In the high-density setting of Nanshan District, Shenzhen, a new comprehensive research and development (R&D) office building has been built for Baidu Group, consisting of two high-rise towers and a set of interconnected circular courtyards. The East Building consists of two wings, skewed into a V-shaped plan, with the core pushed from the typical center position to the junction of the wings.

The central design concept revolves around the notion of “connectivity,” easily associated with one of China’s largest technology companies. This extends across the towers’ orientation on the landscape, which guides users through the campus from one side to the other, through to its use of a system of external staircases, which also take advantage of the region’s balmy climate. The staircases that sail between the wings of the East Building are planted and provide broad steps, chairs and tables, and even foosball tables, to encourage occupiers to serendipitously intersect and interact during the course of the day.

In a departure from the typical atomized tall office building, public spaces are created at several intervals, as a way of changing the behavior of the high-rise office occupiers and encouraging sociability and creative “collisions.” This affects the floor plans, such that the "thinning" of the traditional core-tube-plus-large-span format has resulted in each standard office plate having a depth of 12 meters. While this has the initial effect of reducing usable office space by 30 percent from what would be available in a more traditional layout, it creates a vibrant core space in the void between the wings, which addresses the client’s requirement that each department is well-connected to the other, physically and visually. The displacement of the core tube to the rear of the V-shaped floor plate enables the office layout to support diversified, distributed, creative and “smart” work units, which can operate with greater autonomy and freedom of movement. A number of informal communication areas are arranged at different locations within the tower, especially where the planted exterior staircases connect, complementing the outdoor green space atop the podium.

The pixelated panel system on the buildings’ façades is an interpretation of ancient Chinese poetry into the binary codes that power the digital age, while also representing the client’s corporate temperament to the world. The façade is made of aluminum-alloy prefabricated members. The exterior side consists of a vertically-oriented, perforated ventilation panel. The interior side is designed with operable ventilation louvers, which provide outdoor fresh air to the interior, without the potentially visually marring effect that operable windows would have on an otherwise tidy and uniform façade.

The connectivity that pervades the project is intended to stimulate the creativity of employees and drive a forward-looking mentality for the company. The dynamic interplay of interior and exterior, combined with the external staircases and the off-set core, facilitate an efficient and aesthetically pleasing model for intra-office communication and collaboration. This was the result of an equally collaborative process between employees, designers and the local urban planning authorities.