Starlight Place

Aedas designed the Starlight Place in Chongqing, China.

Description from the architects:

Starlight Place – a shopping mall and 2 serviced apartment towers that physically touch at podium level and share basement parking and mechanical rooms. Aedas was also appointed to design 6 residential towers to accompany the shopping mall and serviced apartment towers for the client but act and function as independent properties.

Starlight Place, dedicated to youthful fashion, enhances Nanping district as a retail destination and greatly improves the local lifestyle and culture. The external architecture is powerful and expressive, representing Chongqingers’ tough spirit and inspired by surrounding natural environment. Angular forms, invoking Szechuan mountains and abstract sculptural forms, are accentuated by materials – polished black granite and copper-toned cladding.

Interior concept of ‘opposites attract’ represents the warm-hearted nature of Chongqingers that underlies their tough outer persona. The curvaceous forms, inspired by rivers flowing between deep valleys. The steep site topography dictates 8 levels of shopping mall, invoking the rivers and valleys.

Four pedestrian entrances, at different levels due to site, converge within the arcade to become the heart of the design. Event spaces are interspersed throughout levels to further enliven and create sense of place. Main north entrance plaza creates a grand public space, already a popular landmark in Nanping district.

The dramatic and eye-catching design has successfully attracted premium global brands, top-flight domestic brands and luxury goods manufacturers as tenants. Notable tenants are CRC Vanguard, H&M, Uniqlo, Valentino Jeans, Max & Co., DKNY, Juicy Couture, Hugo Boss, Armani Exchange, Polo Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, Kappa, Levi’s, Miss Sixty, and the largest Apple Retailer in the city. Also included are an IMAX cinema complex, many distinguished restaurants such as South Beauty, and the very first Costa Coffee in Chongqing.

The landscape design is strongly influenced by the shopping mall architecture and thereby takes on many of the Chillida-inspired angular forms and patterns. Paving patterns, signage and sculptural works of art all display the theme.