Digital China International Innovation Center | Order and Freedom
Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base, the Greater Bay Area’s premier hub for global high-end industries, is guided by principles of green ecology, technological connectivity, and cultural vitality. Through a block-based urban fabric, it creates lively streets and highly permeable mixed-use public spaces.
As one of the first flagship projects within the base, the Digital China International Innovation Center occupies a prime location at the core of the district, adjacent to the central green axis. Respecting the rigorous planning framework, the design responds creatively with spatial permeability and a pixelated technological language. While honoring the urban grid, the architecture transcends formal boundaries through vertical ecology and multi-dimensional linkages, composing a narrative of freedom and dynamism within disciplined order.
Horizontal Porosity, Vertical Growth
The master plan integrates into the framework of the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base with a humble yet perceptive stance, attuned to the spatial rhythms of a city shaped by mountains and sea. Horizontally, the design introduces gentle permeability, carving passages that breathe with the city—streets narrowing into valleys, plazas unfolding like inlets—seamlessly connecting with the central green axis and transit networks. Within a rigorous grid, these gestures generate a fluid and open ground interface.
Vertically, the system unfolds like organic vines, weaving sky bridges, terraces, and elevated courtyards into a three-dimensional cluster. Together, they compose a light and dynamic urban symphony that overlays order with vitality. Rather than a direct replication of the city’s structure, the architecture translates its underlying logic into a language of balance—anchored in urban discipline, yet free to ascend with organic growth.
Multi-Dimensional Connectivity
The design establishes a multi-layered system of public spaces that links the city to the building. At ground level, pocket parks and meandering streets soften the site’s edges, allowing greenery to flow into the urban fabric like a stream, creating a seamless connection with the central green axis and adjacent plots. On the second level, elevated skybridges weave a warm, pedestrian network, gently connecting people, parks, and light, while activating the area with slow-mobility vitality.
Greenery extends from the ground-level courtyards through podium terraces up to the sky gardens, gradually forming a structured vertical ecosystem. This system not only strengthens the interface between building and city, but transcends mere connectivity—it integrates people, nature, and architecture into an organic whole, elegantly embedding the project within the broader ecological framework of the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base.
Ecological Layering
The design treats the green corridors of the Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base as a natural extension of the city’s lifeblood, using architecture as a medium to facilitate a profound dialogue between people and nature. By deeply integrating the building with the ecological system, the project resonates in sync with the city’s pulse.
The twin towers, arranged in a staggered layout, engage actively with the central green axis. Layered sky terraces and stepped setbacks form a vertically ascending green interface, like veins of nature climbing upward, bringing the city’s ecological sequence into the building’s vertical dimension. This strategy not only continues the district’s ecological framework but also organically embeds the site within the broader narrative of urban sustainability. The architecture becomes more than an isolated object; it breathes with the city. Through its three-dimensional ecological layering, the project orchestrates a symphony of nature, architecture, and culture, achieving a seamless collaboration from macro urban scale down to micro site experience.
Pixelated Form, Material Craftsmanship
Pixels are no longer exclusive to the digital world. When discrete units are endowed with gravity, tension, and vitality, architecture becomes a frozen quantum poem. The design takes the “pixel,” the fundamental unit of the digital age, as the generative motif for the building’s form. Through parametric logic, the mass is deconstructed into modular pixel units, allowing standardized components to combine freely in three-dimensional space and evolve organically. The result is an architectural system that balances rigorous order with dynamic tension.
The architectural facade, through the use of pixelated forms and high-tech materials, echoes the corporate identity of Digital China’s cloud technology, conveying a dynamic, futuristic, and developmental symbolism.
Modular Rhythms
Parametrically generated pixel units form the fundamental modular language of the façade. Using standardized 4.5 × 4.5 m curtain wall modules, a clear structural order is established. These units are systematically arranged, overlapped, and interwoven, producing a façade rhythm that is both cohesive and dynamic, where poetic movement emerges from rational order.
The towers and podium continue this modular language while responding to their respective functions through differentiated pixel density and compositional rhythm—the towers emphasizing verticality and technological expression, the podium adopting a more approachable scale and contrast of solid and void. The façade transcends its role as a static envelope, becoming a dynamic medium that embodies dualities of order and freedom, reason and poetry.
Material-Art Synergy
Materials here are more than functional carriers—they shape emotion and ambiance. The building’s character is elevated through meticulous material selection and precise craftsmanship. The transparency of glass contrasts with the solidity of aluminum profiles, producing a dynamic play of light and shadow that accentuates the volumetric depth and rhythmic variation of the pixel units.
The podium façade conveys a more humanistic narrative. The crackle-glazed ceramic panels reveal ice-crystal-like textures beneath their surface, subtly shifting with changing light and viewpoints. This resonates with the technological expression of the towers while adding warmth and tactility to the building’s base. Complementing this, the pale yellow aluminum grilles provide soft linear textures, further humanizing the scale and enhancing approachability. The dialogue between solid ceramic and voided aluminum enriches the façade’s layered complexity.
The Digital China Group International Innovation Center writes a new chapter of urban development along the Shenzhen Bay, using pixels as its brush and technology as its ink. On an urban scale, it is not only a landmark building but also a catalyst for the city's growth. Its open urban public space system has energized the surrounding area, fostering urban vitality. The unique architectural form, blending seamlessly with the regional characteristics of the mountains and sea, enriches the Shenzhen Bay skyline.
Project Information
Project Name: Digital China International Innovation Center
Architectural Design: Shenzhen Huahui Design
Chief Architects: Xiao Cheng, Ren Yuanyuan
Design Team: Chen Kangyuan, Gao Yunfei, Xie Changjin, Zeng Xiaotao, Gao Hao, Li Jiangtao
Location: Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China
Design Period: January 2018 – May 2023
Completion: September 2023
Site Area: 25,634 ㎡
Gross Floor Area: 200,000 ㎡
Client: Digital China Group Co., Ltd.
Project Management Unit: Excellence Commercial Property Co., Ltd., Shenzhen
Interior Design: CTG Architecture
Landscape Design: Lab D+H SH
Construction Documents: Guangdong Architectural Design and Research Institute Group Co., Ltd.
Contractor: China State Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co., Ltd.
Lighting Consultant: Tungsten-Studio
Photography: Zhang Chao Architectural Photography Studio, Liao Qinfang, Tungsten-Studio,XIA Zhihang, Shenzhen Huahui Design