China Memories: Hangzhou Tower Concept, CCDI Group, 2011
I walked off the 13 hour flight from a kiwi summer into -10 degrees and a China winter. My new boss sat me down in an old style cafeteria in Xujiahui. He ordered xiaolong bao dumplings, a Shanghai specialty. First bite and I burned my tongue on the soup inside the dumplings. Welcome to Shanghai.
It was late January 2011 and I had just joined the International Design Department at CCDI Group. CCDI Group was, and still is, one of the largest and leading LDIs in China. My old office in Kanjian Lu is now a hotel and painted brown. I remember it in slick architectural grey. I also remember the daily lunches of dumplings, meatballs, duck, etc that my colleagues and I ate everyday in the small local restaurants across the street.
The culture shock moving from New Zealand to China was intense and overwhelming at times. Just adapting to my new city, the languages, new foods, and culture was challenging enough, let alone the huge difference in project scales and types. My background was in small residential projects, and quickly my 1:50 scale rule was replaced with 1:1000, 1:2000, 1:5000...
One early project was a mixed-use development for a home appliance manufacturer in the nearby city of Hangzhou. The International Design Department was helping out another division at CCDI Group. It wasn't entirely amicable and I had to learn fast about internal politics in a Chinese office. I also had to work fast and long. The standard office saying at the time was we work "five plus two" and "white and black".
My design drew on the client's branding, with oval towers and smooth organic forms in the podium, reflecting the style of appliances they manufactured. The facade of the main tower also captured the essence of pouring soy milk through changes in the glass colours, emphasizing one of the client's main products. Unfortunately, my design never progressed past the early concept stage, and may not have even been presented properly to the client.
I didn't have time to think much about this project until a couple of years later. The International Design Department was being wound up and absorbed into other departments, and my new team leader asked what I'd been working on. I showed her the render below. "Beautiful", she said, "Is this your work?". I quickly rummaged around in my pile of sketches and luckily uncovered a couple showing my ideas for the facade (below). She immediately offered me a significant pay rise. The new team had few English speakers and my Chinese language skills just weren't good enough to communicate in technical architectural terms, so I didn't stay much longer with CCDI Group.
However, CCDI Group always looked after me very well and I will always appreciate my introduction to working in China with the International Design Department. Looking back after 10 years, I still think this design had some potential.
Sketches and design by the Author prepared while working for CCDI Group in early 2011.