Designed by Rem Koolhaas' OMA back in 2006, the much-debated structure comprises a 250-metre skyscraper with a vast podium hoisted up around its waist, forming a canopy for a public plaza at its feet.

The three-storey podium is suspended 36 metres above the ground to create the large trading rooms of the Stock Exchange, while a landscaped garden will be accessible on its roof.

A strict grid of square windows generates the facade of the 46-storey tower, while the surrounding podium displays a zigzagging sequence of structural trusses.

Scheduled to complete in May, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange is OMA's second-largest building in China after the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, which completed last year. The firm is also currently working on a second Shenzhen skyscraper in the city's business district. See more architecture in Shenzhen or more projects in China.

Dezeen filmed a series of interviews with Rem Koolhaas, as well as OMA partners Reinier de Graaf and Iyad Alsaka at an exhibition about the firm's work in London. Watch the movies or see all our stories about OMA.

Photography is by Philippe Ruault.

Here's some extra information from OMA:

Shenzhen Stock Exchange

The essence of the stock market is speculation: it is based on capital, not material. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange is conceived as a physical materialization of the virtual stock market: it is a building with a floating base, representing the stock market – more than physically accommodating it. Typically, the base of a building anchors a structure and connects it emphatically to the ground. In the case of Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the base, as if lifted by the same speculative euphoria that drives the market, has crept up the tower to become a raised podium, defying an architectural convention that has survived millennia into modernity: a solid building standing on a solid base.

SZSE's raised podium is a three-storey cantilevered platform floating 36m above the ground, one of the largest office floor plates, with an area of 15,000 m2 per floor and an accessible landscaped roof. The raised podium contains all the Stock Exchange functions, including the listing hall and all stock exchange departments. The raised podium vastly increases SZSE's exposure in its elevated position. When glowing at night, it "broadcasts" the virtual activities of the city's financial market, while its cantilevers crop and frame views of Shenzhen. The raised podium also liberates the ground level and creates a generous public space for what could have been what is typically a secure, private building.

The raised podium and the tower are combined as one structure, with the tower and atrium columns providing vertical and lateral support for the cantilevering structure. The raised podium is framed by a robust three-dimensional array of full-depth steel transfer trusses.

The tower is flanked by two atria – voids that connect the ground directly with the public spaces inside the building. SZSE staff enter from the East and tenants from the West. SZSE executive offices are located just above the raised podium, leaving the uppermost floors leasable as rental offices and a dining club.
The generic square form of the tower obediently blends in with the surrounding homogenous towers, but the facade of SZSE is different. The building's facade wraps the robust exoskeletal grid structure supporting the building in patterned glass. The texture of the glass cladding reveals the construction technology behind while simultaneously rendering it mysterious and beautiful. The neutral colour and translucency of the facade change with weather conditions, creating a mysterious crystalline effect: sparkling during bright sunshine, mute on an overcast day, radiant at dusk, and glowing at night. The facade is a "deep facade", with recessed openings that passively reduce the amount of solar heat gain entering the building, improve natural day light, and reduce energy consumption. SZSE is designed to be one of the first 3-star green rated buildings in
China.

The 46-storey (254m) Shenzhen Stock Exchange is a Financial Center with civic meaning. Located in a new public square at the meeting point of the north-south axis between Mount Lianhua and Binhe Boulevard, and the east-west axis of Shennan Road, Shenzhen's main artery, it engages the city not as an isolated object, but as a building to be reacted to at multiple scales and levels. At times appearing massive and at others intimate and personal, SZSE constantly generates new relationships within the urban context, hopefully as an impetus to new forms of architecture and urbanism.

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As a response to the rapid urbanisation going on in the country, Vincent Callebaut wanted to completely rethink the current structure of cities and do away with suburbs. "The more a city is dense, the less it consumes energy," he explains.

He continues: "The challenge is to create a fertile urbanisation with zero carbon emissions and with positive energy. This means producing more energy that it consumes, in order to conciliate the economical development with the protection of the planet."

The architect proposes a new type of urban habitat based on the rules of the natural world, with stacks of giant pebbles housing entire communities. All energy would be sourced from the sun and wind, anything produced would be recyclable and local expertise would be capitalised wherever possible.

Residents of each tower would also work there, reducing the need to travel. All food and commodities would be produced within the building, in suspended orchards and vegetables gardens, plus all waste would be fed back into the ecosystem.

"The garden is no more placed side by side to the building; it is the building!" says Callebaut. "The architecture becomes cultivable, eatable and nutritive."

Entitled Asian Cairns, Callebaut's proposals are for a series of six towers, with some containing as many as 20 glazed "pebbles". A steel structure would create the curved shapes, while solar panels and wind turbines would be mounted onto the outer surfaces.

The project was commissioned by private Chinese investors.

Vincent Callebaut has developed a number of conceptual architecture projects in recent years. In 2010 he revealed a conceptual transport system involving airships powered by seaweed and has also been working on a tower with the same structure as a DNA strand.

See more architecture proposals in China, including a Zaha Hadid-designed cultural complex in Changsha and a pair of opposing museums in Tianjin by Steven Holl.

Here's a lot of extra information from Vincent Callebaut:

Sustainable Farmscrapers for Rural Urbanity, Shenzhen, China

From Rural Exodus to Chinese Urban Biosphere

At the end of 2011 in China, the number of inhabitants in the cities exceeded the number of inhabitants in the countryside. Whereas 30 years ago only one Chinese person out of five lived in the city, the city-dwellers represent now 51.27% of the total population of 1 347 billion of people. This urban population is supposed to increase to 800 million of inhabitants within 2020 spread mainly in 221 cities of at least one million of inhabitants (versus only 40 in Europe of the same scale) and 23 megapolis of more that five million of inhabitants.

According to Li Jianmin, an expert in demography from the Tianjin University, the Chinese population will be urban at 75% within 2030! Facing this massive rural exodus and the unrestrained acceleration of the urbanisation, the future models of the – green, dense and connected – cities must be rethought from now on! The challenge is to create a fertile urbanisation with zero carbon emissions and with positive energy, this means producing more energy that it consumes, in order to conciliate the economical development with the protection of the planet. The standard of living of everyone will thus be increased by respecting at the same time the standard of living of everybody.

The green city

The cities are currently responsible for 75% of the worldwide consumption of energy and they reject 80% of worldwide emissions of CO2. The contemporary urban model is thus ultra-energy consuming and works on the importation of wealth and natural resources on the one hand, and on the exportation of the pollution and waste on the other hand. This loop of energetic flows can be avoided by repatriating the countryside and the farming production modes in the heart of the city by the creation of green lungs, farmscrapers in vertical storeys and by the implantation of wind and solar power stations. The production sites of food and energy resources will be thus reintegrated in the heart of the consumption sites! The buildings with positive energies must become the norm and reduce the carbon print on the mid term.

The dense city

The model of main contemporary cities advocating the urban spread and based on the mono-functionality and the social segregation, must be rejected! Actually, the more a city is dense, the less it consumes energy. This is the end of ultra secured ghettos of rich people against quarters of huge poverty! This is the end of bedroom suburbs without any activity alternating with uniform commercial area and without any inhabitant! This is the end of museum city centres fighting against monofunctional business districts. This is the end of embolism of the all-car eating away the city centres! This is the end of the explosion of public and private transports devouring our lands because based on an obsolete geographical separation of housing and work! The social diversity and the functional diversity must be the key words to build more intelligent cities! Ecologically more viable, the dense, vertical and less spread city will constitute an attractive open pole and offering many services. The social will be reinvented!

The connected city

The information and communication technologies have now a major role in the development of city network and will be able to reduce the carbon emissions from 15 and 20% within 2020. The communication solutions such as the optic fibre and the satellite systems enable already thanks to their associated applications (videoconference, telecommuting, telemedicine, video surveillance, e-commerce, real time information, etc.). to reduce considerably the carbon emissions and to save the travel costs by reinforcing at the same time the economical dynamism and the attractiveness of the cities.

Based on innovation, the TIC solutions favour the diminution of physical goods and means of transport via the dematerialization. They empower also a clever logistics and a synchronisation of the production operations. Everything tends to new opportunities of profitable growth and to a saving with low carbon print. The sustainable development must thus enable to find innovative solutions for an economy resilient to climatic changes which is in total harmony with the biosphere in order to preserve the capabilities of the future generations to meet their needs.

The Biomorphism, the Bionic and the Biomimicry at the Service of the Renaturalisation of the City

The oldest living beings appeared 3.8 billion years ago. In terms of durability, the human societies are thus far behind the nature that made its proofs. If only 1% of the species survived by adapting themselves constantly without hypothecate the future generation and without any fuel, their subsistence merits the respect and reminds us the laws of their prosperity:

» The Nature works mainly with solar energy.
» It uses only the quantity of energy it needs.
» It adjusts the shape to the function.
» It recycles everything.
» It bets on the biodiversity.
» It limits the excess from the interior.
» It transforms the constraints into opportunities.
» It transforms waste into natural resources.
» It enhances the local expertise.

Based on these billions of years of Research and Development, new innovation approaches aiming at modifying the carbon balance, guide us to three additional scales operated by the contemporary biotechnologies: the shapes, the strategies and the ecosystems.

The Biomorphism is based only on shapes from the Nature, e.g. the vertical wings of the Steppes Eagle, the spiralling and hydro-dynamical shape of the nautilus, the ventilation of the termite mounds.

The Bionics is based on living strategies, natural manufacturing processes, e.g. the plasticity of the lilypads, the hyper-resistant structure of the hives in bee nests.

The Biomimicry is based on mature ecosystems and tends to reproduce all the interactions present in a tropical forest such as: the use of waste as resources, the diversification and the cooperation, the reduction of the materials at their strict minimum, e.g. the autogenerative agriculture, the reproduction of the photosynthesis process (main energy source of humanity), the production of bio-hydrogen from green algae.

Whereas the primary reason of architecture is since time immemorial to protect Man against Nature, the contemporary city desires by its emergent methods to reconciliate finally Man and the natural ecosystems! The architecture becomes metabolic and creative! The facades become as intelligent, regenerative and organic epidermis. They are matters in movement, recovered by free plants and adjust always the shape to the functionality. The roofs become the new grounds of the green city. The garden is no more placed side by side to the building; it is the building! The architecture becomes cultivable, eatable and nutritive. The architecture is no more set up in the ground but is planted into the earth and exchanges with it the organic matters changed in natural resources.

Asian Cairns, Towards a New Model of Smart City

Benefiting from its privileged geographical position in the heart of the Chinese megalopolis of the Delta of the Pearl River, Shenzhen faces a spectacular economic and demographic development. Since the return of Hong Kong to China, both cities have been merging together and constitute now one of the greatest Chinese metropolises with more than 20 billions of inhabitants! In this context of hyper growth and accelerated urbanism, the "Asian Cairns" project fights for the construction of an urban multifunctional, multicultural and ecological pole. It is an obvious project to build a prototype of green, dense, Smart city connected by the TIC and eco-designed from biotechnologies!

Three interlaced eco-spirals

The master plan is designed under the shape of three interlaced spirals that represent the 3 elements which are fire, earth and water, all organised around air in the middle. Each spiral curls up around two magalithic towers and forms urban ecosystems implanting the biodiversity in the heart of the City under the shape of vast public orchards and urban agriculture fields. Huge basins of viticulture and vast lagoons of phyto-puration recycle the grey waters rejected by the inhabited vertical farms.

Six multifunctional farmscrapers

The six gardening towers engraved in a Golden Triangle pile up a mixed programmation superimposing farmingscrapers cultivated by their own inhabitants. Like our Dragonfly project in New York, the aim is to repatriate the countryside in the city and to reintegrate the food production modes into the consumption sites. The megalithic towers are based on cairns, artificial stone heap present on the mountains to mark out the hiker tracks. Clever exploits of the construction, these six towers pile up housing, offices, leisure spaces in the monolithic pebbles superimposed on each other along a vertical central boulevard. This central boulevard constitutes the structural framework of each tower. It choreographs the human flows, distributes the natural resources and digests the waste by sorting and selective composting. True city quarter piling up mixed blocks, these cairns make the urban space denser by optimising also the quality of life of its inhabitants by the reduction of means of transport, the implantation of a home automation network, the re-naturalisation of the public and private spaces and the integration of clean renewable energies.

These six farmscrapers are pioneer towers aiming at the 10 following objectives:

1. The diminution of the ecological footprint of this new vertical eco-quarter enhancing the local consumption by its food autonomy and by the reduction of means of road, rail and river transport.
2. The reintegration of local employment in the primary and secondary sectors coproducing the fresh and organic products to the city dwellers who will be able to reappropriate the knowledge of the farming production modes.
3. The recycling in short and closed loop of the liquid or solid organic waste of the used waters by anaerobe composting and green algae panels producing biogas by accelerated photosynthesis.
4. The economy of the rural territory reducing the deforestation, the desertification and the pollution of the phreatic tables.
5. The oxygenation of the polluted city centres whose air quality is saturated in lead particles.
6. The production of a vertical organic agriculture of fruits and vegetables limiting the systematic recourse to pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers.
7. The saving of water resource by the recycling of urban waters, spraying waters and the evapo-sweated water by the plants.
8. The protection of the biodiversity and the development of eco-systemic cycles in the heart of the city.
9. The diminution of the sanitary risks by the disappearance of pesticides noxious for the health and by the fertility and total protection of the phreatic tables.
10. The diminution of the recourse to fossil fuel needed for the conventional agriculture in long cycle for the refrigeration and the transport of the goods.

Hundred of bioclimatic pebbles with positive energy

Each pebble is a true eco-quarter of this new model of vertical city. Structurally, they are made of steel rings which arch around the horizontal double-decks. These rings are linked to the central spinal column by Vierendeel beams that enable a maximum of flexibility and spatial modularity. These huge beams form a plan in cross that welcomes the individual programmation of each pebble. The interstitial spaces between this cross and the megalith skin welcome great nutritive suspended gardens under the shape of farming greenhouses.

True living stones playing from their overhanging position, the crystalline pebbles are eco designed from renewable energies. An open-air epidermis of photovoltaic and photo thermal solar cells as well as a forest of axial wind turbines covers the zenithal roofs punctuated by suspended orchards and vegetable gardens. Each pebble presents thus a positive energetic balance on the electrical hand and also on the calorific or food hand.

The "Asian Cairns" project syntheses our architectural philosophy that transforms the cities in ecosystems, the quarters in forests and the buildings in mature trees changing thus each constraint in opportunity and each waste in renewable natural resource!

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News: concrete made with unprocessed sea sand has been found in at least 15 buildings under construction in Shenzhen – including what will be China's tallest building when completed – putting them at risk of collapse.

An industry-wide investigation made public last week discovered that 15 buildings in the city were partly constructed from concrete made with sea sand instead of river sand, including the 660-metre-high Ping’an International Finance Center, expected to be the second tallest building in the world.

While cheap sea sand offers cost-saving opportunities for contractors, the salt and chloride present in it can corrode steel reinforcements over time and ultimately cause a building to collapse.

The Shenzhen Housing and Construction Bureau found that 31 companies had violated industry rules and ordered eight of them to suspend business for one year in the city, Bloomberg reported.

Construction has now been halted on Ping'an International Finance Center, which was designed by US firm Kohn Pedersen Fox and has been under construction since 2009.

Like many Chinese cities, Shenzhen is undergoing a frenzy of construction activity, with architects including OMA and Mecanoo working in the city.

OMA recently won a competition to design a financial office tower, the firm's second building in the city after the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Mecanoo are woking on a cultural complex in the Longgang district, while the Futian District - an area that's larger than Manhattan - is being redesigned by SWA Group to create pedestrian areas and green spaces.

See all our stories about architecture and design in China.

Image is by Kohn Pedersen Fox.

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Located in the city's business district, the 180-metre Essence Financial Building will be cut into two by a large outdoor terrace that will slice horizontally though the facade to open up a view of the nearby Shenzhen Golf Club.

Circulation routes will be sidelined to the edge of the floorplates, creating flexible office plans that can be adapted to suit different layouts and alternative uses.

Each facade will be designed in relation to the movements of the sun, as a deliberate move to minimise solar gain. East and west facades will be the most screened, while the south facade will feature graduated openings and the north facade will have the largest windows.

David Gianotten, partner in charge of OMA Asia, commented: "OMA is very excited about its continuous and deepening participation in Shenzhen's development, especially as the city makes its latest evolution: from a manufacturing city into a services hub. This next generation of urbanism calls for a new generation of office towers of which the Essence Financial Building could be one."

OMA's first project in the city, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, is set for completion in April. Other major projects underway in the city include a masterplan for Futian District, while the city's tallest building completed in 2011 and is the 442-metre Kingkey 100 skyscraper. See more architecture in Shenzhen.

See more architecture and design by OMA, including a series of movies we filmed with partners Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf and Iyad Alsaka at the opening of the OMA/Progress exhibition in 2011.

Here's a statement from OMA:

OMA has won the design competition for the Essence Financial Building in Shenzhen. The project, led by OMA Partners David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas, and designed as a new generation office tower for Shenzhen, was selected from entries by four competing international and Chinese architectural practices.

The Essence Financial Building, located in the Financial Developement Area of Shenzhen, reflects on how the emergent forces in business and society could shape a contemporary office tower typology. The building challenges the many conventions that govern office tower designs, in particular the prevailing central core plan and curtain wall systems.

The Essence Financial Building shifts its core to the edge of the floor plate, resulting in large unobstructed plans that allow a variety of office configurations - and therefore working styles - that meet the demands of the contemporary services industry. Direct and open additional connections between floors can be created to cater for visual and physical contact between departments. The building rationalizes programs into unique volumes, which are then maneuvered to create the distinct form of the building, as well as a viewing platform overlooking the Shenzhen Golf Club, and shaded outdoor recreational spaces for staff.

Above: section - click above for larger image

The facade of the building is an architectural translation of the sun and solar gain diagrams, as well as to the views from each side of the tower. Each face thus takes on a unique pattern. The East and West facades are less penetrable, in response to the low-hitting sun, while the south facade has graduated openings the size of the windows increases down the building in proportion to the decrease of solar penetration. The north facade opens toward Fuhua First Road.

The project was developed together with SADI, YRG, SWA, Inhabit and AECOM.

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Above: raised walkways and gardens are proposed for Futian District

Landscape architecture and urban planning firm SWA Group hopes to transform the congested and car-dominated district of central Shenzhen into a calmer, greener space where pedestrians are welcome.

As part of SWA's masterplan, titled Garden City of Tomorrow, residential streets will be made over with exercise areas for all age groups as well as quieter green spaces.

Office streets will incorporate gardens with seating areas, while retail streets will encourage pedestrian traffic with public art and better lighting.

A botanical garden in the shape of a circuit board, representing the Chinese city's electronics industry, has been proposed for a space alongside the Civic Center.

Three existing parks divided by major roads will be linked by a raised landscape of walkways, cycle paths and gardens called the Bridge Park.

Above: a botanical garden has been proposed alongside Shenzhen Civic Center

"Our landscape and urban design strategies will rebalance Futian from a car-dominated city with a challenging street system to offer a more beautiful, more functional environment, from landscaped boulevards and greenspaces to plazas and large gathering spaces," said Sean O'Malley, the principal leading the masterplan from SWA Group's office in Laguna Beach, California.

The first phase of construction is expected to begin in the second half of 2013, with completion by autumn 2014.

Futian is home to the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, where we made a series of movies in 2009, including one about a project to build a farm in a city square and another looking at an installation of 10,000 garments manufactured in Shenzhen.

Other projects in Shenzhen we've featured recently include a registry office that looks like its covered in confetti and the Kingkey 100 skyscraper, the tallest building in the city.

See all our stories about Shenzhen »
See all our stories about masterplans »

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