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Image: Rendering Chongqing Chaotianmen, Moshe Safdie architects

We all spend useless time on the web. For example with ‘liking’ or commenting on posts on Facebook. That’s what I did as well on December 2nd, when I commented ‘unbelievably uuugly and a total Sands knock off’ on Moshe Safdie’s scheme for Chongqing Chaotianmen.With ‘Sands’, I referred to the Singapore Marina Sands, a project that Safdie did a few years ago, and that has quite some resemblances to it: Read the rest of this entry »

Architecture of Power

Architecture and power are very closely related. In China, this relationship is not only visible in the architectural icons that it produces; its relationship is very much apparent in the omnipresent government buildings.

Every Chinese city is constructing and renewing its government buildings, and in especially in the case of new city districts, governments and planners try to create new governmental icons in their cities. Based on the Confucian tradition, these buildings contain certain classic features, like fengshui and yin and yang. Especially the idea of hierarchy is strongly expressed in the architecture of government buildings in China. A horizontal, symmetrical organization, with the building facing south, are some examples.

But there’re more. In general you could say a government building in a new district is part of a collection of buildings: a conference centre, a theatre, a top notch hotel. The building itself is indeed symmetrical, it has a big square in front of it, and it has steps leading up to the central gate. On the symmetry axis there is a flag post with the national flag.

The material used is in general grey stone. The front (south) facade sometimes consists of columns. The architecture is either non-descript, not very much expressive or ‘Euro-style’ – referring to classical Roman architecture or French castles.

In the book ‘Confucian Utopia’, a ten year retrospective on the urban planning practice of Tongji University, the writers call this development the ‘rebuilding of the “Patriarchical” City’.

City governments tried to rebuild the spatial structure of the “Patriarchal” City by establishing the governments’ patriarchal buildings. Such planning well satisfied [...] the confidence from the governmental development by taking the city as ‘home’ and taking the governments’ building as ‘parent’.

The results are visible in cities and new districts over China.The book made an analysis of 42 government buildings all over Beijing, and their architectural features, that express this Confucian elements. All of the 42 buildings had a square in front of them, 35 were symmetrical.

We came across some beautiful examples of these architectural expressions of power in Kunming, Yinchuan and Chengdu and other cities. And we’re not the only ones. Recently, Chinese netizens have been collecting pictures of these kind of buildings in their online campaign “Photograph Your Area’s Government Office Building” From ChinaSmack:

Chinese netizen phenomenon “exposes” the government office buildings found in various provinces, counties, cities, and towns throughout China that “cause people to stare in awe”. It is said that these photos reveal that the scale and splendor of government office buildings even in impoverished areas of China’s western interior certainly do not “lose in the slightest” to those in China’s wealthier coastal areas.

These are some of the government buildings we came across over the past two years:

Hefei

Yinchuan

Yinchuan, Communist Party HQ

Chengdu, City Government (architect: Paul Andreu)

Chengdu

Kashgar

Kunming

Kunming

Embedded architecture

From Daan’s Diary:

Mondaymorning. I am having a cup of coffee and am reading a bit in my just acquired copy (!) of SMLXL. In the essay ‘Bigness’ I read: ‘Beyond a certain critical mass, a building becomes a Big Building.’

The phone rings. It is my friend S. ‘Hey Daan, we are going to do a 131,000 square meter project in Taiyuan. The program is mall, office, hotel. Can you join our team and meet the client?’ I discuss the idea with Michiel. Taiyuan is one of the Go West cities. It is a perfect opportunity to be part of the architectural process in one of the cities: embedded architecture.

Tuesdaymorning 10.40am my plane lands in Taiyuan. Our local partner, an LDI awaits us at the airport. They take us to the site, where we meet the client. The client is a local coal mine owner, who wears a blue suit and a Rolex. When I ask him what kind of building he has in mind he says: ‘Number 1 international!’ So far our architectural debate.

One week later, the client wants to see where the project is heading. We submit some schemes. The LDI has presented them already. We are waiting for reply…

To be continued

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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MAD architects: urban forest

MAD Architects, Beijing recently revealed their plan for the so called ‘Urban Forest’ scheme in the city of Chongqing. Read more on this designboom post: MAD architects: urban forest.

Li Xiangning: About Contemporary Chinese Architecture

Opinion article written by Dr.Li Xiangning, Lecturer at College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University Source: www.chinese-architecture.com

“A cat is good if it catches mice no matter it is black or white.” The saying was cited by DENG Xiaoping,China’s former leader,to push his pragmatic approach. The same can be said about Chinese architects’s practice. They have developed an expedient tactic, which is not a compromise with the greedy market,but a wise balance between the ultimate architectural ideal and social reality in China. It is based on a full understanding of our powerfulness and weakness. Read the rest of this entry »