Press Releases
KPF Review Mixed-Use: Stitch, Stack, Transform
Mixed-use buildings represent one of architecture’s most powerful tools for urban vitality. These projects do more than aggregate programs—they synthesize them, creating environments where diverse uses reinforce one another and generate a civic life greater than any single function could sustain.
More than the Sum of Its Parts
A successful mixed-use building enables each function to perform to its best while delivering an integrated whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
— Elie Gamburg, AIA, Principal and Jeffrey A. Kenoff, FAIA, Principal
In many cities before the 20th century, workshop and residence, market and meeting hall, dwelling and commerce cohabited the same spaces, whether at the scale of the individual structure or the urban block. Seen this way, the mixed-use building is not a contemporary invention. It is a return to something essential and, when approached with genuine craft, something transformative. A building that brings together a diversity of uses has the capacity to elevate its context, improve the performance of every program it contains, and make of itself something greater than the sum of its parts would otherwise allow.
At KPF, we have long understood that the mixed-use building is one of architecture’s most powerful instruments for activating the city. The stakes are simultaneously civic and commercial. A well-conceived, mixed-use building does not simply aggregate programs—it synthesizes them. It generates conditions in which each use performs more effectively through proximity to the others, where shared infrastructure can generate real economies, and where the building’s relationship to its urban context is enriched rather than simplified. Resilience follows too: Districts and buildings that accommodate diverse programs may be equipped to absorb shifting economic and social conditions.
Historian believe that Trajan’s Market (110 AD) in Rome once contained administrative offices of Emperor Trajan as well as shops and offices, and the remains of a library have been excavated. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
Yet this complexity comes with real design challenges. Stacking a hotel above an office above a retail podium requires fundamentally rethinking the building’s organizational logic. Mechanical systems, floor-to-floor heights, circulation hierarchies, and how the building meets the ground must each be resolved in ways that elevate every program while producing an integrated whole of architectural coherence and civic generosity.
Our strategies reflect three distinct formal propositions. Stacking establishes vertical differentiation of program as the generative logic of form—producing towers of sculptural precision, dynamic urban collages, or larger spaces carved from within the total building to reveal diverse internal worlds. The stitched block weaves functions across a formal field—seamlessly integrated or delightfully distinct, with each element remaining individually legible and architecturally celebrated. Transforming existing single-use structures—by cutting away excess, introducing moments that allow disparate uses to coexist, or layering in interventions—generates opportunities to cultivate neighborhood-like environments within larger buildings.
What unites these approaches is a conviction that a curated mix of uses, architecturally considered, both shelters program and elevates it. A successful mixed-use building enables each function to perform to its best while delivering an integrated whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Stitch
Mixed-use buildings represent one of architecture's most powerful tools for urban vitality. These projects do more than aggregate programs—they synthesize them, creating environments where diverse uses reinforce one another and generate a civic life greater than any single function could sustain.
— Hugh Trumbull, AIA, Principal
In a traditional downtown, buildings of multiple use types share close proximity, establishing symbiotic economic relationships as well as visual interest, a vibrant public realm, and a strong sense of place. Unfortunately, in many places, single-use zoning has led to the decline of such rich environments and their replacement with mono-functional business districts and sprawling residential suburbs.
New mixed-use developments often work to reestablish this kind of diversity by stitching together different environments through horizontal circulation and public realm. The challenge with these projects is not necessarily to combine the correct mix of program, but to connect program types architecturally in a way that results in a coherent whole without stifling the energy and interest that comes from a diversity of use.
No matter what particular programmatic elements are being connected, stitching together different uses reveals opportunities to make a public realm. This public space, indoors or out, has a civic component, establishing new connections and amenities that can impact people beyond the building’s core users.
Prince Bay Taiziwan Plots
Prince Bay Taiziwan Plots, in Shenzhen, features a residential tower and an office connected by a retail and dining podium, which acts as a mixing chamber that disrupts the project’s vertical logic and brings people together on the horizontal plane, an effect accentuated by the building’s artful scrim façade.
Intended to be a part of a greenbelt across a segment of the city, the new project takes advantage of its adjacencies to several major urban axes and anchors a new civic hub on the Shenzhen waterfront.
OPPO Chang An R&D Center
OPPO Chang An R&D Center, in Dongguan, is a state-of-the-art tech campus that connects innovation, living, and working in China’s Silicon Valley. Designed as a series of interconnected circles in plan, the campus cultivates a strong sense of connectivity and accessibility.
A departure from the typical Chinese corporate campus, the Oppo Chang An R+D Center is a highly walkable community located within the urban core of Dongguan, where it integrates street-level connections to the surrounding city and presents a radical symbol of modernization and contemporary technological prowess.
Westlake 66
This logic can be applied to projects that build a new piece of the city, such as Westlake 66—where a high-tech facade and an elevated park knit together five towers and a retail mall in one of China’s most significant tech hubs—but it can also be extrapolated into other project types.
Situated between two Hangzhou landmarks, Westlake 66 combines office space suited to technology startups and young professionals with a retail mall, two hotels, and a new greenway for the city.
NYU Shanghai
At KPF’s new Shanghai campus for New York University, stitching takes a slightly different form. The single, donut-shaped building arranges the many functions of a university into a spiral that winds its way around a central courtyard, connecting departments to foster opportunities for meaningful collaboration between faculty, research, and teaching.
The project contains 30 distinct programs, is accessed by four distinct gateways, and features 40 unique terraces, achieving an extraordinarily high level of greenery in a dense, urban environment.
Placemaking Through Urban Layering
Programmatic diversity enables a richer amenity layer—it is the markets, gardens, podium parks, and “wow moments” that transform a program into place and gives a development its lasting identity. – Bruce Fisher, AIA, Principal
Stack
Stacking one use type atop another within the same building is an idea as old as stairs. Today, what we call vertical urbanism requires a great deal more than a single staircase. These buildings contain complex, multi-functional ecosystems within soaring, sculptural towers of great technical ingenuity.
— Forth Bagley, AIA, Principal
Building up is a predictable response to high land costs in the most expensive and dynamic cities, but great mixed-use projects are about more than making the land pay. Successful vertical urbanism projects combine all of the functions and programs of a city or a university campus into a vertically oriented environment, producing a holistic and immersive experience for building users that reveals new synergies and efficiencies.
Today, cities around the world are experiencing a sort of vertical mixed-use renaissance as decision makers rediscover the value of having programmatic diversity in cities’ densest quarters. This transformation takes a number of forms, from new buildings that include a mix of office and entertainment or amenity space, to hotel-anchored buildings that also include residences, restaurants, or even boutique office space. As vertical mixed-use continues to grow, expand, and transform, what new combinations will the future hold?
Lotte World Tower
Containing one of the world’s most complex stacked mixed-use programs, Lotte World Tower, in Seoul, is a groundbreaking example of turning the programmatic spectrum of the city into a vertical village.
The development includes a truly staggering array of programs. A transit center, parking facility, public square, lakeside park, generous indoor public spaces, shops, aquarium, movie theaters, concert hall, food and beverage, healthcare, roof gardens, conference spaces, office space, hotel, residences, and observation deck all share space within the project.
Victoria Dockside
Comprising hotel, office, residential, retail, and cultural components interlaced with generous outdoor public space, Victoria Dockside invites locals and visitors alike to reconnect with Hong Kong’s waterfront.
A striking presence on the harbor, the 65-story Rosewood Tower is a beacon for the development. Anchoring the development and adjacent to the tower is a linear building that flows along the shoreline.
One Fukuoka
At One Fukuoka, in Japan, a centrally located office building is the heart of a thriving community, incorporating retail and dining spaces on the lower floors, activating them with live events, and even finding a place for a small hotel within the same building.
As a centerpiece of the Tenjin Meiji Avenue Grand Design redevelopment, the project capitalizes on the city’s status as a business and cultural hub, renowned for its connectivity to other Asian countries, rich heritage, and balanced urban lifestyle.
One Crown Place
Integrating new build and heritage elements, One Crown Place brings together a diverse program and revives an underutilized city block in Hackney. Composed of several buildings, the site synthesizes retail, hotel, office space, and high-end residential to deliver a lively new community with 24/7 activity.
The site, composed of several buildings, synthesizes retail, hotel, office space and high-end residential to deliver a lively new community. The project provides 24/7 activity and active street front on all sides of the city block.
What If Buildings Were Neighborhoods?
The mixed-use tower represents a compelling opportunity to scale urban intelligence inward to create buildings that function less like stacked floor plates and more like self-sufficient communities. – Luc Wilson, Global Director of Design Technology
Transform
Today, many cities are replete with existing buildings that have good inner strength but are saddled with tired uses and poor performance. Rejuvenating these undervalued buildings represents both an enormous opportunity to inject a varied mix of character and use into monofunctional environments and a sensible response to the climate emergency.
— John Bushell ARB RIBA, Principal
Through our “Keep, Edit, Add” process, we work to identify and understand every element of the existing building worth keeping, test the potential for future uses, and reposition the building by removing dysfunctional elements while adding new space and supporting elements such as cores and services.
Historic buildings become more animated destinations by opening up their typically defensive bases, introducing more publicly accessible uses, and establishing usable roofscapes. Radical addition is also possible, generating a mix of spatial types within a building (old, new, shallow, deep) which can attract a wide mix of tenants. More complex structures suggest a mix of uses for the next phase of life.
By reimagining these formerly single-use places as environments where a mix of uses come together, we can transform them into active and attractive anchors of successful city districts.
Oriente Green Campus
In Lisbon, Portugal, Oriente Green Campus transformed a derelict, half-finished shopping mall into a tech hub, a university campus, and a community catalyst. The size of a city block, KPF turned the center of what would have been the mall into an open courtyard, balancing tenants’ privacy with openness, allowing building-wide access to windows, and breaking down the building’s monumental scale.
The resulting project is a self-contained campus that has become an epicenter of new development in its neighborhood. Universidade Europeia occupies half of the building, while the other half is a series of commercial spaces.
8 Canada Square
KPF’s reimagining of the former global headquarters of HSBC at 8 Canada Square in London converts a large office tower into a mixed-use destination in an evolving commercial district. One of the largest and most ambitious skyscraper renovations ever undertaken, the building addresses the district’s transformation from a global business district into a global destination.
Food, beverage, and retail activate the podium base, which is open to facilitate connections to nearby transit, parks,
and other public realm. This will enable a new publicly accessible route between the adjacent Elizabeth line station and Canada Square Park.
SouthWorks
SouthWorks, in Ithaca, New York, blends adaptive reuse with new construction across a 95-acre site, providing nearly 2 million square feet of mixed-use programming. The project identifies four distinct neighborhoods, each with a walkable design that encourages community cohesion and interconnection to adjacent resources and establishes a site-
Previously inaccessible to the community, the entire SouthWorks district will become an economic catalyst and cultural hub for the town of Ithaca. Each neighborhood within the development will also tie into future trail connections to Ithaca’s Six Mile Creek Preserve and Buttermilk Falls State Park, furthering its connection both to the city and the nature that surrounds it
Southbank Tower
At Southbank Tower, a tower with a small footprint but a large core was very inefficient for office but made for perfect residential floors. Meanwhile extending the podium’s floorplates made quality office space, and extensive ground-floor retail transformed an ambivalent relationship to the street into a coherent and welcoming urban environment.
What was once a single-use office block is today a hive of activity that is home to state-of-the-art offices, shops, restaurants, and apartments with great amenities and excellent views.
The Interior as Urban Possibility
Mixed-use buildings create a new kind of interior condition—one where the boundaries between program types dissolve and each space must hold multiple identities at once. The interior actively participates in the life of the building, choreographic movement and experience through lighting, texture, and threshold. – Darina Zlateva, AIA, Director
