DESIGN BY COMMITMENT
With his flair for integrated architecture, Wang Shu combines his fine eye for detail with a sense of place for every building he plans, Fang Aiqing reports.
Having to spend days on train journeys between Beijing and Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region during his childhood, Wang Shu used the time observing and drawing.
Wang, now 55, currently the only winner from China of the Pritzker Prize for architecture, recalled at a recent forum his early experiences of such journeys that have influenced his career.
Seeing the passing scenery shift from urban areas to mountains, forests and rivers, and then into the wilderness and the Gobi Desert during the lengthy train rides, Wang says his mind was broadened and his interest in local architecture had been cultivated since a young age.
And it was since then that he raised his capability for observing things meticulously and calmly. Wang says he was able to delineate all the details attached to even the smallest component on the train, which, in later life, turned out to be of great help to his success as an architect.
Wang addressed the third Sino-French Cultural Forum held from Sept 17 to 20 in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, China’s former capital city for 13 dynasties and the starting point of the ancient Silk Road.
The forum was co-initiated by Chen Zhu, vice-chairman of the NPC standing committee and president of the Western Returned Scholars Association, and former French prime minister Jean Pierre Raffarin, in 2015.
The annual forum, first launched in Beijing the following year, is dedicated to promoting cultural exchanges and cooperation between the two countries.
Dialogues involving topics like cultural heritage preservation, education, travel, fashion and design, arts and life were held this year in Xi’an.
“The Sino-French Cultural Forum is a platform for highlevel and in-depth dialogue between Chinese and French cultural and art circles,” says Christine Cayol, the French vice-president for the forum and founder of the Beijingbased art gallery, Yishu 8.
“Cultural diversity is a beautiful aspect of the world, and it’s also important to enhance the mutual understanding among people from different countries, generations and ethnic groups, which can help us see the wider world. I hope our forum will manage this, and lead to the next step of win-win cooperation.”
It was also when a group of renowned architects from both China and France shared their common ideas about what constitutes harmonious architecture, and the relationship between buildings and their natural surroundings and the cultural tradition of their homelands.
For Wang, the Silk Road is the embodiment of cultural diversity. Growing up in a number of cities including Urumqi, Xi’an and Beijing, while living and studying in a range of buildings made of adobe, brick and other materials, he learned that architecture doesn’t have to adhere to one particular cultural standard.
Although he has courted controversy through his work, often doubting the impracticability of his designs, Wang, for years, has been promoting the idea of integrated architecture with its surroundings, and exploring new ways to combine the language of modern architecture with the traditional Chinese one to create a new architectural field.
One of his representative works is the Xiangshan campus at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, built between 2002 and 2007 using more than 7 million pieces of recycled bricks, tiles and stones, with around 30 buildings set in a recreated natural landscape. It evokes a strong sense of a traditional Chinese garden set within a rural idyll.
He further realized this idea in his designs for museums in Ningbo and Fuyang in Zhejiang, where traditional villages have largely been torn down. There he turned his focus to tackle rural revitalization through his architectural designs, a growing trend in China these days.
French architect Paul Andreu, 80, designer of the Charles de Gaulle Airport in
We should make pioneering explorations for the world on the road to sustainable development.”
Wang Shu,
Paris, Pudong International Airport in Shanghai and the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, says he was impressed by the rural architectural work designed by the new generation of young Chinese architects that were exhibited at this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Although he was not able to remember their names, he was impressed by their work, which he described as being less grand but far from mediocre as well as being typically Chinese yet providing a breath of fresh air.
While many years have passed since he designed the National Center for the Performing Arts, Andreu sees the new group of young Chinese architects coming to the fore as having brought about great changes to China.
In his view, Chinese architects are aware that inheriting tradition does not simply mean imitating ancient buildings but rather drawing inspiration from the roots of their cultural connotations.
As harmony and balance are the foundation of Chinese culture, Andreu says he hopes China will be able to bring more innovation and set an example especially in terms of urban planning in the future, and he thinks that Chinese architects know very well the problems they are facing.
He is currently working on a project in Yiyuan county in Shandong province that aims to revitalize this rural area — which is largely populated by elderly people since the younger generations have left to work in the cities — through art and design.
Earlier media reports said that he plans to work with billionaire Soichiro Fukutake, who joined Japanese architect Tadao Ando to launch a campaign to revitalize Naoshima through art, and Fram Kitagawa, the curator behind the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan.
According to Wang, he is now working on his first overseas project to build a large mixed community in Paris with a rammed earth and timber structure.
For him, rammed earth is among the most sustainable architectural materials around, and it is through exchanges with French experts since 2009 that he has managed to find a modern solution of how to best make use of it.
“With such a huge amount of construction projects taking place in China, we should make pioneering explorations for the world on the road to sustainable development,” he says.