Ken Wai (middle), managing director of Aedas Ltd China, takes a photo with his colleagues after he is given awards for four excellently-designed projects.

SHANGHAI - Aedas, one of the world's leading architects, was given four awards by the Shanghai Architecture Society for its excellently-designed projects at the China Commercial Real Estate Summit of 2011 which was held on Friday.

The awards, which were chosen by the society from more than 130 candidate works presented by the world's 30 top architecture designing companies, include two innovative awards for Beijing North Stars and Chengdu Renhe Spring and two best work awards for Nanjing Hexi Olympic New Town and Shanghai Dynasty on the Bund, said Liu Youchen, communications manager of Aedas Beijing Ltd.

"The event aims to play a platform for excellent architects to exchange experience in designing commercial architecture," said Zhu Zhongyi, vice president of China Real Estate Association.

He told the participants at the summit that the association hopes to see the creation of more new excellent works in the future.

Real estate developers call for well-organized designs for their commercial projects which are confronted with a golden opportunity for expansion, he said.

"This is because urbanization should be supported by many commercial developments including shopping malls, traffic terminals, hotels and office buildings," he said.

At present, funds spent on non-residental projects account for less than 30 per cent of the total investment given to real estate projects, he said.

"It means the commercial real estate development has a great potential," Zhu added.

His words were echoed by Ken Wai, managing director of Aedas Ltd China, who said architecture design is the backbone of commercial real estate development.

A financially sustainable commercial development, which does not only need to be competitive with the current market upon competiton, but needs to be viable within the future payback period of the investment, needs to be designed for the future as well as the present as more and even better developments are built, Wai said.

"Based on well considered researches and business plans, the quality and standard of the proposed development can be identified. The design will strive to attain the goas identified," he told the participants at the summit. He said a considerable planning based on sound retail experience will provide a new icon to the city center that is very inviting for shoppers. But bad connectivity has negative impact to the success of a commercial development.

"In a word, the key to success is to learn from the past, design for the present and plan for the future," Wai said.