thank you for coming, everyone. today we have xangingli, or li xanging, depending on how do youorder name, family name. and with us, asmany of you know, he's teaching and this yearwith us, this term with us, but his position intongji university is now professor--correct me if i'm wrong-- and deputy dean for the collegeof architecture and urban planning and deanof the sino-spanish
college of tongji university. and this is why we have had agood relationship seeing him for the first time in madrid,then in tongji, and then here. and he has several books writtenlike experience architecture, down architects and chinesetactics, 2005, 2006. architecture asresistance, [inaudible] show and his architecture,[inaudible], 2012 and 2004. he's also been veryactively involved in curating [inaudible] somebiennales, as this [inaudible]
hong kong biennale of 2015. decide how you're going tospace our season in 2015. and also, he's a memberof cica, "see-ka", which is an internationalorganization that contains the most importanthistorians and critics. i have asked him to really tryto make in such a short time a panorama or a vision,more than a panorama, his vision on what is happeningnow in chinese architecture. because i think thisis a key moment for us,
i mean, for chinesearchitecture. the young generation hasevolved and is not mimicking [inaudible] other cultures. and at same time,we are beginning to understand the hugeamount of production has passed from the quantitativeto the qualitative now. and this is a veryimportant moment. so please will you joinme in welcoming xanging li and let's give him a hand.
[applause] thank you. do we have respondentsas [inaudible] that though mostly all of youknow because he's teaching in the school from [inaudible]. [inaudible] is visitingscholar and you may notice, not so long time ago,teaching with us. thank you for having me here. and thanks to [inaudible]and also to gsd.
today, the topic isbuilding a new tradition. i'm going to-- ofcourse, [inaudible] asked me to cover the kindof history turn maybe, not a history turn,but the chinese new emerging architecturalpractices that are trying to rebuild theconnection with our past, with our traditionand history as well. so china has seencities and buildings that are advancing triumphantlyfor the past three decades, so
at a speed and scale thatare never seen in the west. so high-rise buildingsare springing up swiftly in the cities, while thehistoric blocks built over hundreds of yearsago are being dismantled. so the rapid advent ofmodernity is accompanied with the disenchantingand the duplication of modern western civilization. china's constructionindustry thus have received a severe criticismfrom the international academia
that perhaps the loss ofchina's unique cultural characteristics,and its breaking from the pastconstruction tradition will bring aboutnothing but water without a source andtrees without roots. so chinese contemporaryartists are more sensitive to thecrisis of our own identity. also, the breaking of ainherent connection to history. artists like artist[? luong ?] foon.
this is one of the mostactive and important contemporary chineseartists. [? luong ?] foon illustrates that in-between thesituation of china's history and future is imaginationand also its dirty reality. so why are artists like,also another artist-- this is [? wong ?] foon. and another artist,[? yangyong ?] liao, tries to melt theever-growing urban landscape into a historic reflectionof chinese traditional ink
and wash paintings. so ironically rebuilding a lostconnection with china's history and reality. so these are someof projects that he worked on and also showedin some exhibitions at [inaudible]. i am going to touchupon this again. in a review made 10years ago, i once pointed out thatchina's architecture
were either adapting brand-newarchitecture forms which had no culture association withthe chinese tradition at all, or duplicating simply theimages of traditional chinese architecture, or makingsingle appropriation of traditional chinese typology. such as gardens ratherthan translating them into contemporary language. today, when i look back andrely on the changes that have taken placeover the past decade,
i'm pleased to see that thecontemporary chinese architects are employing constantly the newproduct emergent in multitude to express their interpretationto the traditions in plural, yet individual manners. a culturalconsciousness rooted in the connectiveunconsciousness is taking on in varied contemporary forms. so as a matter of fact, that thecontemporary chinese architects are more concerned with theinterpretation to the tradition
due to influence fromthese aspects as follows. firstly, the presentation of themainstream architecture system to the so-calledchinese-ness, or the subject that that embodies the nationalimage that symbolized the power is mainly shown in buildingscarrying the meaning of political declaration. i will use this example. for example, in the 2010shanghai world expo, china pavilion took theseso-called oriental crowns
as a form of metaphor. so this awkward, directborrowing of historic image always reminds me of achinese artist's work shown in an exhibition entitled,the living chinese garden in dresedn nationalmuseum of germany in 2009, in which i also participated. so this installation shows someridiculous gardening technology to create weirdshaped tree branches to satisfy a kind of unhealthyappreciation of forms, also
in the traditionalform of china. and also, it could be also takenas a metaphor of distortion of architecture forms to satisfythe weird pace the full history and power. so as a contrast, the good newsthat the [inaudible] comprised, and an architect from beijing,li xiaodong, [inaudible], respectively playeda significant role in pushing china'sarchitectural culture to turn to another direction.
thirdly, as the urban-- so theseare some projects-- thirdly, as the urban expansionprogress is going to a limit-- when, you know, theeconomy of china is going down a little bit, sothe speed will be slowed down. while expandingoutwards, the cities must turn to insidethemselves to tap into the potential for anew round of development, so urban regeneration. that is, to takeurban regeneration
and rural constructionas a main drive to the futurearchitecture development. which also breedsthe possibility to recreate thosekinds of traditions. so in the citycenters, two evolutions are taking place simultaneously. one is thetransformation and reuse of existing urban architecture. and the other, theconscious employment
of traditional spaces,materials, and processes in the newly builtpublic buildings and residential buildings. so in beijing and shanghai,both the biggest cities in china, the wave of urbanrenewal is in full swing. a series oftransformations to hutong, a unique type of livingspaces in beijing. this is one picture of thelife in hutong have come up. architect [? jiupei ?] insteadinserted a contemporary metal
box into the traditionalspace in a transformation of a famous chinese artist,[inaudible], courtyard. hence forming a kind ofjuxtaposition of tradition and modern materials. another architect, a youngarchitect office, pao office, also introduced contrastingboxes into the plug-in housing project. this is the plug-inhousing project. these starting [inaudible]and life happening there.
also, another illumina, andthat's a graduate of the gsd, [? john ?] kuo, whose office iscalled standard architecture, recreated a kindof routine space by inserting cereal of boxesinto its micro-hutong program. and also the arch studioimplanted the artificial nature of the postings industry areainto the traditional texture of its hutong teahouse program. it's a new teahousebuilding, the hutong. so it is the case, wasthe hutong transformation
by the tao office. in the meanwhile, architectsin shanghai-- so these are some teahouses in hutongin the city of beijing. and another project by tao. he's a graduate from yaleschool of architecture. and started thisarchitecture practice. no, that's not-- that nameshouldn't be mentioned here, i know. and so in the meanwhile,architects in shanghai,
so also the birthplace ofchina's modern industry, have completed atransformation for cereal of industry buildings. architects from ateleirdeshaus, the [inaudible], who gave a lecture at[? piper ?] two days ago, revived the heritage ofindustry architecture. the long museum at the westbank of china, of shanghai. the refined and made modularapplication of the remaining structural elementsand created a kind
of sympohny of light,shadow, and structure. and another architectoffice, original design, not only transformedthe power plant into the exhibitionspace of the power station of art, which isused as the museum of modern art in shanghai. successfully, but also turned,then, also an old spice factory into a brick wood modernoffice space for its own use. this is the interiorof the museum
of modern art in shanghai. and taiwanese-- neriand hu-- they're a singapore and taiwanesearchitect office-- transformed thekind of workspaces by the old wharfin huangpu river into a minimalistboutique hotel. so it's called waterhouse. and [inaudible]architect zeng qun transformed the multi-levelbus garage of a bus company--
so it's a huge--this is the interior of the waterhouse onthe huangpu river. and this is tongjiarchitectural design institute by architect zeng qun whotransformed the multi-level bus garage of a bus companyinto a modern headquarters of an architecturedesign institute. so obviously, it is morechallenging to create contemporary buildingsin urban areas into than to transformthe existing ones.
so also, the returnto the traditions due to options ofmore strategies thus becomes theexpression of positions. like wang shu has become aflag of contemporary chinese architecture cultureafter winning the pritzker prize in the southern songimperial street project in honjo. as he always does, traditionalwood, bricks and tiles are used to build a seriesof good-looking cottages.
also the representationof his ancient street still carries someformal criticality. and in his [inaudible]guesthouse project at china academy ofart-- this project-- the spaces of traditionalchinese landscape gardens are abstracted intorecreational promenade, which wings its way up and downwith the terrains and floors through the publicspaces of the guesthouse. so although the traditionalimperial roof is reserved,
i think the joint forms oftraditional brackets components are pushed to extremes. numerous wood componentsare piled and repeated to form a kind ofdense texture, and even deliver a certainsense of a kind of contemporarybaroque aesthetics. so in this work,landscape gardens becomes a source to buildcultural imaginations and metaphorical forms.
similarly, thecritics often mention these works-- his togetherwith several other contemporary architectural practices ofthree other architects-- mainly, dong yugan, tong ming,and ge ming, who also deal with the garden spaces a lot. and are regarded asfour architects who teach at colleges whileconducting garden space designs as full content[inaudible] garden masters. so more or less,the stages of men
of letters, or thetraditional chinese literati, from the traditionalchinese culture, which is almost impossiblein modern times, is reflected in both ther designphilosophy and their living conditions. they even have stirred upa kind of cultural movement to study conventionalgarden literature, making contemporary gardenresearch thriving in china for while.
absorbed in brickconstruction, dong yugan combines creatively the kindof brick buildings technology of something that reminds usof louis khan or carlo scarpa with the traditionalchinese garden spaces in a marvelous manner. so these are some otherbrick buildings he built up. however, his pursuit ofthe space monumentality in the red brick galleryand some other projects seems a far cry fromthe aesthetic mood
of landscape gardens. rarely using traditionalarchitecture forms or materials, tong ming,an architect from shanghai, and ge ming, an architectbased in nanjing, they both employ spatialorganization methods of landscape gardensinto their works, such as a series of courtyardswhich enable concrete beams and columns. while walls and othermodern buildings components
could be understood politicallyas a kind of reflection of the traditionalchinese garden spaces. for example, tong ming pursuedextreme spatial changes in limited spacesbased on modern forms and the materials in his hantianheng museum-- this one. and also [inaudible]studio, which is a studio for a famouscontemporary chinese artist. through his [? ruyen ?]garden-- and this is another studio designedby tong ming for the artist
zhou chenya. another image of that. so in his [inaudible]garden design, [inaudible] the architect ge mingpresented a kind of evolution different from the series ofcourtyards visual organization and the rock court intraditional gardens in a contemporarydesign language. these are some otherimages of the same project. and also, besides in jiximuseum, architect from beijing,
li xinggang, takes theleaning roof skylines in traditional chinese buildingsas an echo to the surrounding natural landscape. so i think it's quitesimilar to the way that im pei was dealingwith this at suzhou museums, and also his hotel atthe hill of fragrance in beijing many yearsago, who was termed as a kind ofpostmodern approaches to deal with chinese tradition.
so similar method also appearsat the nantong university, the fanzeng muesumgallery designed by original studio, wheredark and light gray tones and the translucence curtaingrills create conjointly a poetic image of a traditionalchinese ink and wash painting. rooted in northwest china,architect liu kecheng blended the dignifiedand the low technology and sustainability inthe form of earth houses or the cave houses fromthe northern part of china.
the construction styleof northern architecture into his works,for instance, using clay materials and cave-likeconstruction from the fuping pottery art villagemuseum and artworks in the shaanxi provinces. in the meantime of theurban construction, also a new trend isemerging in china. growing in numbers,independent architects leave cities forvillages to conduct
the design and constructionof rural architecture. and they're participatingin the transformation of rural society. because of the air pollution andunsafe food, and the traffic, all the problems in thebig cities, more and more, young architects aremoving to the villages and settle down there. architects designgathered in cities until the recent decades.
due to the low economicand cultural level, villages are alwaysbeyond the vision of architects in theirpractices for many years. we don't have architecturedesign projects in the villages for many years. so over the past decade,the congestion, and also industry pollutionin chinese cities, have pushed architects toreturn to the rural areas, while the kind ofnostalgic dream continues.
so where they can find apeaceful landscape there in the villages. for instance, the earth buildingon-the-bridge primary school designed by li xiaodongwon the 2012 aga khan award for architecture. and the house forall seasons designed by hong kong-basedarchitect, john lin. this is the bridge schoolthat is used as a bridge to connect the twoparts from the river,
but also could beused as a school if they close the flexible,adaptable, movable walls that you could divide thebridge into several classrooms for the students. and also, the hongkong architect, this is another project designedby the same architect, li xiaodong. it's a library in thesuburb of beijing. and the hong kong-basedarchitect john lin
won the ralph erskinearchitecture award because of this house for four seasons. like artists, designersand social workers who arrive at villagesto participate in the rebuilding ofrural communities, some independentarchitects also choose to stay in a village tocontinue the construction work. and even more move outof cities to become part of the rural community.
so this is the interior ofthe house of four seasons. these are some architects areworking in the villages-- zhao yang, wang hao, huangyingwu, chan haoru, and he wei among them. a number of works that combinethe professional training of architects with the ruralconstruction traditions, living customs, and also localmaterials and climates emerge, such as thevictory street community by zhu xiaofeng, the scenicarchitecture based in shanghai.
zhu xiaofeng alsograduated from here, gsd. and namchabarwa visitorcenter by tsinghua university professor-- sorry,zhang ke, a gsd graduate and standardarchitecture. this is namchabarwavisitor center. and another visitor center intibet, yushu jianamani tourist service center by zhang li, thetsinghua university professor. his practice iscalled teamminus. so in addition, anew pattern that
combines digital technologyand the culture critic has come up in chinesearchitecture groups. they either borrow theparametric design method of brand new digitalform from the west or express the attitudesof critical transformation to the traditions,or generated the kind of possibility forculture reinterpretation to china's low technologyand hand built traditions. for example, throughdazzling visual effects
of stainless steeland the bubble that looks like coming from theouter space, mad, ma yansong, remodeled beijing's traditionalhutong social structure. criticality was kind ofhutong bubble project. and also, in the silk walland lanxi curtilage project, an architect basedin shanghai, also tongji professor, yuan feng,uses digital technology to translate the traditionalmaterials and intentions in traditional paintings,such as silk and sloping roof,
hence enabling the parametrictechnology to be put into practice and strike rootsin the kind of construction reality of china. so from village to cities,from culture architecture to residential architecture,after two decades of destructive construction,all the historic quarters are dismantled. china's contemporaryarchitecture practice is expecting a kind of newtradition of architecture.
it is a careful borrowing,rather than just literally direct and shallow appreciationof the traditional building culture and space logic. and also, a culturalrenaissance after the baptism of the westernmodern architecture. rather than conservative,subjective construction, a coexistence of diversified andvaried solutions, rather than simple duplication to themainstream experience. so sooner or later,the practices
of these independent architectswill generate, similarly to acupuncture, akind of acupuncture because the massproduction of china still bears a lot of criticismbecause of no consideration, no deliberation. but a kind of acupunctureeffect phenomenon that individual architectsare building small buildings to generate thatkind of dynamics, to initiate an evolution.
so i call thisacupuncture effect through some individualcases, and hence push forward the kind ofwhole construction industry, and even the whole public, tohave a critical and innovative recognition to the tradition andhistory in china in the future. thank you very much. can you just moveto the position? you can stay here. you have to respond [inaudible].
you're judged by the q&a. being questioned. so i don't know if you wantto-- you have a caller, or who wants to--what we'll try to do is short responses [inaudible]. chris, you know wellthis [inaudible]. so i have to start. i'm just gathering my thoughts. i mean, thanks for sharing this.
maybe i start with aquestion, and maybe i will then follow up with myinterpretation of what you just presented. of course, you've titled yourpresentation "a new tradition." i mean, in a sense, it'ssomewhat paradoxical in terms of the two words. it's both new,but it's also old. so if you could summarize, ina sense, what to you is new, and what versions ofthe old have been kept,
perhaps it will helpme in my next response. i think in the beginningof 20th century, in the generationof liang sicheng, they started tocome here to study. they studied upenn at thattime, which is the beaux arts. but when they goback, they tried to turn to the rediscoveryof traditional chinese architecture, but in a new era. i think i use theterm new tradition,
that it's not only lookingback to the tradition and try to reinterpretand reproduce it, but building a newtradition, which is a mixture of the influencefrom the architecture education they had here. most of the architectsi presented here, they graduate from here, gsd orcolumbia, princeton, and yale. but the problemis that right now, they try to reflectthe kind of reality
that when china was no longersticking to its existing, the older buildingtechnology, like wood, because wood is notimpossible in china because the fire code isvery strictly prohibiting building with wood. and also, bracketsystems, which is the traditionalchinese language. so they were bringinga kind of language from modernism, like lecorbusier or louis kahn,
or carlo scarpa,whatever, to china, and to try to mix that with alittle bit of a chinese essence of what they learned fromthe things like gardens or the kind of paintingor contemporary art to reflect contemporaryconditions of china. that's why i alwaysuse zhang yimou as a case, the famouschinese director, that he was always showingthe images for traditional, the kind of imaginationof chinese past.
but instead, the youngergeneration, like [inaudible], are reflecting more aboutthe real social and cultural conditions in china,which is not very known to the western world. but it doesn't satisfythe western eyes a lot. but this is the realcondition in china. so i think in severaldecades, or a half century, when people arelooking back to now, this will become a new traditionother than the tradition
of tradition we had before. so that's why i usedthe term new tradition. right. ok. i think if that'sthe case, then i think we need to make a clearerdistinction between what we mean by tradition. because i think in theexamples you showed, i think we couldsee that tradition
can be both an image, as wellas a way of working, right? and if i have to choose twoprojects that you've shown and two architectsthat you've shown, then let's say iwould say yang feng. in a sense, it woulduse a traditional image, but the process isnot traditional. wang shu would be the opposite. wang shu ends upwith an architecture that has no traditionalimage, but in which
its process and its methodis incredibly traditional. now, let me eliminatewhat i mean by that. i think wang shu'swork, to me, is more interesting than this oneprecisely because he uses-- and i think this is alsoyour thesis-- that that's a certain retreatto interiority, to the countryside,to adaptive reuse. because i think intraditional chinese culture, i think the concept of yinand yang, a relational logic,
is more important. that is to say that ifi were to compare, let's say, a palladian villathat sits and punctuates a landscape in which itsits as an autonomous figure in an expanded field. so we can say that therelation between self and other is one that isconfrontational and separate. whereas, let's say wewere to take a siheyuan, a traditional chinesecourtyard house
that is composed ofwalls and pavilions, that relation betweenoutside/inside, nature and architecture, isnot confrontational. it's relational. that is to say thatthe binary opposites. it's one thatalways tries to seek equilibrium between thetwo, harmony in a sense. so that's why i think if we wereto take that as an approach, then i think the workof wang shu to me
is incredibly interestingbecause the way he uses material-- to use brick,to use timber-- he's not the first guy whohas used it and not the last guy who will use it. but it's preciselythat the way he uses it to adapt to the existingcontext, existing building, existing site topography. and to the extentof the way in which craftsmen or buildersare able to use it.
so it is an architecture. it's incredibly imprecise. and it's able to adapt tothese different conditions. so although the imageof his architecture, at the end of the day tome doesn't look traditional at all. but the approach, theway of working, to me resides preciselywithin this tradition of a relational logic,finding equilibrium
between two opposites. whereas in this example,i think, for instance, using a parametric approach,each placement of the tile has to be incredibly precise. any deviation would renderthe entire composition useless or pointless, right? because of the gradient. it has to be so precise. so to me, thismethod of working,
it's not very, in a sense,chinese or traditional, although the image--the roof, the material-- is very traditional. so i think we need to makethis separation between what we mean by traditional. are we recreating animage of tradition, or are we working ina traditional way? and what i meantraditional, it resides in, of course, thecultural history that
is underpinned by confucianism,yin/yang philosophy, and taoism. do you want to respond? i think the argumenti want to make is that after the period ofthe china pavilion of expo, which is the earlier way ofsimply borrowing an image. so now there are peoplefrom different perspectives and using differentmethods and technologists, trying to break away from thatsimple borrowing of image,
and try to injectdifferent things into it. even wang shu, i'mvery close to him. i wrote many reviewsof his works. he never showed you theearlier works of himself when he was reading all thosebooks of derrida and foucault. and also, he was learningfrom, i think, peter eisenman. he did some kind ofdeconstruction architecture, but he never showed. but at that period, althoughhe doesn't want to show it,
but it's critical to hisphilosophy, development of thinking, because he triedto combine the new things. he didn't study outside china. he didn't come here, europeor united states, to study. but generally, deep inside, heknows the philosophical kind of reflection of the tradition. what he learned fromthose books, maybe there's a misreading ofderrida or misreading of the french philosophers,roland barthes.
but i think at least hetried to reinterpret, or look at the traditionfrom different perspectives. i think this is inherentin his own logic. that's why he's very unique. he's also very self confidentabout his own approach. this is very rare inchinese architects, or even among thearchitects in the world. because not often, he doesn'tlook at the works of others. he doesn't readarchitectural magazines.
that's something crucialto his practice as well. so i think it's very unique. but of course, in china, wecan't have everybody work or design like want shu. so there aredifferent approaches, trying to approach somethingfrom different angles or different approaches. that's what i want to showhere as a kind of mosaic. we have to go withshorter [inaudible].
sorry. you can respondwhatever you want. thank you, xiangning, foryour interesting lecture. it shows a very rich and avery complex [inaudible]. maybe sometimes paradoxicalcontext and paradoxical program of chinesearchitecture nowadays. maybe i'm wrong,but my impression is that you have talkedabout exceptions maybe in this search, this attemptto create, to translate
into contemporarylanguage or traditions, and all understandingof chinese architects. and so my question is thatmaybe the challenge is not how to find a new language,a new modern language, a new contemporary language. this is important, butnot the really thing. and the challenge maybehas to do in the sense how to deal with the hugeurbanization of china today. so maybe theexploration should be
not only in terms of style,in terms of buildings, but also in terms of types. how to deal with the complexity,with the necessity on the one hand of having so levelsof density in cities, and how to create othersway of understanding the problem of the city, and howto combine a new understanding of the city with newarchitectural types based on the tradition? so i think this is a real,maybe the actual challenge
for chinese architecturebecause all those buildings are very interesting, areamazing in some aspects. but maybe are justsmall examples in the huge panorama of china. what do you think about? i think because this is onlyone presentation with the topic of connection with tradition. so i selected asmall group of works that will satisfy the kindof requirements by inaki.
but of course, in the coursesthat i'm teaching here at gsd, there are twolectures every week. so i presented underdifferent categories, like urbanism, of course, is avery radical and contemporary issue pressing in all chinesearchitecture practices. guys like [inaudible] and thegroup influence from people are rem koolhaas,and also mvrdv. the kind of diagramis also very present in chinese architecture.
so these are some other topicsi covered in the lecture course as well. so from here, i'mdealing with one aspect. i think it's like a sliceof chinese architecture from certain perspective. that's why you see here. of course, beyondthe mass production, this is one group of people. but i think that a way toreframe the question of eduardo
is, do you think thatthis approach has an impact in the way thecontemporary architecture is dealing with themegaplot or the cbd, or all these other [inaudible]? there is a kind of link thatyou can establish in the future. i think that the link maybe the intermediate scales between buildings and theproblem of the [inaudible]. and maybe thisproblem of meeting the scales should be faced witha reflection on types one more
time. maybe-- i don't know. so in this context,the reinterpretation of the traditional types ofchinese should be important. it's not about style. it's not about cities. but it's something in between. so i think your directionshould be maybe more rich if you had presented this wayof understanding the type,
how to translate old typesinto contemporary types, as a kind to reflectabout the cities, about the future ofurban planning and so on. also, one thing tomention is that in china, there's a very important--i'll use the term "problem"-- that most of the large scaleprojects are in the hands of national, and the stateowned, large design institute. so those kind ofindependent architects here are excluded from whenthey are designing projects
like cctv. they either invite internationalarchitects or big companies to do. so all those independentand individual architects are excluded from this system. that's why here, yousee the kind of gap. that's why at thevery beginning, and also in myearlier many writings, i mentioned the gap betweenthe selected projects
exhibited worldwide onthe neat taste and very nice articulation ofarchitecture quality, and also the massproduction, which you will see in any majorcities, the large plazas and the major boulevards,urban design scale. you see the contrast and alsotension in china these days because the gap between thetwo groups of people, one, the independent, good, cuttingedge architect, and also the large mass productionof architecture.
i'll use the term "design,"but also production. it's a design industry. and that's the huge kindof gap between there. my question comes atit sort of sideways. one of the places,obviously, where tradition and newnessor change intersect is in pedagogy or in education. for the first year thisyear, i had a crash course during march iiadmissions, as inaki
knows, in just looking throughhundreds of portfolios. and it was actually quitefascinating to see and to get what was probably a somewhatinaccurate picture of exactly the way the education isplaying out right now. so i'm just curious how--one of the things that seemed to come forwardin a lot of student work was a kind of tensionbetween experimentation, a tremendous energyand experimentation. but then that seemedto be oftentimes placed
into maybe a common softwareformat or something like that. and so my question is, how aretechnological changes being taken up at thelevel of education? you mentioned parametrics inthe level of the construction industry. but is that same dialoguebeing played out now at the level of education? or is it still the case of thatan architect or an architecture student will have tocome here to acquire
certain kinds of technicalskills and then return? i think the pedagogicalmethod is also very divided. among architectureschools in china, there is alsodebate about what's the aim of trainingthose students? one is that youwant to encourage them to be very usable bythe big design companies. as soon as they graduate,they could design proposals, projects like 100,000square meters.
that's the situation that manystudents, not like in europe, that young architects,when they graduate, they start with a tabledesign or furniture. and they get bigger and bigger. chinese students, as soon asthey're jumping into projects like 100 squaremeters at the sudden. so there's a bunchof educators believe that this is theaim of a student because this is theneed of the society.
at the same time, thereis a group of, i think, good architects andeducators trying to encourage students to thinkdifferently and critically. so this group ofstudents, most of them are coming to gsd and manyother american universities. also, you see the reflectionin their portfolio. they're strugglingbetween the kind of experimental aspectof architecture, but also the kind of large scalemanifesto of chinese ability
of building things. so you still see thekind of gap there, too. so you see somestudents are doing very good experimental works. but at the same time,there are monsters also in their portfolio. can i add to this? because this impliesall of us because it's a global community,the education.
i think that's oneof the frustrations i have with our admissionsprocess-- i have many. but one, and thebiggest probably, is the lack of capacityof the architects that are instructors here tounderstand the different takes of different schools. for example, veryclearly, i think that we have lost some ofthe best nanjing-- you're from nanjing, by the way.
yeah. nanjing studentsbecause in this school, we have very few peoplethat can understand the typology culture. if we were in [inaudible], wouldhave immediately identified these guys. and if there is nota kind of parametric, if there is not akind of game of shifts of movement insideit, we tend to think
that they're poor students. once you begin to understandthe different cultures that you see in different schools,who are the protagonists of this discussion? which is not a battlefield. it's a discussion, anintellectual discussion. i think that changes completelythe program, completely. and i think this iswhat is happening now. some schools arehaving, i would say,
position that looks moreto some schools in europe as a reference, but areidentifying their own position. others are mimickingliterally other schools in the west coast,those that are more radical in formal terms. others are trying to mimic thiscoast, like i'm more cultural, i'm more sophisticated. and you can distinguishquite well the roots. all of us have a rootin other schools.
but you can identifyvery well these things. and i think it's fascinatingin this moment, a panorama, a landscape, because allthese ingredients are together but we are unableto distinguish them. i think that because ofthe chinese architecture education in the modern sensestarts from the people who study abroad. it happened that everyschool is connected with a kind of traditionfrom the western world.
take the three majorarchitecture schools in china, namely,tsinghua, tongji, and the southeastuniversity in nanjing. so i think southeast universityused eth as their model. so they were fixed on thekind of very minimalist, very rational layout of anorganization of structure, that kind of thing. and also, tsinghua is anelite university of china. not only architecture school,but the whole university
was pushing the studentsto be the leaders in their respective disciplines. that's why their approachesare always different. and tongji-- ofcourse, tsinghua was associated with the upennbecause of their founders studying at upenn. and tongji, we said wehave a connection we used to be a german university. so we had a connectionwith bauhaus.
but actually, thefounding director of the architectureschool of tongji was a student of here,of [inaudible] at gsd. so we have theconnection with gsd here. so you see the majordifference, distinguish of the different mainstreamlines of architectural schools in china these days. so i think it willcontinuously in the future also have some impact on thepedagogy ideas of architecture
education, and alsopractice in the future, because of the connectionwith the western world since the beginningof 20th century. we have to go toopen to the public, but chris wantedto add something. yeah, quick question. short. i promise, very short. you said that architectsthat you've shown here,
they are in a wayoutsiders to the process of urbanization in china, inresponse to eduardo's question. now, as we see today, aschina, especially the state, is becoming more ambitious inexerting their cultural power elsewhere, and alsoin china, do you think that architectsthat you've shown here will be coopted by the state? and do they see themas emblematic figures that portray a certain traditionof chinese architecture?
i agree that yousee the reception. before wang shu won pritzkerprize, nobody knows him. then, when thenews was released, the first thing i think theminister of construction would say, who is this guy? because they neverheard about him before. they never paid anyattention to his work because it's out ofmainstream kind of thing. and also later,i think the value
of this kind ofarchitecture practice is, as i said,acupuncture, that is, the joins and the critical pointthat you want them to be there. and after wang shuwon pritzker prize, there was some peoplesuggesting that wang shu should be the chiefarchitect of beijing, and he would design all thebuildings along the [inaudible] boulevard. so i think that wouldbe another disaster.
the value of thiskind of things is that they are therealways as a measure of what we're doing right now. so if everybody wasdoing a wang shu building and wang shudesigned the whole city, that would be also a disaster. we are happy tosee, in certain kind of a sense, the juxtapositionof the two things, a kind of a balance.
of course, they are discontentabout this kind of situation and they're excludedfrom the mainstream. but at the sametime, it is critical that we have this strength, andnot just stingy kind of things. so i'm sure that we have alot of people-- yeah, mark. i want to thank you for yourextraordinary talk, a range of projects, andalso your comments on the different practices andyour ability to group them. that was really amazing.
and i also have tocommend the panel because those were threereally great questions that are hard to follow up on. my own initialreaction was very much similar to chris's aboutunderstanding the way that tradition is understood. it actually is kind ofreminiscent to me of japan in the 1950s, where therewas a whole public debate among architects about thenew traditions that needed
to be created in thenew, modern society, new, democratic society. and kenzo tange was verymuch a public spokesman, but there were many,many people involved. it's interesting to me-- thisis leading to a question-- that although thearchitects in japan had long enjoyed a kind ofprominence that made them public intellectuals, ina way that i think is only your story about wang shu beingunknown to the construction
minister reveals that there'sbeen a long period of anonymity among architects in bigquestions about the city. but in fact, muchof the innovation, much of the enabling of thecreation of a new tradition, which involved creatingnew construction methods and new ways of imaginingspace, much of that was enabled by the researchand development capabilities of the japaneseconstruction firms, which were, in some sense, leadingrather than following
the initiative of architects. i'm wondering what role, whatkind of relationship you feel is taking place betweenarchitects and builders and researchersabout construction to enable these kinds of new,amazing kinds of structures to be built? you see a very dangerous breakamong architects, and also the industry. so as i said, i knowthat in japan, architects
are supervising theconstruction companies. they are responsible for makingall the construction drawings and working out the detailsinstead of architect himself. but of course, he'ssitting on top of them. but in china, we don'tsee the consciousness yet between the design andbuilders that try to follow. so that's why all theseindependent architects, they spend at least fouror five times then energy. they need to design everything.
you cannot select the best,a nice door handle from the catalog of a company. so you have to tell them. maybe you evenneed to design one because you don't havethe industry that's supporting good design. so that's the reason. but now it's starting thatfurniture makers and also construction builders areturning their eyes and ears
to architects. so it's just a start. that's why i said that whenchinese architects are doing some projects inchina, they always spend much more energythan they needed if they are going to do it here. because of thisindustry, it's easier. the constructionquality is good. but there, you need tospend much more energy
to talk with the buildersbecause you don't have the very mature system ofindustry supporting architects and at the same time,when foreign architects, like richard meier or stern,they're going to china. when they're buildingthings, because they face the same problem, they'redoing very bad, i have to say. because if they lose thesupport of the industry, and they're facingthe chinese market, the construction qualitiesthey cannot handle.
that's the big issue for them. other? yeah, [inaudible]. thank you for organizingthis talk, inaki's effort. and also, thank you for lixiangning's teaching, the host master, to introducingstudents to what's going on in china inthe architecture field. my question is, i thinkyou used a very dangerous and a provocativeword, "tradition,"
because for chinese culture,it has 3,000 years of history. and which part oftradition we need to go back when webuild a building, and we need to findaffiliation with? i think that's one question. probably it's goingto be challenging. that's one. and then two, i thinkamong the architects that you've shown here, someof them, in their process,
they are critical. they are very thoughtfulin terms of material, in terms of the process. but some of them, i haveto say that there is the process of imitating form. sometimes, we cansay that if there is a famous western architectcreating a certain form, soon, you'll find thatform being produced by some youngarchitects, it doesn't
matter, trending inside chinaor trending outside china. you can find thatkind of imitation. so form is still a driver ofproduction of architecture here. so my question is,how do you think that, as architectsin china, when there's so many contemporary challenges,the search for returning back to tradition should be acomponent in their creativity process?
so i think, to thefirst question, the use of the term"tradition," there are two kinds of traditioni'm talking about. one is the building andtechnology, the materials, like wang shu was using. and i see a newtradition, starting from the modernarchitectural education. and i think if you goto china decades ago, the old architectureschools are providing
the same coursesand the same cases that you didn'tdistinguish them. and these days, when yousee several generations, you feel the kind of thing,like frank lloyd wright has many students, and they alldevelop into their own career. you see people like[inaudible], and the group of young architects whoworked in his office before. and now they're startingtheir own career. you see the impact ofthe older generation.
you see the continuityamong generations. that's a very good thing. you see kenzo tenge, andisozaki below him, and toyo. so this is the kind of newtradition also of education, and also build up throughthe decades, i think, which is very critical. so you see that zhaoyang was a graduate. he used to work for [inaudible]. and now he startedhis own career.
and so still, yousee the trajectory and the impact of the oldergeneration to the younger. and also, what's thesecond question again? [inaudible] imitation. i think it's very hard to saywhich form is an imitation because as architect, if youlook at architecture images or magazines, consciouslyor unconsciously, you are imitating forms,like peter eisenman was
doing somethingvery close to frank gehry, the kind of high rise. i think the criticalthing is not literally, just simply say that thisimage is very close to that and that's a copy. by copying images is alsoreinterpreting is another way. by developing this thinginto something else, you want to look at also thesite-specific issues, like how to solve the problemon this specific site.
then even the imageis a little borrowing. like a chinese inkand wash painting, for centuries, they'realmost the same. and chinese calligraphy,they're almost the same. but when he was dealingwith a specific issue, then there was somedifferent editing to that. so it's very hard todistinguish, i have to confess. but at the same time, youwant to distinguish carefully between the simply copyand the original copy.
my second question isless about imitation and more about in the processof creativity, to what extent this huge word like"tradition" from china needs to play a rolein that process? because i have to say a lotof architects, including us, we always feel that burdenof history and tradition. how are you going tointerpret that in the process? i guess that's a huge question. but i'm just wonderingyour own thoughts.
i think yes, thereis huge burden. i think there's anothercase, which is italy. i think if youlook at the history of italianarchitecture, it almost occupied half ofthe architecture history of the whole world. but look at thecontemporary design. architecture design is italyis pretty weak compared with spain, with germany,with switzerland.
so the burden of history isquite obvious there-- in china, too. but the good thingis that because there is a break ingenerations, because it's a bad thing that webreak with the tradition. but also, if theyoung generation, they're breaking awayfrom the tradition. but at the same time, ifthey're conscious in that they have the concept,they have the idea,
capacity to lookat the tradition not as you are the god,i have to follow you, but something that icould use for my own sake. this is maybe a chancefor chinese architects. that's why you seethat people are saying that [inaudible] isthe first modernist architect in china. i don't believe so. but he's a critical figurebecause people believe,
through his career, thatwe see a different path from the earlier generation. that we could do an alternativepath in chinese career. we are having to close, but icannot repress myself asking you a last question. extending this idea, iwant to put on the table the new normal because youtalk about new tradition. and what we know is thepresident was complaining against the iconic term,and a very generic term,
as it has come to us,but has been interpreted by many as a return to themost conservative and almost [inaudible]architecture traditions instead of interpreted as a kindof possibility of discussing the new trends or how muchthese kind of positions can imply a revision of thecorporate, iconic [inaudible] and our vision ofthe old traditions that doesn't work anymore. and i think that-- just toput a bit of pressure on you--
i think that peoplelike you that have a lot of responsibilityin communicating architecture in china, let's putit in a question. do you think that you shouldtake responsibility and phrase this kind of challengein ideological terms? for example, the biennalesare always generic. hundreds of stuff,but never-- i remember with aldo rossi, thetriennale of milano, that he presented a trend andchanged the whole parameter
of the world. do you think thatthere's this possibility? do you think the new normalhas something to do this? no. i have to confess that i don'tknow what the president means when he says "new normal." but i understand that theapplication and understanding of architects through that. in china, when the big boss issaying something, for example,
he was saying that we shouldn'tbuild weird architecture. behind that, i know thebehind-the-screen story. it starts with somebuildings like zaha. i shouldn't say thisbecause of zaha. then you know that theinterpretation of the people under him is very different. a policy is there. so i think the government wantsto talk about the new normal. it's the way that thegovernance is operated.
but architects andplanners, of course, will take that as their own jobto reinterpret it or interpret the new normal. i don't think new normalwill be a very pressing issue for architects and planners. maybe for planners becauseof the shifting of policy. but architecture, i don't takenew normal that seriously. well, it's more thanenough in terms of time, not in terms of content.
thank you, everyone,for being here. thank you, xiangning. thank you, all of you. it has been a great [inaudible].