DnA

Design Vanguard 2009

Clifford A. Pearson

When we planned the first Design Vanguard issue in 2000, we wanted to provide a launching pad for the next generation of architects shaking up the design world. We picked 10 firms that seemed to be looking at architecture from fresh perspectives — incorporating digital technologies, exploring the nature of materials, and rethinking the way fabrication and construction engage design. Today, many of those architects have made significant contributions to the profession. The publication this month of our 10th Vanguard issue offers us a chance to look back for a moment and appreciate the changing landscape of architecture. Back in 2000, seven of the Vanguard firms called the United States home, though a few of the individual architects had been born elsewhere. This year, only three firms are based in the U.S., though a number of partners in foreign studios studied here. This changing geographic mix does not reflect any diminished talent pool in America; rather, it shows a rising tide of innovation and construction in other places. Right now, the large volume of building in Asia alone offers architects there myriad opportunities to explore their ideas and hone their craft, so it’s not surprising that we include two firms from China and one from Japan this year. Spain too (and Latin America in previous years) has seen an explosion of talent pushing the boundaries of architectural knowledge.

We never set an age limit for Vanguard architects, because we know that talent rarely can be exercised right out of school. Instead, we use a very rough rule of thumb, looking for firms in operation for 10 years or less. We want this program to showcase emerging architects who have at least some building under their belts but are still approaching design from new directions. These people aren’t kids; they’re rising stars, provocateurs, and trailblazers. This year’s class features some architects who have built quite a lot and a few who are working on large projects with sizable staffs — signs of business savvy, showmanship, and a recent period of enormous economic growth. With the boom over in many parts of the world, we’re interested in seeing how future Vanguard firms adjust and turn the new reality to their advantage. 

Design Vanguard 2009

http://archrecord.construction.com/features/designvanguard/2009/09DnA/default.asp

By Aric Chen

As the principal of beijing-based DnA_Design and architecture, Xu Tiantian is one of the few women to head an architectural practice in China. Yet in many ways, the 34-year-old architect is typical of her generation of compatriot designers, conveying less interest in formal expressions of “Chineseness” than in finding inventive solutions for specific conditions — which happen to be in China. “ ‘Chineseness’ is too general a term,” says Xu, an alumna of Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture. “I would rather our buildings be rooted in their given locations.”

Photo © Iwan Baan

Songzhuang Artist Residences, Beijing

By deftly negotiating a building’s program and site, Xu has managed to build an impressive portfolio very early in her career. (Prolific building is another attribute she shares with many young Chinese architects.) Since founding her firm five years ago, Xu has completed projects ranging from a 29,000-square-foot art museum in Ordos, Inner Mongolia — its twisting form suggesting a desert viper — to a cluster of public toilets that sprout from the ground like periscopes at the Jinhua Architecture Park in Zhejiang Province, where artist and impresario Ai Weiwei invited 16 emerging and more established architects to design a series of small structures.

Trained at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Xu says architecture is about “the program and context influencing behavior and activities and interacting to define the building both inside and out.” It is a straightforward approach. But in Xu’s hands, it is often manifested as a meaningful complexity in which patterns of use maintain constant dialogue with the landscape. Consider Xu’s forthcoming town center for Baixi, a new resort area being built in the mountainous Changbaishan National Park near the North Korean border. Its main elements will include an entertainment hub of faceted, rocklike pavilions and a spa and aquatic center hovering above outdoor pools like an exploded bridge. A third element, a towering information center, will offer multiple views from its zigzagging ramps and platforms while evoking a directional signpost.

But Xu’s context remains China, and so her architectural narratives inevitably address aspects of the country’s sociopolitical condition. A design she has proposed for affordable workers’ housing in Beijing, for example, reconfigures the building type’s conventional layout of long, often dehumanizing rectangular blocks into compositions of overlapping, curvilinear volumes revealing open communal courtyards.Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Beijing, her Songzhuang Artist Residences encourage both functional and metaphorical readings. Completed last year, its 20 units form a dynamic, random stack of 10- and 20-foot-tall concrete boxes housing, respectively, living and studio spaces. For Xu, the somewhat chaotic arrangement also responds to the area’s recent history as a refuge for artists, many of whom were evicted from their previous enclave near Beijing’s Old Summer Palace. “In such an artist community formed gradually after being expelled by the police, order and discipline have never been key characteristics,” she says. “Rather, violence and anger are more often expressed.”

The Songzhuang Artist Residences further demonstrates the improvisational approach often demanded by China’s tight budgets and even tighter construction schedules — a reality that “hardly allows time to devote to details,” Xu says. Working with a construction team of area villagers, Xu adapted the structure to suit local building techniques, while time and budget constraints required further compromises. “But that’s okay, because the project wasn’t about perfect details or beautiful materials, but creating this space for artists,” says Xu, whose forthcoming projects include an aquatic center for Dalian’s Maritime University and a 54,000-square-foot commercial center in Tsingdao for the Chinese real estate giant Vanke. “This is what I would call very Chinese — the ability to really adapt to a situation,” she says. 

vanke qingdao

Songzhuang Artist Residence

photo by Iwan Baan

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