KPF Design Their Third Chongqing Supertall

These two designs by KPF are two proposals for a new supertall tower in the Chinese city of Chongqing, the third supertall project in town by the architecture firm.

The project, estimated to be about 380 metres in height, is situated in the very heart of the core area of Chongqing's Jiefangbei CBD with MAD's Urban Forest planned literally over the road.

Such is the scale of development that the scheme will have another nine supertalls just within a 500 metre radius of this project if everything gets built. This is still less than Dubai, but for a city that is experiencing rapid organically driven growth there are bound to be more on the way.

The first design by KPF features a tower with an efficient rectangular footprint with a series of voids cut out of one of the upper corners, and then pushing through the centre of the top of the tower with a rectangular horizontal loop around it. This is bound to elicit reactions that it does, at least superficially speaking, resemble the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing by Rem Koolhaas.

At the bottom, the concept out cut-out blocks is continued with the façade treatment that gives it the impression of being several stacked rectangles.

The second proposal from KPF is more monolithic in nature. It's a single sculptural tower with a strong sense of verticality, curving corners and a slanted roofline that is keeps more to the philosophies of William Pedersen, one of the founders of KPF, who was a big believer in simple geometric forms.

Which design will be chosen for the site is yet to be announced, but no matter what the choice it seems that this time KPF will be the winner, and have yet another chance to contribute to what is rapidly becoming one of the greatest and densest concentrations of supertall skyscrapers in the world.