China Internet Giant Goes Vertical in Crowded Shenzhen

While the growth of tech firms in the US has led to university-sized suburban campuses such as Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California and the Googleplex in Mountain View, China’s more crowded conditions and urban lifestyle is leading its Internet firms to think more vertically, and nowhere is this high altitude innovation more evident than in Tencent’s new headquarters being developed in Shenzhen.

Tencent, which is the parent company for such well-known Chinese online brands as QQ and the WeChat mobile app, already employs more than 25,000 people globally, and its new corporate home is planned to provide workspace for 12,000 of these team members.

Designed by US-based design firm, NBBJ, which also planned Amazon’s upcoming “biosphere” project in downtown Seattle, the interconnected twin-tower structure will stand 250 metres tall and provide the tech giant with 270,000 square metres of space.

According to NBBJ, the company’s goal with the linked skyscraper design was to create the interactivity of a campus environment in a more vertical structure that better fit the small footprint required by Tencent’s downtown location. The new high efficiency towers are scheduled to be be completed by 2016.

In Shenzhen, where the tech giant is located, land prices have recently been reaching record levels with one developer paying the equivalent of more than RMB 25,000 per square metre of gross floor area at a land auction in November.

During December, home prices in Shenzhen rose by an average of 20 percent compared to the same period a year earlier as the city continued to have the fastest growing real estate market of any of China’s major metropolises.