That was quick: The Shen­zhen Stock Exchange has broken ground. OMA won the com­pe­ti­tion just a year ago, now has moved a team of archi­tects to Shen­zen and starts building.

SSE con­sists of a cen­tral tower with an ele­vated box raised off the ground to pro­vide a canopy for a public plaza beneath.

There was a rather con­tro­ver­sial dis­cus­sion on dezeen when the com­pe­ti­tion result was announced. I have to say that I still buy the sim­plic­ity story. Icons that are able to talk to other icons and are not autis­tic. Whether that public plaza will ever be used in the intended way? Time will tell. How­ever, Lina BoBardi’s Museum of Art in Sao Paolo is a great place.
What is also nice is the ref­er­ence to Mies’ Neue Nation­al­ga­lerie in Berlin. That build­ing together with Jenny Holz­ers Instal­la­tion was really amaz­ing. Here we go again:

more pics & snip­pets from the press release:

“Lift­ing the base in the air vastly increases its expo­sure,” says Kool­haas. “In its ele­vated posi­tion, it can ‘broad­cast’ the activ­i­ties of the stock market to the entire city.

“The essence of the stock market is spec­u­la­tion: it is based on cap­i­tal, not grav­ity,” he con­tin­ues. “In the case of Shenzhen’s almost vir­tual stock market, the role of sym­bol­ism exceeds that of the pro­gram – it is a build­ing that has to rep­re­sent the stock market, more than phys­i­cally accom­mo­date it.”

The premise of OMA’s design is based on the essence of the stock market as spec­u­la­tion and the desire to create a build­ing that is beyond sym­bol­ism for an almost vir­tual stock market.

For mil­len­nia the solid build­ing has stood on a solid base which anchors the struc­ture and con­nects it emphat­i­cally to the ground. In the SSE build­ing the tra­di­tional base is lifted up the tower to become a float­ing plat­form to broad­cast the eco­nomic infor­ma­tion of the vir­tual market and in turn lib­er­ate the space on the ground for public space and events.

Facts: Site: 132,000m2 land in the down­town area of Shen­zhen
Pro­gram: Total 175, 000m2: Rental office 86,000 m2; Reg­is­tra­tion & clear­ing house 20,000 m2; Acces­sory area 15,000 m2; Secu­ri­ties infor­ma­tion com­pany 15,000 m2; SSE office area 14,500 m2; Trad­ing floor 14,500 m2; Tech­ni­cal oper­a­tions area10,000 m2. Height 200m

Design:
OMA Rot­ter­dam
Part­ner in charge: Rem Kool­haas
Asso­ciate in charge: Shohei Shige­matsu
Team: Anna Little, Christin Svens­son, Jason Long, Carlos Garcia Gon­za­les, Joao Bravo da Costa, Mauro Par­ravicini, Mar­i­ano Sagasta, Bart Schoonder­beek, Kon­stan­tin August, Klaas Kresse, Kengo Sko­rick, Katha­rina Ger­lach, Mendel Rob­bers, Hong Yong Sook, Beat­riz MInguez de Molina, Martti Kalliala, Andrea Bertassi, Daniel Ostrowski, Yuanzhen Ou,

AMO
Todd Reisz, Bren­dan McGetrick

OMA Bei­jing
Part­ner in charge: Ole Scheeren
Team: Dong­mei Yao, Hiro­masa Shirai, Anu Leinonen, Tiey­ing Fang, Pei Feng, Xinyuan Wang