Qingdao Vanke Future City | Qingdao, China | CLOU Architects

Qingdao Vanke Future City
Qingdao Vanke Future City

CLOU architects were commissioned by Vanke to design the fourth floor atrium of the newly opened Future City Mall in Qingdao. Located in Qingdao’s northern district, Vanke Future City is a brand-new shopping and leisure destination devoted to the mingling of aesthetics, creativity, and social experiences, hoping to bring a fresh vitality to Qingdao’s old town and its surroundings.

Qingdao Vanke Future City

The crux of the design challenge was to create an iconic social space, tempting customers to the upper levels of the mall, and energizing its retail and dining areas. This led to the concept of an immersive jungle garden.

Qingdao Vanke Future City
Qingdao Vanke Future City

Wandering in the Fantastic Jungle

The consumers of today value comfort and intimacy in commercial and public spaces and cherish nature, outdoors, wellness and social interaction above all. Responding to this, we decided to integrate nature and art into an immersive space, taking inspiration from the paintings of Henri Rousseau. We created a vibrant, experientially unique jungle garden.

Qingdao Vanke Future City

In the atrium’s central space, we chose a two-storey red cube structure as the focal point, surrounded by a jungle of plants and water. Reminiscent of the primitive and mysterious scenes in Rousseau’s paintings: the vibrant colours, light and shade, invokes an imaginative and dreamlike atmosphere.

We chose bright red as our main colour to create a striking visual impression, which will quickly grab people’s attention, like the flowers and animals that populate Rosseau’s mysterious paintings, we created a dazzling contrast between the colourful subject and detailed background, and a pleasing sense of illusion.

Qingdao Vanke Future City

A circular bridge on the first floor connects the central cube to its surrounding areas with varying staircases. Tropical greenery, seating, water features, and staircases create human-scale details, enhancing the walking experience and enticing customers to linger and explore. This alluring, outdoor feeling provides its visitors a place where their imagination can roam freely.

Qingdao Vanke Future City
Qingdao Vanke Future City

A variety of paths and steps create fun and interactive scenes for socializing, exploring, and taking photos. The entire atrium serves not only as a public space for the local community to relax, but also as the perfect venue for joyful community events.

Qingdao Vanke Future City
Qingdao Vanke Future City

With the unique spatial experience created for Qingdao Future City, CLOU hopes to activate the social and artistic potential of commercial space and make a fun, intimate and pleasurable place that creates lasting memories.

Qingdao Vanke Future City

Landscape Architect: TOA Landscape Architecture

Designer: CLOU architects

Design Team: Jan Clostermann, Lin Li, Xinhui Ding, Rentian Liu, Jingyao Cheng, Qiao Ding, Christopher Biggin

Client: Vanke

Local Design Institute: Qingdao Tengyuan Design Institute Co.,Ltd

MEP: Promising Engineering and Consulting (Beijing) Co.,Ltd

Photography: Zhu Runzi

Text: CLOU Architects

About Damian Holmes 3253 Articles
Damian Holmes is the Founder and Editor of World Landscape Architecture (WLA). He is a registered landscape architect (AILA) working in international design practice in Australia. Damian founded WLA in 2007 to provide a website for landscape architects written by landscape architects. Connect on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/damianholmes/