Cambridge Robotics Valley, a close-knit, coherent campus

Located at the outskirt of Pudong District in Shanghai, Cambridge Robotics Valley (CRV) is master planned as a research, development and manufacture hub for robotics engineering and artificial intelligence industry. In contrast to conventional suburban business park, the design of CRV is intended to create a close-knit, coherent campus for cutting edge technology companies with unique spatial experience and atmosphere. The campus planning is conceived as a Green Valley, an undulating landscaped park knitting together different departments of the technology park. A cluster of robotics laboratory and R & D office buildings are placed around the parameter of the site to maximize the open space. The organization of the campus is centered around a sunken garden, which connects the amenities below grade with above ground activities. CRV aims to become an incubator for emerging artificial intelligence technology, while serving as a research and development platform for established robotics companies.

As the first step for Cambridge to establish a robotics industrial park, even though the site currently possesses a partial production base, well it has not built a complete structure system yet, nor can it form a high-quality campus. As the first project, how can CRV lead the surrounding areas to continue to create a green smart manufacturing environment with a pleasant scale and abundant space in the future? This precisely puts forward requirements for architectural space design.

CRV integrates corporate R&D offices and headquarters, robotic laboratories, production workshops, conference and exhibition centers, supporting services and other functions into one to meet diverse functional needs in a limited space while maximizing the creation of outdoor public spaces. In order to change the cliché of the conflict and incompatibility between industry and nature, and to blur the boundaries between manual architecture and natural landscape, the CRV design concept simulates a green valley and extends the freely undulating landscape in the site, making the building subtly fall on the rich layers of greenery. The idea enables the architecture grow freely within the landscape, and combines the two parts into one organic garden amid the valley.

The design moves each building block outwards till the site edges and forms a sunken green valley enclosing the center, so as to make it a vivid visual focusing point at the park square. Each building in the park is independent and mutually infiltrated in the meantime, connected underground through the green valley, furthermore becomes a node for internal communications and a flexible space for interactive experience. Greenery grows in the building and extends through the atrium to the roof then forms an outdoor garden to attract visitors to linger and relax. The high-rise R&D building and multi-storey small detached buildings are arranged around the central green valley and adjacent to Zhou-Deng Highway. As the main display area of the project, the buildings seem to emerge from the green carpet, dissolving the large volume and at the same time, they echo the concept of undulating green valley to the utmost. The green smart ecological park not only blurs the boundary between the industrial park and the natural landscape, but also reshapes the relationship between people and nature, people and industry, and people with each other in the park.