CELIA
Architecture brought to life
CELIA is an illuminated, kinetic ceiling that transforms the underside of the Ping An Asset Tower in Shenzhen into a shared urban room. Conceived to animate a rarely seen “fifth façade,” CELIA brings light, motion, and atmosphere to the public plaza beneath the tower. Short for Computer Enhanced, Luminous Interactive Architecture, it uses sensor data to generate shifting patterns of light and motion in response to people and building systems.
A Fifth Facade
One of the major architectural moves of the Ping An Asset Tower was to uplift the building mass — both to allow a pedestrian skyway to permeate the site and to draw passive ventilation through its underside. This created a condition almost unknown in high-rises: an exposed, outdoor ceiling functioning as a “fifth façade.” Rather than treat it as a blank soffit, we saw the chance to define it as the ceiling of an urban room, a major node along Shenzhen’s pedestrian network.
CELIA was conceived to bring this space to life — luminous, kinetic, and responsive to the flows of people beneath it.
How we brought CELIA to life
Most buildings are inanimate. They may have skin, skeletal frames, even systems for respiration and circulation, but without a nervous system they cannot sense or respond. For CELIA — suspended as the ceiling of an urban room — the goal was to make the surface perceptive, capable of responding to people and to the building’s own needs, and in doing so, bring it to life.
Two lines of inspiration guided us. The first was the idea of giving the building a “voice.” We looked to bioluminescence in jellyfish, where light becomes a language of presence and emotion. This suggested a surface that could glow, shift, and signal in response to its surroundings.
The second was the need for motion. The underside of the tower also had to draw in fresh air, and we saw the chance to combine this practical requirement with expression. A morning glory, which opens and closes with light and time, became our model. CELIA’s petals would breathe with the building while engaging those who passed beneath.
Implementation
Our team in Shanghai worked with fabricators to produce several prototype iterations over the next twelve months. Progress was enabled by Ping An Real Estate’s management and project team, who supported the process throughout. Lighting design was provided by the brilliant team at Lighting Planners Associates with EFC+ providing facade consulting.
The final configuration utilizes 108 moving ‘petals’ and 2,484 LED light fixtures, each individually addressable. The motion control system uses several pre-scripted paths which are triggered by real-time feedback from indoor and outdoor environmental sensors.
Living Architecture
Three years in the making, the ceiling finally found its name. CELIA — short for Computer Enhanced, Luminous Interactive Architecture — also stems from the Latin meaning heavenly: a digital world reflected above our own.
CELIA is not about creating a parallel, virtual reality but enhancing the one we inhabit together. It transforms the overlooked underside of a tower into a shared civic space — luminous, kinetic, and responsive to the flows of people and air beneath it. In doing so, it demonstrates how technology, when guided by systems thinking, can unlock the hidden potential of a site, elevating experience while remaining grounded in place.
For us, CELIA is architecture in service of people, place, and planet — proof that even the most constrained conditions can generate value, community, and wonder when approached as an opportunity rather than a limitation.
