AECOM Plants 168-Meter Financial Tower in New Shaoxing District

AECOM's 168-meter International Financial Center anchors a 22-block mixed-use district in Shaoxing, China, according to project documents the firm shared with designboom.

The tower's 45-degree rotation relative to the site "establishes a dialogue with the neighboring hotel tower," AECOM said. The shift also frames views toward Meishan and Jinghu National Urban Wetland Park, the area's two defining landscape features.

What does the 45-degree rotation actually do?

It breaks the orthogonal grid (the right-angle street pattern common in Chinese new-town developments). The rotation aligns the tower's main axis with the mountain view, AECOM's project notes said, opening the glass facade to oblique daylight angles throughout the day.

Subtle vertical changes in the curtain wall (the building's outer glass skin) read as ripples on water. The adjacent hotel tower's podium borrows rounded forms from water-worn pebbles, a direct reference to Shaoxing's canal network that threads through the city center.

How does the master plan hold it all together?

A central park organizes the relationship between buildings and public space. A network of pedestrian and landscape connections weaves the financial, hospitality, retail and civic blocks into one walkable framework that links offices to shops and shared outdoor rooms.

The composition references the rhythm of local mountain ranges. AECOM said the result forms a "recognizable family of towers" with room for individual headquarters identities. The arrangement makes the surrounding landscape a defining reference for the district's skyline.

What's the practical change for Shaoxing?

The scheme brings financial-district scale into direct contact with everyday urban life. AECOM's project description says the design "seeks to bring the scale of the financial district into contact with everyday urban life, linking workplaces with shopping, leisure, and shared outdoor spaces."

Lead architect Colin Franzen led a 22-person design team. Members included Teddy Tu, Wang Yue, Yang Qiao, Liu Yingda, Liu Xing, Li Guoping, Wang Feng, Echo Zhou, Li Sijia, Ran Xuerong, Eduardo Hidalgo, Zhou Pei, Xia Fan, Zhu Yinan, Huang Lu, Cang Lijia, Shen Yuqian, Dong Le, He Zhiqin, Li Xirong, Zhang Heyi and Xin Tan.

What does the project add to Shaoxing's skyline?

The 168-meter tower will rank among the city's tallest buildings once completed. Its angular footprint and rippled curtain wall set it apart from the flat-topped office blocks that define most Chinese financial districts from Shanghai to Shenzhen.

The landscape-led framework also reaches beyond a single tower. It uses the central park, the rotated axis and the pebble-form hotel to tie the whole 22-block district back to Shaoxing's mountains and waterways, something local developers rarely attempt at this scale.

AECOM hasn't shared a completion date, and the project's reader-submission status to designboom leaves construction timelines and developer commitments unclear.