Horizontal Skyscraper – Vanke Center China

This guide to the Horizontal Skyscraper at Vanke Center in Shenzhen starts with the building right over your head, a structure most people walk beneath without noticing it as a skyscraper at all. It follows architect Steven Holl's response to a strict height cap on a site meant to hold a headquarters, apartments, offices and a hotel, and his decision to rotate the whole tower ninety degrees and lay it on its side. The building floats on just eight concrete cores, opening a shaded tropical garden beneath it where there might have been only pavement. Take a moment in that garden before heading up.