Construction is now complete on the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)-designed Jiangxi Nanchang Greenland Zifeng Tower, an eco-themed mixed-use structure in the Gaoxin District of Nanchang, China.

The development – a 268m (879ft), 56-storey tower – marks an elegant new addition to the city’s skyline and is owned by the country’s leading development company, the Greenland Group.

A defined rectangular shape emphasised by a strong diagrid shading fin system, together with a unique ‘Great Window’ give the building a striking, sculptural presence in Nanchang city centre’s technology quarter.

Office floors occupy the bottom two-thirds of the tower, with InterContinental’s new Hua Lux brand hotel stacked on top of this zone, occupying the tower’s top 20 stories. The Great Window is a distinct aperture carved into the tower which transitions the floor plates to a suitable size and layout for the hotel function. Aesthetically, it marks the tower with a strong design, distinguishing it from other towers that make up Nanchang’s urban fabric.

SOM’s integrated architecture and engineering approach allowed for the inclusion of high-performance systems, including the aluminium triangular sun-shading fins that trace up the building’s four faces. The fins shade the tower, preventing excessive solar heat and glare to the interior, with intersections that comprise a structural node with integrated white LED lights that, when illuminated at night, make the system’s diagrid pattern and the tower’s rectangular form glow across Gaoxin.

The system is part of a comprehensive suite of high performance architecture and engineering elements that have won the tower LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Silver accreditation, the US green building certification programme recognising best-in-class building strategies and practices.