Huafa Wuhan City Hub
- Client
- Huafa Group
- Services
- Architecture
- Sector
- Mixed Use, Retail
- Location
- Wuhan, China
- Awards
- CREDAWARD, 2023: Merit – Comprehensive Commercial Project (Mixed-use)
A new façade drawn from Wuhan’s historic Bund
Benoy was commissioned to redesign the façade of Huafa Wuhan City Hub, a mixed-use development in Wuhan’s central business district near Hankou Railway Station, one of the principal nodes on China’s high-speed rail network. With the structure already under construction, the façade design needed to provide a new architectural identity without altering the engineering already in place.
55,097m²
A façade strategy drawn from Wuhan’s Bund
The cultural reference is Wuhan’s historic Bund area, defined by an unusual combination of Chinese and Western architectural language at a fine, walkable grain. The new façade reinterprets that grain – intricate, layered, human-scale – and applies it to the larger massing of the development behind. A pure white frame establishes a unified architectural language across the scheme, within which a flexible system integrates shopfronts, balconies, bridges, signage, greenery and circulation cores.
Streets, blocks and a curated journey
The commercial element is organised as a series of blocks that generate retail and F&B streets, with an indoor mall sitting beneath the office towers. The façade operates as a placemaking tool: a coherent street architecture that adapts in scale and character as visitors move through. A curated journey leads from the principal entrance, through the retail street, past green features and freestanding F&B pavilions, towards the heart of the complex marked by a featured lift. A programme of bronze sculptures of figures and animals pose across the public spaces, give the streetscape a continuing sense of life.
