Rising generation of Chinese architects thrives on innovation

Posted by FFW on Thursday, August 7, 2008

And so it is time for the locals to speak up. In what seems to be an epiphany for the foreign press, the Chinese actually have a voice. Like Dubai, foreign architects have arrived in droves to claim their bit of designed real estate in China. Much like how other Asian countries are waking up to the idea of the rise of their young creative classes, so too are the Chinese; only this time they are getting enormous amounts of exposure because of the gravity their nation carries as the next largest economy in the world. It is not too difficult to draw parallels with the situations other countries in Asia, as Christopher Hawthorne of the LA Times gives the scoop on the different stakeholders in the Chinese built environment.

Christopher Hawthorne, for The Los Angeles Times, BEIJING — Two very different groups of architects are responsible for most of this city’s recent growth: foreign firms cashing in on the Chinese boom and local design institutes affiliated with various universities. Sometimes they work together. And sometimes their relationship grows strained, as was the case when a group of senior architects connected to the institutes wrote a highly charged letter to government officials four years ago, just as Olympic planning was moving into high gear, condemning the design for the National Stadium, by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, as a pricey “white elephant.”

In the crudest narrative of contemporary Chinese urbanism, foreign architects are carpetbaggers — some more talented than others — while the institutes are sclerotic bureaucracies, practically allergic to innovation. But there is a third group of architects that may, in the end, have the definitive say about the shape of the new Chinese city. It is made up of young designers who were born in China and educated in the U.S. or Europe and have returned to start their own firms, burdened by neither stereotypical Western ideas about Chinese culture nor ties to the hidebound institutes.

Get the full article on The Los Angeles Times