My point of view:
on Architecture and Travel

Interview Date: 10-08-2011

What is the importance of Architectural Tourism?

What is the importance of Architectural events (like WAF that is hosting us here) worldwide? Which are the profits for a city holding such kind of major events?

We can have this platform for the communication and for open our eyes to see what’s happened on the world and it’s also for the communication among the people and in architecture class.  It could be a link later to promote the relationship between the colleagues from different countries.

:: Besides your professorship in the university, you lead also the architectural office “in+of architecture”, doing planning and design practice in China.

China is a country with great history. Designing a modern building within this context is a complex procedure. Is critical regionalism an approach to your architecture?

In China the development is very fast because after we have slept the Cultural Revolution, after being a closed civilization suddenly we had the opportunity to see what happened in the whole world, so a lot of architects came in to China and built a lot. So Chinese learned. On one side there are the falling countries and on the other side they want to have some traditional scenes in the modern architecture so there’s always a dilemma. One thing is that they are searching for national identity but the problem is that we can only admonish to win this by using some fragments of traditional symbols, signs.  But Chinese are not so self confident about that.

They are in the technology and also in the design concept where they are better from the western countries which are not so confident. So we have some conflict somehow between the government and the client and in such a modern time we must have our own language. We try to transform this and combine the local handicraft and the modern technology; we try to do some scene in this moment to the contemporary spirit of China.  It’s not just like this famous Chinese film in which they just show the life in the traditional time, they give to the western countries and the foreign countries a mistaken image. They don’t see what happens in China, they just see what happened in the past of China.

You are the chief editor of World Architecture Magazine which is the most influential Architecture Magazine in China. Can an architecture magazine influence ordinary people, non architects, to deal with architecture and demand better urban environment? How can this be done?

The World Architecture Magazine is the most influential architecture magazine in China. We have every month 30 thousand copies and in China is difficult for normal people to understand architecture because they see architecture as an object, as spooky, as lovely or something like. Because we introduce architects and architects of the world including Chinese architects, we have organized since 2002 an architect’s award, this is a Chinese architects award every 2 years so we invite every time several judges from foreign countries which they join in a meeting to find there a project to judge, to find the basics of architecture, to select it from some pieces in china, and to promote any project magazine, the publications and the exhibitions to foreign countries.

This is a big question because after 20 years of development all the Chinese cities became fat and also higher. In china most of the people lived in the countryside but now with high organizations and a lot of people come in to the city, the city has a lot of problems like traffic. In Beijing it’s a huge problem, they have 5000000 cars and every day we walk very slowly, when we drive in the traffic jam. It’s a big problem and another problem is that Chinese want to catch up so they develop very quickly. They demolish a lot of traditional scenes because they think that this is easy. Everything we built they think is a completely nothing. This is easy.  Now we have the sense of the tradition being demolished and the heritage cannot come back so we want to keep that. This is the one thing. Another thing is about the natural resource, about the green and the sustainability so we have that sense. Everything now in China is slow; they search for the only quantity. They want to have some quality.  This is a change point.

At the end, can you please provide your personal proposal for 10 buildings (constructed and visitable) which you think as the most important worldwide that someone must visit anyway?

From my generation I like some buildings of Le Corbusier and Mies Van der Rohe. I also like Alvaro Siza.