As every good design professional knows, the client is at the forefront of every project. Sometimes this can feel like the client plays judge, jury, and executioner to every last revision, and in a field as detailed and complex as architecture, satisfying these demands, as well as the designer’s own creative vision, can be bewildering and aggravating. But in the end, doesn’t adapting to another person’s tastes just push us to be better?
Courtesy of Leewardists
Centuries of civilizations built on structures designed by architects and yet, their voice is lost among the countless stories of rulers and armies and sometimes wondrous monsters.
The Leewardists are rewriting the contemporary history of our civilization through the voice of this elusive being, The Architect.
For more of The Architect Comic Series follow them on Facebook, Instagram or visit their website.
Since we’ve started to branch out into China, the ArchDaily China team has been able to discover the rich layers beyond just these rising Chinese stars. As part of the country’s large-scale urbanization process, last year, we posted some of the large-scale projects designed by China’s (largely unknown) Design & Research institutions such as train stations and cultural centers.
In addition, we’ve also come across a series of smaller, lesser known, younger practices that focuses more on small-scale experimental work. Here are our top ten favorites:
Led by principle Ruan Hao, LYCS is one of the most diverse young design practices in China. Based in Hangzhou, the practice has a team structure of 3 partners and 2 associates to allow the firm to operate at all scales, from Masterplans to their infamous Cat Table.
LYCS are one of the first young architectural practices in China to explore the typology of urban schools with the Roof Track School. The practice claims to be invested in critical issues of design building, urban development, and construction within China.
Duo Xiang Studio
Vanke Pavilion, Shanghai World Expo 2010. Image Courtesy of Dou Xiang Studio
Duo Xiang Studio is a Beijing-based studio which explores everyday objects, focusing on appropriateness. This fresh approach has led to an interesting array of works from the Comb Chair, made out of hundreds of combs, to the Vanke Pavilion as a part of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
Public Folly – Water Tower Renovation. Image Courtesy of Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong
A research-based practice, META-Projects focuses on discovering and responding to the unusual socio/cultural potential of Asian cities. From the ‘Regeneration-by-intervention’ of their own office, (a courtyard house in the Hutong laneways of ancient Beijing), to the research-based projects designed in collaboration with Vanke (one of the largest real estate developers in China). META-Projects has been very demonstrative of the renewed desire of local architects to connect architecture to its social environment.
Huludao Beach Exhibit Center. Image Courtesy of Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong
He Wei has carved out his architectural approach from his background as a researcher and professor at the Central Academy of Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. With a passion for China’s minorities vernacular architecture and concerns over the future of China’s villages, Hei Wei is seeking to create a dialogue between the past and the potential future of China’s leftover buildings.
ArchStudio first caught the attention of local and international media with their visually seductive and contextually sensitive interventions within historic parts of Beijing. Their breakthrough project, the Hutong Tea House in Beijing uses a ‘curvy corridor’ to physically link and repair the relationship between the past and present while providing the necessary modern day creature comforts.
Zi Bo The Great Wall Museum of Fine Art. Image Courtesy of ARCHSTUDIO
More recently, they have extended their approach to renovation of industrial era spaces and striking new structures such as the Tangshan Organic Farm, winner of ArchDaily’s Project Of The Month for November.
Zhu Jingxiang started his career by building a lot and fast, caught up in the fast pace development of mainland China. After designing over 100,000 square meters of buildings in his early career, he took a professor position at the Chinese University in Hong Kong to take a break to research and teach. However, the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008 drew him into a crusade of design custom, prefabricated and economically viable buildings for disaster prone zones worldwide.
Dou Pavilion, as a part of the China Pavilion, The 15th Venice Architecture Biennale. Image Courtesy of Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong
More recently he has extended the scope of his work practically and geographically. Zhu was one of the principle designers/participants in the China pavilion at the Biennale with his Dou Pavilion, while his innovative light-weight system and post-disaster reconstruction projects have extended beyond remote parts of China to Africa.
Dou Pavilion, as a part of the China Pavilion, The 15th Venice Architecture Biennale. Image Courtesy of Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Perhaps young is not the most appropriate way to categorize Atelier Deshaus, as both of the partners, Chen Yifeng and Liu Yichun are both seasoned architects who have been through the largely unknown Chinese system of Design Institutes.
However, the refreshing designs of Atelier Deshaus surprise time and time again, ranging from the brutalist beauty of the Long Museum West Bund to their recent art installation Blossom Pavilion.
Based in Shanghai, Archi-Union combines digital technology and craftsmanship through a low-tech, locally sensitive digital fabrication method of ‘Digital Tectonics’.
The use of digital fabrication extends beyond facade treatments and mere aesthetics to the transformation of circulation flows and folding of space itself in projects such as Fab-Union Space on the West Bund.
Songjiang Art Campus. Image Courtesy of Archi-Union Architects
O-Office, unlike most other offices on this list, is located in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Having experienced the Chinese urbanization climax first hand from their local context, the firm now seeks to exploit architectural design as a critical instrument for research on our spatial and economic reality.
The transformation of the top floor of Guangzhou’s oldest beer factory into the Silo-top Studio was one of the studio’s first projects, complete with 38 meter high terraces overlooking the city’s old downtown.
People’s Architecture Office believe architecture is for the masses, in fact, it is the masses that inspire their work. From their Courtyard Plugin’s within which a modular system is integrated into century-old houses to enable them for modern living, it is clear to see that PAO’s architecture is not based on form or pure aesthetics but everyday realities.
Courtyard House Plugin en Masse – Second Phase. Image Courtesy of PAO
BIG are known for unconventional buildings that often raise the question “how were they able to do that?” Such is the case for BIG’s Honeycomb, a luxury eight-story condominium currently under construction in the Bahamas. The project’s hallmark is its hexagonal façade made up of private balconies, each with its own glass-fronted outdoor pool. The façade was also the project’s greatest engineering challenge, with each balcony (including pool water) weighing between 108,000 and 269,000 pounds (48,000-122,000 kilograms) while cantilevering up to 17.5 feet (5.3 meters) from the structure. Tasked with this challenging brief were DeSimone Consulting Engineers, who previously worked with BIG on The Grove. Read on for more detail on the Honeycomb’s innovative engineering.
Central to the Honeycomb’s design of is the use of a specially engineered concrete “superslab” which is able to cantilever over 17 feet without wall brackets below. This was achieved by reducing the slab’s weight while maintaining its strength and stiffness. As explained by Bill O’Donnell, the project lead at DeSimone, “to control deflection and reduce self-weight, 12-inch (300 millimeter) diameter tubes were embedded in a 17-inch (430 millimeter) thick conventionally reinforced roof slab.” These voids hollow out the slab, reducing its weight and increasing the section’s overall efficiency. This step also “eliminated the need for a post-tension slab, further reducing the overall weight and reducing the cost of the project.”
Courtesy of DeSimone Consulting Engineers
Courtesy of DeSimone Consulting Engineers
The balcony decks themselves are constructed from a 13-inch (330 millimeter) thick conventionally reinforced slab. What is especially clever, and what allows the slab to be kept at 13 inches, is that the slabs “fold down at the deepest point of the pool to align with the shear wall of the lower unit” for extra support.
Because of the staggered partition walls and varied façade, these shear walls sometimes connect to a structural column, acting “as a rigid bracket supporting the slab above and below.” At other junctions there is no column – here “the wall is not as stiff in these locations but still carries vertical load back to the column strip.” These 18-inch (450 millimeter) thick concrete shear walls not only increase structural support, but join into the sloped pool floors in order to form the hexagonal honeycomb structure.
Courtesy of DeSimone Consulting Engineers
Courtesy of DeSimone Consulting Engineers
While the depths of the cantilevers allow for plentiful outdoor space, the balcony’s utilities added further challenges. Both the summer kitchen and pool required a host of services, while also needing waterproofing and long-term serviceability. This meant the need for thoughtful detailing, with “nearly a dozen conduits that had to be carefully placed to get across the column strip and emerge on the sloped slab in the proper location”. The concrete shear walls were also once again utilised, with embedded pool drains serving as a path for balcony drainage.
Because of the Honeycomb’s innovative structural system, conventional materials were able to be used, but used carefully. As all the concrete in the building is conventionally reinforced cast-in-place concrete, special attention was paid to the concrete mixture itself. To ensure durability, “limiting initial soluble chlorides, providing a tight water-cement ratio, and additional concrete cover over the reinforcing steel were critical design measures.” Finally, for further protection, an integral waterproofing admixture and surface applied coating were also used.
Courtesy of DeSimone Consulting Engineers
Correction update:This article originally mistakenly named the project lead at DeSimone Consulting Engineers as Bill O’Simmons. His actual name is Bill O’Donnell.
The Multimodal Interchange project in Vitré comprises the creation of:
– A pedestrian footbridge in Vitré Station, spanning the railway
Courtesy of TETRARC
– An underground car park with 620 spaces, constructed in two phases, and an overhanging pedestrian footbridge, connecting the first footbridge to the “Place de la Victoire” (Victory Square) and thus creating a pedestrian thoroughfare from this square to the Station’s north car park
– A path connecting the upper part of the Place de la Victoire to rue Pierre Lemaître along the south façade of the car park, against the existing hillside
– A public space serving the underground car park, an overground car park with 16 space, drop-off spaces serving the Ecole Sainte Marie (St. Mary’s School) and the Station via the footbridge, and a road system curving around a plot of land earmarked for the future construction of an office building.
The task was to construct a detached house in the best inner-city location. The plot to be built on rises by about the height of one storey from the northern boundary, where the access road runs, to the south and it opens to the south on to a level area. One major aim of the design was to create an optimum sequence of rooms from the public to the private to provide the highest possible spatial quality in each phase.
Courtesy of Spado Architects
The building itself consists of an east-west orientated two-storey base divided by a projecting roof that separates it from the street and protects it to the south and on top of that a north-south running single-storey gable-ended roof construction that minimises the view from the house to the west and forms a protective roof over the terrace. The building fits into its urban environment in that the roof shape and the building line match its surroundings.
Courtesy of Spado Architects
The route through the building is intended to create a series of different spatial moods. The hall in the basement was designed as a cave-like interior space in a positive sense. The warm, dark colour scheme accentuates the feeling of “coming home” and it emphasizes the light falling from top to bottom in the area of the single-flight stairway. The wall in the area of the stairs was designed as light with a reflecting surface to further increase the play of light.
Courtesy of Spado Architects
Via the stairs you reach the open-plan living area storey that is designed as a flowing space between the inside and the outside but still protected from view. The wall structure of the stairway is extended into the exterior space. This creates a flowing transition between inside and outside. Via another stairway you come to the most intimate and private areas of the house, the bedrooms and the bath area.
Courtesy of Spado Architects
Section
Courtesy of Spado Architects
For maintenance purposes you can reach the garden level along the eastern boundary. There is storage space for garden tools built into the wall at the garden level. The canopied spaces provide areas protected from the weather and from view.
From the architect. The project is a public facility, situated on the new campus of Paris-Saclay. The building hosts a mix of activities including indoor and outdoor sports facilities, a restaurant, cafeteria, and various public spaces: a pedestrian square, street terraces, park areas for deliveries, bikes and cars. The building is organised vertically with its different activities superimposed on one another, using the roof as a panoramic playground for football and basketball games. The different areas are linked by an open staircase that allows independant accesses. The building takes the form of an urban shelf, a vertical public space, accessible to all campus visitors, day or night.
It is a shared facility, encouraging the encounter of various populations living close to one another, but rarely meeting. The Restaurant, cafeteria and sports activities are made accessible to students, company employees, teachers, and researchers. It aims at creating a meeting point for everyone by mixing activities that are usually separate.
Courtesy of MUOTO
The building has been conceived as a minimal structure, using rough materials, robust and long lasting techniques. Technology is used minimally to provide a place that will last in time, without need for complicated maintenance.
In response to the low construction budget, detailing has been kept to a minimum. This economical approach has allowed for the inclusion of a generous public square in the construction price, ensuring a planted pedestrian connection with the existing academic buildings next to the site. The vertical configuration of the building provides a minimal footprint.
Product Description.– The main materials used in the building are glass and concrete. The glass façades are characterized by large aluminium sliding doors with triple rails. The concrete beams have been prefabricated and casted in industrial moulds, while concrete columns have been casted on site.
The flooring tiles are large and resemble cement, providing a wide clean surface for furniture on it. Black furniture and lighting fixtures contrast with the white kitchen.
The living space was kept soft with several textiles: a mint green velvet couch, a vintage private collection carpet, and a custom-made entertainment center and coffee table fit the size and ambiance of the living room.
First Floor Plan
The heart of the living room is an entertainment center made of brass colored metal profile and aluminum net, which gives the space it’s industrial and approachable feel.
The family of five who lives here loves to entertain; therefore we selected a large dining table suited to the size of the sofa.
Section
The kitchen is full of storage, creating an organized and minimalistic space. The same goes for the parent’s master bedroom features. A walk-in closet constructed from thin metal profiles and industrial glass, elegantly matching the bed-room and serving as its main focal point.
Product Description: We chose to use a large colored metal framework in order to create an anchor to the bright white open space of the living area. Metal profile is a material that is typically thought to be cold and industrial, but with the right color and accompanying materials, it can transform into something new.
Using a metal framework allowed us to build this storage unit on a very large scale. The slick and elegant design compliments the apartment’s proportions, keeping a homey feel.
Chinese residential buildings dated from 1980s/90s are now facing challenges of being upgraded in order to adapt to new needs and current way of living.
The site consists of two parts, the front part along the street, and the back part which is an apartment with a separate access from the residential building. In-between there is an open space, forgotten and abandoned by its previous users, hidden behind by a brick wall.
Floor Plan Diagrams
In the design, this open space is revealed, transformed into three green patios, and a transparent glass pavilion connecting the front and the back, providing the space with a continuous sense of interior/exterior with natural light, enriching, and adding stimulating moments to the overall experience of the space. Extended into the front space, one of the green patios can be seen from the street level. While standing inside of the glass pavilion, street life can also be seen directly or captured by mirror reflection.
The shop is called DressingForFun. Located in a local Chengdu street, it encourages young people to come back to our street life rather than spending enormous time in shopping malls. A series of fun elements are designed, creating interesting and interactive moments in the space. The space itself is also designed to be flexible, allowing the possibilities for events and exhibitions.
Axonometric
The entrance revolving door has the shop logo cut out from the front steel panel, with back-lit colorful acrylic plate behind, which can be rotated by a door handle from inside, accordingly the logo will show different color.
The idea of clothes racks comes from unfolding paper clips. Two types of clothes racks are formed by “unfolding”: moveable standing ones, and fixed hanging ones with lighting integrated.
Joyful Church chose Beck to create a new facility for the church’s growing, vibrant worship and education programs on Sundays and for the church’s many social welfare ministries during the week. The church’s vision was to have a design that expressed a strong symbolic Christian message, but that also used traditional Korean symbols in a fusion of architecture, faith and culture. The location was a 10 acre site in a new town development area of Pohang. This site had many development challenges included steep, wooded hillsides and strict zoning limitations.
Beck’s solution provided a 383,500 SF design that integrated into the landscape with gently flowing lines that wrap around a large central plaza. Spaces included a 2700-seat sanctuary, 800-seat chapel, cafeteria, cafe, library, fitness facilities, children’s and youth spaces, welfare ministry facilities and a 350 car underground parking garage. Placement of the buildings into the natural hillsides and careful orientation of the windows allowed ample natural light into the spaces while providing greater energy efficiency. Forms and patterns in the architecture were inspired by traditional Korean crafts and calligraphy, and the use of natural materials and colors further harmonized the entire building into its unique place.
“Beck showed its devoted effort and undivided attention to our church until completion of the building and advised church step by step during church’s decision making procedure.” Senior Pastor Park, Jin Suk, Joyful Church
Product Description.Brazilian granite was used to create forms and patterns in the architecture which were inspired by traditional Korean crafts and calligraphy, and the use of natural materials and colors further harmonized the entire building into its unique place.
From the architect. House M is located on a corner plot overlooking a public park, about a mile away from the coast, in Lima’s 1950´s traditional residential neighborhood of San Isidro.
The project has been developed as a basic composition of volumes, planes and materials that define the spaces in response to the views, light, privacy, and a large program.
Floor Plan 1
The four story building is defined by a half sunken garage, office space and service area, all of which raises the living quarters above street level generating a platform for the rest of the building.
The first floor of the house, with the garage roof top garden, living, dining room and the kitchen area sit above the street, overlooking the park through glass walls, while solid concrete walls block the view from the street and generate an entry sequence in to the house.
Section
The third and fourth levels are defined by a two story wood screen and a horizontal white cantilever volume, with the bedrooms, family room and gym that floats along the tree canopies over the ivy covered concrete wall that surrounds the house.
Sig Nordal 