For a mixed-use development, the Westlake 66 project in Hangzhou, China, was especially mixed up. Like many projects in this category, the development was initially devised to add a combination of offices, retail, hotels, and public space, weaving the different uses into a six-tower, multiblock amalgamation that would cover more than 2 million square feet. But between the start of the project in 2018 and its completion earlier this year, the exact mix of uses changed repeatedly.

The New York City-based architects behind the project, Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), turned that uncertainty into the project’s defining design feature. The entire project’s podium level has been wrapped with a cell wall facade treatment that can reconfigure based on whatever is happening inside the building. The modular system allows for a variety of exterior conditions on the building, from wide windows letting light into a boutique showroom to narrow tinted windows for a dim bar lounge to a louvered vent to let the building’s mechanical systems breathe. Should the uses inside the buildings change over time, the exterior could be adjusted to match.

Designing around uncertain programming is part of the reality of taking on big mixed-use projects, according to Jeff Kenoff, a design principal at KPF. “At any given moment, it’s a hotel, or it’s food and beverage, or it’s an atrium, or it’s something else. That was constantly changing throughout the design process and even during the leasing process,” says Kenoff. “One of the buildings was meant to be hospitality, but instead a university came in and said they wanted to do an urban building as part of their university system.

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