new Tencent campus from crazy floats above Shenzhen
Along a jumbled shoreline at Shenzhen, CRAZYThe center of Tengyun rises above the coast as three clouds office volumes held 8.6 meters (30 ft) in the air. Designed for Tencent’s campus headquarters Chinathe building complex opens up the ground below as a public coastal space where visitors can move below the workspace towards the water.
The gesture gives the project its meaning, as corporate campuses often build their own inner worlds, with landscape and amenities kept behind a controlled edge. Here, MAD lifts the main mass into ten structural cores, releasing the land below as a shadowy field of paths, grass, planted slopes and sea views.
image © Zhang Chao
a corporate campus with public space below
With the Tengyun Center in Shenzhen, the architects at MAD they bring together three interconnected volumes along a north-south axis, each suspended above the public level and connected by elevated steel bridges. The elevated structure frees up the equivalent of two full storeys of space below the buildings, turning the site into a shaded field of paths, lawns, planted slopes and open areas overlooking the sea.
The southern volume houses exhibition and event spaces, including a second-floor public hall facing the bay. The central and northern volumes contain offices arranged around open atriums, with circulation and communal areas positioned to maintain visual contact with the coastline. In the north building, a shell-shaped semi-open ETFE skylight brings daylight inside while filtering the strong coastal sun.
image © AOGVision
The structure of Tengyun Center is shaped by the opening
The same concept continues through the facade system of Shenzhen’s Tengyun Center. Large curved glass surfaces and frameless glazing reduce interruptions on the sea-facing elevations, while integrated horizontal shading follows the rounded geometry of the buildings to soften solar exposure. The technical elements are folded into the overall spatial approach, serving the project’s larger effort to keep the workplace, public transit, and climate in conversation.
At ground level, the campus eschews the familiar corporate edge of walls, gates and planted decoders. The landscape moves through the raised structures and towards the coast, where existing mangroves, tidal habitats and bird migration routes are preserved as part of a government-led restoration effort. The shoreline maintains its ecological role while the building occupies the plot above with a lighter urban gesture.
image © AOGVision
image © Zhang Chao
image © Zhu Yumeng
