Sculpted by the Sun

25. November 2024

Photo © Iwan Baan

One of the most formally striking buildings added to an office profile on World-Architects in recent weeks is Sun Tower, a waterfront cultural facility in Yantai, China, designed by OPEN Architecture, the Beijing firm of Huang Wenjing and Li Hu. Take a visual tour through a building “sculpted by the movement of the sun.”

The Sun Tower sits in the Yantai Yeda Development Zone, an area where a sun-worshiping culture emerged in ancient China and whose shoreline faces the Bohai Sea to the north. (Photo © Jonathan Leijonhufvud)

Formally, the Sun Tower is like an angled cone that has been hollowed in the center and sliced vertically — the slice is an arc with sections that are parallel to the noon sunlight on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. (Photo © Jonathan Leijonhufvud)

The hollowed-out center serves as an outdoor theater whose main axis points toward Zhifu Island, over which the sun rises on summer solstice.  (Photo © Iwan Baan)

Ramps lined with digital exhibitions ascend the 50-meter-tall Sun Tower between its inner and outer concrete shells, though an elevator is also available for visitors. (Photo © Iwan Baan)

The unconditioned, in-between space offers numerous spots to stop and take in distant vistas. (Photo © Iwan Baan)

Enclosed near the top of the building is the library, which is “intended to foster discussions on coastal community collaboration and raise environmental awareness.” (Photo © Jonathan Leijonhufvud)

Suitably, the library features seating oriented to the glass wall and sea beyond. (Photo © Jonathan Leijonhufvud)

Above the library, at the very top of the Sun Tower, is the “Phenomena Space,” an intentionally undefined space with an oculus that tracks the sun but that also allows rainwater to feed a shallow pool that swirls for nine minutes every hour — a special time device in a building shaped by our celestial timekeeper, the sun. (Photo © Iwan Baan)

A diagram of the way the sun sculpted the Sun Tower. (Drawing: OPEN)