Sino-Finnish Hybrid Centre officially open in Nanjing

PES-Architects' hybrid development, the Sino-Finnish Centre, has been officially opened in Nanjing, China. The opening ceremony was held as part of Nanjing's traditional Lantern Festival. The completed project is based on the winning proposal of an architectural competition organized in 2016. For PES, the event marked the completion of a design project spanning nearly a decade.

The core design concept is based on the metaphor of "breaking the ice" between cultures, expressed architecturally through building forms inspired by ice blocks and ice crystals. When viewed up close, the fragmented glass prism façade structure imitates ice crystals and changes its colour and tone under different lighting conditions. The project is exceptionally large in scale, comprising a hybrid complex of approximately 210,000 m², including an office tower, a 100-metre-high hotel tower, a conference centre, an exhibition centre, and timber-structured exhibition pavilions.

Sustainability was a key guiding principle throughout the design process. The prismatic double-skin façade system enables passive cooling in summer and heat recovery in winter. The load-bearing structures of the exhibition pavilions have been realized using CLT and glulam elements, an uncommon solution in contemporary Chinese construction.

The project remains our founder Pekka Salminen's last completed design.