The other Huaxi Project

Guiyang received architectural world fame last year with the Huaxi project, a masterplan made by Beijing MAD Architects. In this masterplan, 11 young architecture offices were invited to contribute. The result is a bouquet of contemporary architectural forms. The project is widely published, widely discussed and widely criticized. And not yet build.

Last week, we were taken to Huaxi by Wei Haobo, director of Westline Studio in Guiyang. He showed us his project “Dream Stream”, consisting of 4 different buildings in the hills of Guiyang. Each building has a - especially for Chinese means - radical building typology. And most of all: they succeeded in building these proposals! Take a look:

The Bamboo Tree House is a structure with different dwellings lying on the hill. The houses are connected by staircases. The shape refers to the informal architecture of the farmer villages. Wei was also inspired by the village architecture in the South of Spain, he told us. The facade was meant to be filled in with local stones. However, the developer decided to make a cheaper solution by filling the structure in with tiles…

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Eeuw van de Stad: Residential Complex, Taiyuan

On the blog ‘Eeuw van de Stad’we posted a series of pictures and a small story about a remarkable residential complex we ran into in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province last month. The complex is interesting sice it combines ultimate urbanity with ultimate suburbanity. Sounds familiar? We already posted one picture of the complex on our site earlier. Now check out the full story (in Dutch) and pictures at: Eeuw van de Stad » Go West Project 4: Uitzicht.