Tianjin's 'Pile of Boxes' skyscraper
We have never been to Tianjin, but we have seen a pile of boxes, and these ingenious buildings do indeed look like giant piles of boxes. Sounds kinda cool, via Inhabitat:
The port city of Tianjin (Mainland China’s third largest city behind Shanghai and Beijing) is adding another skyscraper to its skyline. Construction on Atkins’ TEDA Landmark Towers (Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area), nicknamed “the pile of boxes” by local residents, is set to be underway. The design features three towers made up of stacked and slightly rotated eight-story blocks. Each tower will use a geothermal heating/cooling system and feature sky-gardens in rotating corners of the glass blocks. The gardens will “light up the corners of each tower, creating an illusion of glowing lanterns rising up into the sky.” Each of the buildings will also be crowned with mesh-like blocks that house vertical wind-powered turbines to help supply electricity.
The tallest of the three towers will rise to 356 meters (80 floors, 1168 ft) and will be Tianjin’s second tallest building after the Tianjin TV Tower (415 m) when finished. The two other towers will be 136 m (446 ft) and 198 m (650 ft) tall and will be connected to the taller tower by a nine-story building that will include a shopping mall. The three towers will house offices, residential apartments, retail shops and even a luxury five-star hotel.
