A Chinese Question

Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu of Shanghai-based architectural practice Neri&Hu tell zaneta cheng how they hope to redefine “Made in China”

hypothetical boxes, both Neri and Hu are ready to show us that they’re more than a convenient cliché.

How do they plan to do this? “We’re conceptual. We’re more interested in issues from which we draw out problems and questions, and we probe into them critically,” says Hu. “We offer ways of looking at these issues as a variety of different experiences, as a way of challenging people’s expectations of the norm or tradition. Think about the typical hotel lobby – what it should look like, what it should feel like. I think we all come in with our preconceived notions of what is right and what it should be, and we like to challenge those anticipations and conventions.”

The couple believes that design is not intuitive; one of the reasons they decided to name their practice the Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. Deliberately multidisciplinary, they love getting their hands dirty and abstracting issues such as culture from their esoteric surrounds, grounding them in the familiar.

“We want to inject a more cerebral and intellectual approach