NANJING YUZUI RUNMAO TOWER

NANJING YUZUI RUNMAO TOWER

Nanjing / China

Architects: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill
Developer: Yuzui Synthesis / Nanjing Hexi New Town Development and Construction

As dusk settles on Nanjing, China, a profound homage to the city’s culture ripples high overhead. This is Runmao Tower: an upright simulacrum of the Yangtze River exciting over the wavelike textures found within Yuhua Stone. Runmao’s undulating glass facade, run through with minute, invisible shadow gaps, embraces both history and legend. As night falls, these gaps waken with LED light, purling and swelling like shimmering water over the precious, iconic stones. In the dark, to onlookers below and to the heavens above, the entire surface is fluid quicksilver. 

Each Yuhua Stone is a token of this region’s distant past; this majestic structure indelibly honors tradition as keenly as it celebrates the region’s future. When construction is completed, Runmao Tower will be an architectural phenomenon; paired with Office of Visual Interaction’s design, it will create an iconic nighttime identity that captures and proclaims the story of time.