For two decades, the 50-story Golden Business Center has been a Shenzhen, China, landmark distinguished by its eponymous hue. A glittering monument from the early days of the Chinese city’s transformation into a global tech hub, the building is an apt site for the Future City Exhibition Center, a 5,770-square-foot space offering a dazzling vision of things to come. Various Associates has given the street-front venue a showstopping facade featuring gold-tinted, cast-acrylic filigree panels mounted on a cantilevered steel frame that overhangs the sidewalk. Standing out like a marquee while integrating with the building’s aureate color, the 98-foot-long structure creates a dappled passageway to the entrance.
Visitors first enter the Heritage gallery—dark and minimalist, with gray marble–clad walls and ceiling—where images from the city’s past stream across a low-platform screen at the room’s center. A spacious hallway leads to the Future gallery, an even larger room with another low platform holding a model of tomorrow’s Shenzhen. Enveloping digital-display walls provide a spectacular light show that cycles from dynamic sunset colors to a static gradient skyline, surrounding the miniature metropolis with an aura of endless space and time. The final stop, a lounge overlooking a planted courtyard, offers a tranquil retreat before returning to the real city outside.
