Pearl River Tower, High-rise building in Zhujiang New Town, Guangzhou, China
Pearl River Tower is a 71-story, 309.6-meter skyscraper at Jinsui Road and Zhujiang Avenue West in Tianhe, Guangzhou. Its main shaft is rectangular, with a left facade that curves outward in stacked, rounded bulges of light blue-gray glass panels, while the right side is a flat dark band of horizontal louvers with a lighter cross-shaped pattern near the middle. The top of the curved glass section ends in a rounded, darker inward curve. The building is intended for office use and is partially occupied by the China National Tobacco Corporation.
Ground was broken on 8 September 2006, and the tower was completed in March 2011, reaching its full 309.6-metre height in early 2010. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed it with Adrian D. Smith and Gordon Gill. Fire codes and regulations forced changes to the original plan for a positive-energy building, and the finished 212,165 m² tower uses about 40% of the energy a building of its size typically would.
The tower's name comes from the Pearl River, the waterway that gave Guangzhou its role as a trading port. Its tapering glass face and louvred band are the work of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with Adrian D. Smith and Gordon Gill as architects. The China National Tobacco Corporation occupies part of the office space.
The tower stands at the junction of Jinsui Road and Zhujiang Avenue West in Tianhe, Guangzhou. It is an office building partly occupied by the China National Tobacco Corporation, so interior floors are working space rather than a visitor attraction. The sculpted glass facade and the louvered band with its cross-shaped pattern are best viewed from the street and the surrounding plaza.
The structure uses wind turbines and solar panels built into its exterior, cutting energy use significantly below what similar office towers consume. These systems form part of the building's visible design rather than being concealed.
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