In a desperate bid to get an architecture related thread up on this forum, I figured I’d post a building from the news section that caught my eye. It is the REN (Chinese for person) building in china, proposed for the 2010 expo by Danish architects BIG (Bijarke Ingels Group). It is apparently literally designed after the Chinese character for person, ren. The building is two "bands", one full of sports and activity related program (body), the other full of intellectual program like meeting rooms (mind), the two bands combine to form a hotel at the top.
Now, I'm going to try to fan the fires of debate here by saying as a contextual approach, or even cultural, this falls flat on its face. It seems as if another European architect is trying to exploit the "anything goes" atmosphere in china right now to build another building they couldn't dream of putting up in Europe. I think it flies in the face of convention over there and as a contextual/cultural exercise, falls flat on its face.
However that said, it is a really neat building, I particularly like the "bubbles" structure and it's curving formal geometry. I have no clue how the interior spaces are going to look, but it does seem as if it could yield some interesting sectional properties.
I wonder though, if even though all this "avant-guard", mostly European architecture going up in china looks cool, and much of it does, is it going to cause more damage culturally to china in the long run? As a nation, china has long had to deal with "colonizing" forces in its cities, specifically from Europe. Are European architects succeeding in transforming china's cultural landscape that the colonizing forces of the early 20th century may have failed to do? It seems this REN building attempts to establish itself in the Chinese cultural landscape, but I think it fails there as much as it fails to establish itself in the Chinese architectural landscape. Or should we at least applaud them for trying?
I'm not necessarily against clarity of symbolism, but it does seem fairly blunt. The skin is interesting, but there are other projects that are doing something similar better. The renderings are terrible.
Basically, if this was a student project in second year, it wouldn't do very well.
bjarke lectured at my school last semester and talked about this project. the design was actually taken from a previous proposal that was shot down. he used the same idea for this project. It wasn't until he proposed it to the Chinese officials did it begin to be dubbed "the REN building" because to the public eye, it really does look like the Chinese character. They even asked fen shui masters to analyze the building...and apparently it's a very feng shui building..but none of this was part of the design decision process. Bjarke has always said (me paraphrasing of course) that sometimes that you can do whatever you want, even if the public doesn't understand it and views your design as something else. I think what he really means is you can have an awesome design, and bullshit the explanation to the public in a very convincing manner for them to buy your 'idea'.
I just like to pretend in my perfect little world that good architecture is "informed" by things, usually contextual. I guess i just hope all that BS they pumped into my head in the first year of school isn't BS after all.
lol... i'm worried what's gonna happen to me once i get introduced to all that stuff. Environment maps that is. I know one guy who uses lens flare in photoshop to the point of madness. And these aren't CGI renders he's doing that to, its real world images of his car.
Apurimac, thank you for this thread. As you no doubt know there has been a bit of debate on this building already in the new section, link to which I post with some trepidation as I'm in a bit of a contretemps over there and am little ashamed of how harsh I can be (though i stand by my belief that most of the "general public" are not capable of making a well-informed distinction between simple and simplistic).
Whew - the point being, thanks for bringing an architectural topic to the forum.
As I said in my rant in the news comment section, there is plenty to think is pretty about this building. The curves are really well-handled, they are very graceful, and the skin is cool in a whimsical, fun way. Not sure if the structural aspect of the circles is valuable, but I imagine it could be done to add lots of strength with little material, as shown on the sides not the flatter faces of the structure.
If you look at the video, there's a section showing how earth-air-metal etc. are all "legible" in the building. I think that's a bullshit post-rationalization, but I'm not a feng shui master!
Urbanistically, look at the third image posted above: those little red dots are people walking up the slope to get to the building. Are they thinking how lovely a little stroll it is, with the breeze coming off the water and down the side of the structure, or are they cursing whoever is making them walk up an exposed endless scaleless mountain to find a hidden door?
I do think it was ballsy to have the animated fly-through go right through the floor where the two curves connect in the middle. Not that I feel like I learned much practical information about how that joint would be handled in reality from it, but it looked cool.
i'll be the crank because, though i appreciate everything liberty bell just said, i think this is irresponsible architecture. what's a way for architects to lose MORE respect than we've already lost? do things not because we think it's the best or the right thing to do but merely because we CAN.
and, no, those people walking across that field of concrete are not happy about the stroll, they're pissed off about being exposed, about having to walk an unnecessarily long distance to the building - a distance where nothing happens, not even planting - and about having to hold onto their hats and jackets. if these architects would like to see a precedent for that kind of space, i can show them one right here in ky - it also probably looked good in renderings but the experience is h-e-l-l.
well, i figured we might as well move that discussion in here.
I watched the fly through, and i it seems to me that intersection between the two slabs leaves much to be desired. There seemed to be no gymnastics there. I'm increasingly convinced this building is a one liner.
All in all a briliant new perception ,much better than anything I seen from internasional Stararchitects, --- I think they will be even more happy about this than any of the other more spetacular structures as this make a much needed communication between chinese and western architecture.
Of all the glossy renderings I seen, this contain the humble attitude I been looking for, something that offer the chinese architecture it's own values in a new way.
Still it is also an old fasion building , the structure percived as a shell rather than a structure , and I do not think enough structural forces can be absorbed by circular Decor , --- perfect in the sense of a real offer not being bragging or over spetacular , nice by being humble enough and communicating values and a form language found in their own aincient architecture, but as allway's , the house as the outher shell omiting the structure staying within today's architecture.
would u build the letters "MAN" in your country?? if u think is silly why would u do it at other country??
the same applies to herzog's bird nest beijing stadium with all those monkey,pig,sheep figure symbolize chinese horoscope... if he believes this is his architecture, then why didn't he put those crappy horoscope sign (sag/taurus/leo...etc) at his German world cup stadium?
First there are no letter "man" beside I think this is just a side effect I don't think the design idear was ever to build a building as a letter --- something that acturly have been done before buildings in form of western letters are not unique, The birds nest -- well from my point of view it is chaos and not at all something I apriciate but they seem happy, still it will not be something that will have further impac on architecture.
Don't think I apriciate how stararchitects also there pointed architecture in the wrong direction --- but the response will come over time, houses that profit their residents with modern architecture by offering humble cheap houses , it will come as a reaction towerds architecture as Spetacular , bragging useless , dull theories.
Apurimac, I'm TOTALLY convinced this is a one-liner (in case that needs to be clarified due to my attempts to be more gracious than I was initially).
vindpust, I don't see the communication between Chinese and western architecture. That video shows how from a certain abstracted view a certain part of the building looks kind of like a triangle therefore evinces "fire" and from another totally implausible and arbitrary angle you might see a square therefore it evinces "wood" and thus the feng fhui of the structure is all there, well, that's bull. You could use the video's methods to find the five elements in an damn building on the planet. And given that the proposal was original made for a harbor in Sweden (according to inhabitat's comments section), the whole Chinese cultural overlay is just marketing.
I still think this came afterwerts , that this form is the same as a chinese letter , but nomatter what "meaning" been put into the form, I still think that compared other Stararchitect Spetacular attitudes , then this will be much more apriciated over time. I think Stararchitects done the wrong thing not supporting the aincient chinese building style, not strenghtening what is allready there , I think Stararchitects failed by being Arogant and offering the Spetacular rather than what has had a genuine value over thousands of years. I find most Stararchitects iresponsible towerds the culture they shuld rather refine and renew , instead of offering engineering as chaos and architecture a spetacular fragile and useless buildings ---- but that will change.
the chinese don't seem to mind if it resembles the character for person.
luckily it doesn't ONLY resemble the character for person, and need not be viewed from that perspective. so it is not a DUCK, but can be if you really like DUCKs...which is cool with me. usually commercial buildings of this sort in china simply look like post-modern mcmansions blown up to extreme size...
so i like the building a LOT for not being an exploded mcmansion. it is cute and interesting, if slightly unercooked, as much of the work from PLOT-ters (I think this was does before teh split, no?) tend to be. However as one liners go theirs tend to be very smart ones, and i suspect this building will be better in reality than in the renders.
I also suspect that the landscaping will improve considerably by the time it is done...if not then we can be angry but for now i look forward to seeing it built...
agreed, this project looks like a total screen. It's the same trite re-heated for a different part of the planet. I'm concered that all these western "avant-guarde" buildings going up in china are in fact damaging the long-standing architectural culture of that country. Or maybe im being too touchy-feely? Hopefully spending the summer there will help answer the question. I understand the market there has demands, but can't western architects approach a chinese site with chinese eyes in a sense? It seems they're exploting it to get their own meglomanical visions built there. Could one adopt local design practice, at least in a partial sense, to inform a building rather than just building a thing there?
i'm less interested in whether it's a good building or not (i'll join those in giving it a thumbs down) than i am apurimac's question whether this is a new form of colonization. i'm uncertain whether the majority of the work being done in china is coming from europe. i have a feeling it's not, but we just read more about rem's and h+dm's projects in arch record than the chinese projects by lesser known architects. the chinese i believe are producing some equally horrible buildings in their own country. at the same time, we are seeing the same sort of formal, overly expressive buildings going up in the middle east, dubai, abu dabi, etc. the fact that these buildings are going up in traditionally colonized areas is coincidental with areas that are currently awash in money.
what does this mean? for those non-chinese architects building in china, there is a huge cultural divide that is too often being bridged by a trite symbolism or formal gesture. i do believe there are overtones of colonialism embedded in these forms, i.e. a belief that the people are simple or exotic and that therefore they should have an architecture that reflects those qualities, instead of an architecture that actually fulfills their needs culturally, ecologically, economically, etc. what is disturbing is that these forms are being designed by chinese firms as well, a sign that cultural currency and exchange is a complex and difficult challenge that exceeds the bounds of pure colonial critique.
Really, jump, you think the built thing will be better than the renderings? Given your location and background I respect your opinions on this one very much. Hmmmm......
Among all the problems I've mentioned with this building, the one that intrigues me most is the joint where the two legs come together, the little triangle they "fly through" in the fly through. (Yes, I'm obsessed with the crotch. That can be the last joke in that vein, OK?) It seems structurally you would need something more at this location. I suppose I want to see that in addressing/designing a joint like this, the engineers would weigh in heavily on the opportunities to celebrate the joint (yes, celebrate the crotch, please stop) with something that becomes part of the aesthetic presentation of the building. The architect and material-user in me wants to see that joint expressed. Just sliding the two tubes alongside each other seems too formally "pure" and thus dishonest, and thus the building seems simplistic.
Oh and to jump: given the choice between this and the extruded McMansion god knows I'd take this in a heartbeat. But I'd want to see the urban design at street level brought to a human scale - what's that line landscapers accuse of of using: "scatter some parsley" around the ground? ;-)
See, the thing is, i can see stuff like this going up in Dubai, because there is not that much context there. I'm not saying that arabs don't have culture and the chinese do, if this building was proposed for mecca i would be even more disturbed. But dubai was a total desert a few years ago, it is as close to an actual tablua rasa as you can get these days. Shanghai however is a different story. There's massive amounts of history there. Yet, when you take a tablua rasa approach to shanghai, or probably even china in general your erasing previous cultural layers which could prove quite valuable from a design standpoint. By the way when I say european, i should probably state "western" because there are alot of U.S. architects over there too.
i disagree, apurimac, there's good urbanism and bad urbanism. these buildings are bad urbanism wherever they are built, even if they do have beautiful landscaped plazas at their base. it's modernism's conceit that "good architecture" justifies bad cities.
i've been to chandigarh. it's an urban mess, completely antithetical to the way indian cities traditionally work, but with some beautiful architecture. i'm anxious to see what has become of brasilia. in my home city of detroit, i blame modern planning for many of the city's ills (it's obviously more complex than just that, but planning has reinforced other cultural/socio-economic fissures).
the tower in the park will never be a good model for urbanism. these highly sculptural projects have huge footprints that won't allow for the density that creates good urban space. are there exceptions to this? of course, (look at mies/hilberheimer's lafayette park in detroit for an example of excellent modern planning), but on the whole, the methods brought down from corb and ciam will not produce a good city.
I couldn't agree more about the tower in the park creating urban havoc, there are so many examples of public housing projects based off the modernist manifesto that fail miserably. So perhaps then this can be a question we should ask ourselves as a profession, "should modernists modify space into "urban" space?" Or maybe a better question is "can they?"
Aside from all of the sociopolitical ramifications of this project, I have a major, major problem with the skin...
If your going to wrap the skin with the flavor of the month, do with a little conviction.
I think of the almost metaphysical importance Mies gave to the corner and then I look at these and the way it reconciles two difference skins, both embarrassingly compromised...
Excellent, excellent point silverlake - I hadn't been able to identify exactly why the transition from "skeletal" circles to "punched" circles at the corners makes me so uncomfortable. You called it exactly.
One-liner buildings can be marvellous - Toyo Ito and H&deM have done some buildings that are fairly one-line. The difference is that their buildings are one beautiful line, articulated with precision. This is one word shouted at random, and articulated with a mouthful of meat pie stuffed into one cheek.
So what would the reaction to this design be if it were removed from an Asian-context? what if it maintained it's shape but was located in Europe? Would it actually be more successful as a formal exercise without the tacky lower-back-tattoo symbolism?
This design is really frustrating; it begins with these fairly graceful curving planes and abruptly turns into a generic modern office building. It doesn’t feel resolved in anyway… it just turns into a big rectangle and stops. If you moved it to another location the name wouldn’t work anymore but the design would still be irritating. Grumble grumble…
wow that whole being on the other side of the planet thing sure was noticeable today...lots of comments while sleeping...
it isn't great architecture, but it is better than average, and really the crap going up in china by chinese/singapore/malaysian/etc/etc archtitects is sooo much worse i can't help but be happy to see something that doesn't look like a doric column shit all over the facade of an office building....
on other hand there is i think also an immediacy about symbolism and taste in china that is not something we are trained to like very much in the western world; the chinese really like to DISPLAY their wealth and power for all to see (apologies if I am being too generic, but it does look that way to me)...so from that perspective the one liner does make sense, whether it is pseudo-weird neo-classical opulence or buildings that look like a kanji (speaking of which didn't PLOT also make a series of towers that spell out a name of some sort in Europe?).
Whether it works as urbanism i don't know, it is too preliminary for me to believe this is all there is. IF it IS done, just like this then Mr. BIG has some 'splaining to do, cuz its rubbish...but the whole thing is too preliminary to say yet...which is why i also am thinking the final project will be better than the renders. unless they don't care about what they are building it would be difficult for it to not become better as it enters design development...dunno, it is highly probable that i am just projecting.
about towers in parks...go to hong kong, look around and see how it works, then let's talk. there is i think a certain tendency to conflate what is being done in china with european and american models when the cultural context is probably more towards hong kong than manhattan. I don't like Hong Kong, but it works, and a lot of people i respect love it there...mind you they have money, and that probably makes a difference.
As for modernism in general causing woes of the world through bad urbanismmm...well i really do wish profs would just STOP teaching that rubbish in school, cuz it is nonsense. I live in a modernist park and it is wonderful, cuz the people are wonderful. the architecture is less than mediocre but it works for daily life. And there are many examples of where modernism DOES work, in many forms, as urban planning (see Peter Hall's books for examples) , and where classical/traditional forms do NOT. The more i study urban planning and theory the more clear it seems that there is not a single planning answer to making good cities. This is not an excuse for ignoring context and people and the street and all of that stuff, cuz it is absolutely important....but we can do that with towers as easily as with row-houses. whether it happens here or not, i don't know, but for now i will give the BIGman benefit of the doubt...
I wonder if - based on the proportionality depicted in this image, and if that white screen is at all opaque - if dwellers inside are more likely to have no window than a view. Otherwise, those bubbles will unfortunately have to shrink a whole lot, or become transparent.
jump, i think you're taking the other extreme stance towards modern urban planning, the rem-stance of calculated ambivalence. i'm not saying all modern planning is bad. there are excellent examples of modern urban planning. stuyvesant town in manhattan is a great example, perfectly suited to its location. nonetheless, on the whole, planning, particularly in the modern era, and not by the great modern architects, but largely by government bureaucrats, has been used as a very blunt sociopolitcal tool to create or reinforce division and at its worst social inequities. this becomes even more disconcerting when there are colonial implications at play. the work of architect eyal weizman and his spatial mapping of the palestinian west bank comes to mind as a powerful critique of isreali planning methods.
i also live in a beautiful modern neighborhood, but the surrounding area is an absolute waste, created by a highway system that in a very calculated way carved up existing neighborhoods. without question modern planning is not entirely bad. i am in awe of l.a. and its unique and wonderful urbanism, but on the whole, this sort of koolhaasian ambivalence is dangerous if you cannot see the ways in which the modernist project went wrong.
Modernism has produced its share of mutants, that's for sure, but i think city planning has been used by bureaucrats in general throughout the ages as a means of perpetuating class division (can we say HAUSSMAN). It wasn't until the modernists came about, Corbu in particular, that the system began to be questioned. Corbu's greatest irony is probably the fact that his manifesto was used to generate housing projects that exacerbated class division, not dissolve it as Le Corbusier seemed to wish with Towards a New Architecture. Even if the architects pursuing that vision had the best intentions.
Jump you make some interesting points, and i suppose being on the other side of the planet gives you a unique insight on the situation in china. I just have the belief that architecture should engage its context, that even though it can look totally outlandish and futuristic, it should have some base in its environment that goes beyond such a one-dimensional interpretation as the building above. I believe if architecture engaged its context more rigorously we would have less of these urban-planning modernist nightmares jafidler has pointed out.
i doN't know a lot about china. another of the phd students in my lab is studying the topic of regionalism and globalisation as it affects asia, including china, so i get to hear about it at meetings. however her view of things is a bit different as she is an architect building huge developments, almost on the scale of stuyvesant, in beijing and elsewhere in China. We have spoken a little about how she feels making large neo-classical towers for the elite class and she is at best ambivalent i would say. At first I was surprised at the lack of thought about this work, but I have come to realise that for the Chinese it is not a bad thing, this development. IN spite of all the problems involved, and the palpable strangeness of it all (IE, my classmate's design for the development has been used to create/set the zoning for the area, after the fact. How is THAT for power, eh ? !), there is something positive happening too. Culturally there is an important change taking place, and this kind of architecture is a reflection of that.
I am not entirely ambivalent. Rather I believe we are dealing in a cultural landscape where some things are possible, even preferred, when maybe they shouldn't be...and we have to deal with that reality rather than sit on the sidelines and become angry...
On the other hand another classmate, aslo doing phd, is studying the environmental damage/effects of the super growth taking place in beijing and along the vehicular corridor connecting it to tianjin. sounds like there is trouble brewing.
Still, I do think architecture is, luckily, not a spectator sport; you know with the pros doing and the consumers watching passively. We all inhabit buildings and partake of architecture on a daily basis and cause changes to take place slowly, hopefully for the better in the end...look at brasilia for example...the modernist part is still there but all around it is a wild chaotic lively city, entirely unplanned and out of control...that sort of thing happens everywhere, and can, in the right circumstances make a new kind of urbanism out of even the most unlikely places, modernist or otherwise...
I believe that learning to make architecture that encourages that kind of thing is more important than making something that looks right or has the right style...and since it is not tied to ideology it doesn't mean there is a right or a wrong way to go about it...
and that is i suppose why i am not ready to say they fcked up with this building. it is only a starting point and not an end point, in my view...and it is, as starting points go, interesting enough to be going on with...
jump, I think you're arguing in favour of what I called 'symbolic clarity' above. It has been my observation that symbolic, figurative and gestural clarity is highly valued in contemporary Chinese (and in a slightly different way, Japanese) practice.
Ito (to take a Japanese example), emphasises gestural clarity too. But what makes his buildings compelling is that a single gesture is refined and brought to bear as the solution for a whole range of architectural problems.
In the case of the REN building, the gesture seems to solve no problems except iconicity.
Apr 24, 07 4:09 pm ·
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The REN building in China: Contextual or Superficial?
In a desperate bid to get an architecture related thread up on this forum, I figured I’d post a building from the news section that caught my eye. It is the REN (Chinese for person) building in china, proposed for the 2010 expo by Danish architects BIG (Bijarke Ingels Group). It is apparently literally designed after the Chinese character for person, ren. The building is two "bands", one full of sports and activity related program (body), the other full of intellectual program like meeting rooms (mind), the two bands combine to form a hotel at the top.
Now, I'm going to try to fan the fires of debate here by saying as a contextual approach, or even cultural, this falls flat on its face. It seems as if another European architect is trying to exploit the "anything goes" atmosphere in china right now to build another building they couldn't dream of putting up in Europe. I think it flies in the face of convention over there and as a contextual/cultural exercise, falls flat on its face.
However that said, it is a really neat building, I particularly like the "bubbles" structure and it's curving formal geometry. I have no clue how the interior spaces are going to look, but it does seem as if it could yield some interesting sectional properties.
I wonder though, if even though all this "avant-guard", mostly European architecture going up in china looks cool, and much of it does, is it going to cause more damage culturally to china in the long run? As a nation, china has long had to deal with "colonizing" forces in its cities, specifically from Europe. Are European architects succeeding in transforming china's cultural landscape that the colonizing forces of the early 20th century may have failed to do? It seems this REN building attempts to establish itself in the Chinese cultural landscape, but I think it fails there as much as it fails to establish itself in the Chinese architectural landscape. Or should we at least applaud them for trying?
I'm not necessarily against clarity of symbolism, but it does seem fairly blunt. The skin is interesting, but there are other projects that are doing something similar better. The renderings are terrible.
Basically, if this was a student project in second year, it wouldn't do very well.
LOL, i could just hear the crit now, "you know, this is nothing but formal masturbation!"
bjarke lectured at my school last semester and talked about this project. the design was actually taken from a previous proposal that was shot down. he used the same idea for this project. It wasn't until he proposed it to the Chinese officials did it begin to be dubbed "the REN building" because to the public eye, it really does look like the Chinese character. They even asked fen shui masters to analyze the building...and apparently it's a very feng shui building..but none of this was part of the design decision process. Bjarke has always said (me paraphrasing of course) that sometimes that you can do whatever you want, even if the public doesn't understand it and views your design as something else. I think what he really means is you can have an awesome design, and bullshit the explanation to the public in a very convincing manner for them to buy your 'idea'.
somebody was having fun with the lens flare tool in that first rendering
The circular fenestrations look cool but A. that sort of thing is definetely played out and B. is going to do nothing in helping that thing stand up
Big had done much more provacative and interesting work, this is disspointing.
I just like to pretend in my perfect little world that good architecture is "informed" by things, usually contextual. I guess i just hope all that BS they pumped into my head in the first year of school isn't BS after all.
It is informed by context. The context of lens flares and default environment maps.
lol... i'm worried what's gonna happen to me once i get introduced to all that stuff. Environment maps that is. I know one guy who uses lens flare in photoshop to the point of madness. And these aren't CGI renders he's doing that to, its real world images of his car.
Apurimac, thank you for this thread. As you no doubt know there has been a bit of debate on this building already in the new section, link to which I post with some trepidation as I'm in a bit of a contretemps over there and am little ashamed of how harsh I can be (though i stand by my belief that most of the "general public" are not capable of making a well-informed distinction between simple and simplistic).
Whew - the point being, thanks for bringing an architectural topic to the forum.
As I said in my rant in the news comment section, there is plenty to think is pretty about this building. The curves are really well-handled, they are very graceful, and the skin is cool in a whimsical, fun way. Not sure if the structural aspect of the circles is valuable, but I imagine it could be done to add lots of strength with little material, as shown on the sides not the flatter faces of the structure.
If you look at the video, there's a section showing how earth-air-metal etc. are all "legible" in the building. I think that's a bullshit post-rationalization, but I'm not a feng shui master!
Urbanistically, look at the third image posted above: those little red dots are people walking up the slope to get to the building. Are they thinking how lovely a little stroll it is, with the breeze coming off the water and down the side of the structure, or are they cursing whoever is making them walk up an exposed endless scaleless mountain to find a hidden door?
I do think it was ballsy to have the animated fly-through go right through the floor where the two curves connect in the middle. Not that I feel like I learned much practical information about how that joint would be handled in reality from it, but it looked cool.
i'll be the crank because, though i appreciate everything liberty bell just said, i think this is irresponsible architecture. what's a way for architects to lose MORE respect than we've already lost? do things not because we think it's the best or the right thing to do but merely because we CAN.
and, no, those people walking across that field of concrete are not happy about the stroll, they're pissed off about being exposed, about having to walk an unnecessarily long distance to the building - a distance where nothing happens, not even planting - and about having to hold onto their hats and jackets. if these architects would like to see a precedent for that kind of space, i can show them one right here in ky - it also probably looked good in renderings but the experience is h-e-l-l.
well, i figured we might as well move that discussion in here.
I watched the fly through, and i it seems to me that intersection between the two slabs leaves much to be desired. There seemed to be no gymnastics there. I'm increasingly convinced this building is a one liner.
All in all a briliant new perception ,much better than anything I seen from internasional Stararchitects, --- I think they will be even more happy about this than any of the other more spetacular structures as this make a much needed communication between chinese and western architecture.
Of all the glossy renderings I seen, this contain the humble attitude I been looking for, something that offer the chinese architecture it's own values in a new way.
Still it is also an old fasion building , the structure percived as a shell rather than a structure , and I do not think enough structural forces can be absorbed by circular Decor , --- perfect in the sense of a real offer not being bragging or over spetacular , nice by being humble enough and communicating values and a form language found in their own aincient architecture, but as allway's , the house as the outher shell omiting the structure staying within today's architecture.
would u build the letters "MAN" in your country?? if u think is silly why would u do it at other country??
the same applies to herzog's bird nest beijing stadium with all those monkey,pig,sheep figure symbolize chinese horoscope... if he believes this is his architecture, then why didn't he put those crappy horoscope sign (sag/taurus/leo...etc) at his German world cup stadium?
First there are no letter "man" beside I think this is just a side effect I don't think the design idear was ever to build a building as a letter --- something that acturly have been done before buildings in form of western letters are not unique, The birds nest -- well from my point of view it is chaos and not at all something I apriciate but they seem happy, still it will not be something that will have further impac on architecture.
if for the beautiful form or any other aesthetic/urbanistic/east meet west reason, i recommand the chinese word "f.u.c.k".
Don't think I apriciate how stararchitects also there pointed architecture in the wrong direction --- but the response will come over time, houses that profit their residents with modern architecture by offering humble cheap houses , it will come as a reaction towerds architecture as Spetacular , bragging useless , dull theories.
Apurimac, I'm TOTALLY convinced this is a one-liner (in case that needs to be clarified due to my attempts to be more gracious than I was initially).
vindpust, I don't see the communication between Chinese and western architecture. That video shows how from a certain abstracted view a certain part of the building looks kind of like a triangle therefore evinces "fire" and from another totally implausible and arbitrary angle you might see a square therefore it evinces "wood" and thus the feng fhui of the structure is all there, well, that's bull. You could use the video's methods to find the five elements in an damn building on the planet. And given that the proposal was original made for a harbor in Sweden (according to inhabitat's comments section), the whole Chinese cultural overlay is just marketing.
Snappy music, though.
is irresposible for designer who pick up a chinese word symbol and make it into a building and say its not their design idea to build a word...
Sorry, didn't preview...feng shui and any damn building on the planet...
I still think this came afterwerts , that this form is the same as a chinese letter , but nomatter what "meaning" been put into the form, I still think that compared other Stararchitect Spetacular attitudes , then this will be much more apriciated over time. I think Stararchitects done the wrong thing not supporting the aincient chinese building style, not strenghtening what is allready there , I think Stararchitects failed by being Arogant and offering the Spetacular rather than what has had a genuine value over thousands of years. I find most Stararchitects iresponsible towerds the culture they shuld rather refine and renew , instead of offering engineering as chaos and architecture a spetacular fragile and useless buildings ---- but that will change.
the chinese don't seem to mind if it resembles the character for person.
luckily it doesn't ONLY resemble the character for person, and need not be viewed from that perspective. so it is not a DUCK, but can be if you really like DUCKs...which is cool with me. usually commercial buildings of this sort in china simply look like post-modern mcmansions blown up to extreme size...
so i like the building a LOT for not being an exploded mcmansion. it is cute and interesting, if slightly unercooked, as much of the work from PLOT-ters (I think this was does before teh split, no?) tend to be. However as one liners go theirs tend to be very smart ones, and i suspect this building will be better in reality than in the renders.
I also suspect that the landscaping will improve considerably by the time it is done...if not then we can be angry but for now i look forward to seeing it built...
agreed, this project looks like a total screen. It's the same trite re-heated for a different part of the planet. I'm concered that all these western "avant-guarde" buildings going up in china are in fact damaging the long-standing architectural culture of that country. Or maybe im being too touchy-feely? Hopefully spending the summer there will help answer the question. I understand the market there has demands, but can't western architects approach a chinese site with chinese eyes in a sense? It seems they're exploting it to get their own meglomanical visions built there. Could one adopt local design practice, at least in a partial sense, to inform a building rather than just building a thing there?
im agreeing with LB by the way, and vin, how does this building truly acknowledge its cultural context, besides the one liner, "i am a man'?
i'm less interested in whether it's a good building or not (i'll join those in giving it a thumbs down) than i am apurimac's question whether this is a new form of colonization. i'm uncertain whether the majority of the work being done in china is coming from europe. i have a feeling it's not, but we just read more about rem's and h+dm's projects in arch record than the chinese projects by lesser known architects. the chinese i believe are producing some equally horrible buildings in their own country. at the same time, we are seeing the same sort of formal, overly expressive buildings going up in the middle east, dubai, abu dabi, etc. the fact that these buildings are going up in traditionally colonized areas is coincidental with areas that are currently awash in money.
what does this mean? for those non-chinese architects building in china, there is a huge cultural divide that is too often being bridged by a trite symbolism or formal gesture. i do believe there are overtones of colonialism embedded in these forms, i.e. a belief that the people are simple or exotic and that therefore they should have an architecture that reflects those qualities, instead of an architecture that actually fulfills their needs culturally, ecologically, economically, etc. what is disturbing is that these forms are being designed by chinese firms as well, a sign that cultural currency and exchange is a complex and difficult challenge that exceeds the bounds of pure colonial critique.
Really, jump, you think the built thing will be better than the renderings? Given your location and background I respect your opinions on this one very much. Hmmmm......
Among all the problems I've mentioned with this building, the one that intrigues me most is the joint where the two legs come together, the little triangle they "fly through" in the fly through. (Yes, I'm obsessed with the crotch. That can be the last joke in that vein, OK?) It seems structurally you would need something more at this location. I suppose I want to see that in addressing/designing a joint like this, the engineers would weigh in heavily on the opportunities to celebrate the joint (yes, celebrate the crotch, please stop) with something that becomes part of the aesthetic presentation of the building. The architect and material-user in me wants to see that joint expressed. Just sliding the two tubes alongside each other seems too formally "pure" and thus dishonest, and thus the building seems simplistic.
Oh and to jump: given the choice between this and the extruded McMansion god knows I'd take this in a heartbeat. But I'd want to see the urban design at street level brought to a human scale - what's that line landscapers accuse of of using: "scatter some parsley" around the ground? ;-)
See, the thing is, i can see stuff like this going up in Dubai, because there is not that much context there. I'm not saying that arabs don't have culture and the chinese do, if this building was proposed for mecca i would be even more disturbed. But dubai was a total desert a few years ago, it is as close to an actual tablua rasa as you can get these days. Shanghai however is a different story. There's massive amounts of history there. Yet, when you take a tablua rasa approach to shanghai, or probably even china in general your erasing previous cultural layers which could prove quite valuable from a design standpoint. By the way when I say european, i should probably state "western" because there are alot of U.S. architects over there too.
i disagree, apurimac, there's good urbanism and bad urbanism. these buildings are bad urbanism wherever they are built, even if they do have beautiful landscaped plazas at their base. it's modernism's conceit that "good architecture" justifies bad cities.
yes!
you can't colonize the willing.
i'm not so sure about that.
The building looks like a walking cheese monster..cheesezilla !
ouch ja, althought i think you're right. do you feel modernism could generate beautiful/good cities though?
i've been to chandigarh. it's an urban mess, completely antithetical to the way indian cities traditionally work, but with some beautiful architecture. i'm anxious to see what has become of brasilia. in my home city of detroit, i blame modern planning for many of the city's ills (it's obviously more complex than just that, but planning has reinforced other cultural/socio-economic fissures).
the tower in the park will never be a good model for urbanism. these highly sculptural projects have huge footprints that won't allow for the density that creates good urban space. are there exceptions to this? of course, (look at mies/hilberheimer's lafayette park in detroit for an example of excellent modern planning), but on the whole, the methods brought down from corb and ciam will not produce a good city.
I couldn't agree more about the tower in the park creating urban havoc, there are so many examples of public housing projects based off the modernist manifesto that fail miserably. So perhaps then this can be a question we should ask ourselves as a profession, "should modernists modify space into "urban" space?" Or maybe a better question is "can they?"
Aside from all of the sociopolitical ramifications of this project, I have a major, major problem with the skin...
If your going to wrap the skin with the flavor of the month, do with a little conviction.
I think of the almost metaphysical importance Mies gave to the corner and then I look at these and the way it reconciles two difference skins, both embarrassingly compromised...
I'd expect more from a third year student.
Excellent, excellent point silverlake - I hadn't been able to identify exactly why the transition from "skeletal" circles to "punched" circles at the corners makes me so uncomfortable. You called it exactly.
One-liner buildings can be marvellous - Toyo Ito and H&deM have done some buildings that are fairly one-line. The difference is that their buildings are one beautiful line, articulated with precision. This is one word shouted at random, and articulated with a mouthful of meat pie stuffed into one cheek.
good point agfa. I'm a big fan of SANAA, and i think alot of their buildings can be fairly blunt.
So what would the reaction to this design be if it were removed from an Asian-context? what if it maintained it's shape but was located in Europe? Would it actually be more successful as a formal exercise without the tacky lower-back-tattoo symbolism?
This design is really frustrating; it begins with these fairly graceful curving planes and abruptly turns into a generic modern office building. It doesn’t feel resolved in anyway… it just turns into a big rectangle and stops. If you moved it to another location the name wouldn’t work anymore but the design would still be irritating. Grumble grumble…
wow that whole being on the other side of the planet thing sure was noticeable today...lots of comments while sleeping...
it isn't great architecture, but it is better than average, and really the crap going up in china by chinese/singapore/malaysian/etc/etc archtitects is sooo much worse i can't help but be happy to see something that doesn't look like a doric column shit all over the facade of an office building....
on other hand there is i think also an immediacy about symbolism and taste in china that is not something we are trained to like very much in the western world; the chinese really like to DISPLAY their wealth and power for all to see (apologies if I am being too generic, but it does look that way to me)...so from that perspective the one liner does make sense, whether it is pseudo-weird neo-classical opulence or buildings that look like a kanji (speaking of which didn't PLOT also make a series of towers that spell out a name of some sort in Europe?).
Whether it works as urbanism i don't know, it is too preliminary for me to believe this is all there is. IF it IS done, just like this then Mr. BIG has some 'splaining to do, cuz its rubbish...but the whole thing is too preliminary to say yet...which is why i also am thinking the final project will be better than the renders. unless they don't care about what they are building it would be difficult for it to not become better as it enters design development...dunno, it is highly probable that i am just projecting.
about towers in parks...go to hong kong, look around and see how it works, then let's talk. there is i think a certain tendency to conflate what is being done in china with european and american models when the cultural context is probably more towards hong kong than manhattan. I don't like Hong Kong, but it works, and a lot of people i respect love it there...mind you they have money, and that probably makes a difference.
As for modernism in general causing woes of the world through bad urbanismmm...well i really do wish profs would just STOP teaching that rubbish in school, cuz it is nonsense. I live in a modernist park and it is wonderful, cuz the people are wonderful. the architecture is less than mediocre but it works for daily life. And there are many examples of where modernism DOES work, in many forms, as urban planning (see Peter Hall's books for examples) , and where classical/traditional forms do NOT. The more i study urban planning and theory the more clear it seems that there is not a single planning answer to making good cities. This is not an excuse for ignoring context and people and the street and all of that stuff, cuz it is absolutely important....but we can do that with towers as easily as with row-houses. whether it happens here or not, i don't know, but for now i will give the BIGman benefit of the doubt...
oh, i thought it was: The REM building in China: Contextual or Superficial?
Hello,
I wonder if - based on the proportionality depicted in this image, and if that white screen is at all opaque - if dwellers inside are more likely to have no window than a view. Otherwise, those bubbles will unfortunately have to shrink a whole lot, or become transparent.
jump, i think you're taking the other extreme stance towards modern urban planning, the rem-stance of calculated ambivalence. i'm not saying all modern planning is bad. there are excellent examples of modern urban planning. stuyvesant town in manhattan is a great example, perfectly suited to its location. nonetheless, on the whole, planning, particularly in the modern era, and not by the great modern architects, but largely by government bureaucrats, has been used as a very blunt sociopolitcal tool to create or reinforce division and at its worst social inequities. this becomes even more disconcerting when there are colonial implications at play. the work of architect eyal weizman and his spatial mapping of the palestinian west bank comes to mind as a powerful critique of isreali planning methods.
i also live in a beautiful modern neighborhood, but the surrounding area is an absolute waste, created by a highway system that in a very calculated way carved up existing neighborhoods. without question modern planning is not entirely bad. i am in awe of l.a. and its unique and wonderful urbanism, but on the whole, this sort of koolhaasian ambivalence is dangerous if you cannot see the ways in which the modernist project went wrong.
Modernism has produced its share of mutants, that's for sure, but i think city planning has been used by bureaucrats in general throughout the ages as a means of perpetuating class division (can we say HAUSSMAN). It wasn't until the modernists came about, Corbu in particular, that the system began to be questioned. Corbu's greatest irony is probably the fact that his manifesto was used to generate housing projects that exacerbated class division, not dissolve it as Le Corbusier seemed to wish with Towards a New Architecture. Even if the architects pursuing that vision had the best intentions.
Jump you make some interesting points, and i suppose being on the other side of the planet gives you a unique insight on the situation in china. I just have the belief that architecture should engage its context, that even though it can look totally outlandish and futuristic, it should have some base in its environment that goes beyond such a one-dimensional interpretation as the building above. I believe if architecture engaged its context more rigorously we would have less of these urban-planning modernist nightmares jafidler has pointed out.
phil9tor: quite right. It just isn't a well thought out proposal at all.
apurimac and jafidler, those are great points.
i doN't know a lot about china. another of the phd students in my lab is studying the topic of regionalism and globalisation as it affects asia, including china, so i get to hear about it at meetings. however her view of things is a bit different as she is an architect building huge developments, almost on the scale of stuyvesant, in beijing and elsewhere in China. We have spoken a little about how she feels making large neo-classical towers for the elite class and she is at best ambivalent i would say. At first I was surprised at the lack of thought about this work, but I have come to realise that for the Chinese it is not a bad thing, this development. IN spite of all the problems involved, and the palpable strangeness of it all (IE, my classmate's design for the development has been used to create/set the zoning for the area, after the fact. How is THAT for power, eh ? !), there is something positive happening too. Culturally there is an important change taking place, and this kind of architecture is a reflection of that.
I am not entirely ambivalent. Rather I believe we are dealing in a cultural landscape where some things are possible, even preferred, when maybe they shouldn't be...and we have to deal with that reality rather than sit on the sidelines and become angry...
On the other hand another classmate, aslo doing phd, is studying the environmental damage/effects of the super growth taking place in beijing and along the vehicular corridor connecting it to tianjin. sounds like there is trouble brewing.
Still, I do think architecture is, luckily, not a spectator sport; you know with the pros doing and the consumers watching passively. We all inhabit buildings and partake of architecture on a daily basis and cause changes to take place slowly, hopefully for the better in the end...look at brasilia for example...the modernist part is still there but all around it is a wild chaotic lively city, entirely unplanned and out of control...that sort of thing happens everywhere, and can, in the right circumstances make a new kind of urbanism out of even the most unlikely places, modernist or otherwise...
I believe that learning to make architecture that encourages that kind of thing is more important than making something that looks right or has the right style...and since it is not tied to ideology it doesn't mean there is a right or a wrong way to go about it...
and that is i suppose why i am not ready to say they fcked up with this building. it is only a starting point and not an end point, in my view...and it is, as starting points go, interesting enough to be going on with...
or something like that.
you make a strong argument mate.
jump, I think you're arguing in favour of what I called 'symbolic clarity' above. It has been my observation that symbolic, figurative and gestural clarity is highly valued in contemporary Chinese (and in a slightly different way, Japanese) practice.
Ito (to take a Japanese example), emphasises gestural clarity too. But what makes his buildings compelling is that a single gesture is refined and brought to bear as the solution for a whole range of architectural problems.
In the case of the REN building, the gesture seems to solve no problems except iconicity.
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