This water tower is located in the campus of a run down military factory; the cautions with which specific renovation measurements are made demonstrate circumspection. They are positioned thoughtfully with the intent of embedding a new reality in a historical sample.

On one hand, we want to keep the original water tower intact, only allowing necessary structural reinforcement and minor treatment on the existing window openings; on the other hand, the new installation – quite an exquisite device – was inserted into the interior tunnel of the tower.

Two end-to-end funnels form the main part of the installation. While the smaller funnel on the top reflecting daylight into the lower parts of the tower, the bigger one shapes the space in the middle, giving it a seemingly endless depth, and is linked to many camera-lens-like window frames, which grow out of the tower body from every possible opening. On the bottom of the tower, theater steps are made to link the entrance and the view platform.

The Arrow Factory Hutong Media & Culture Creative Space is symbolically right next to the wall of the Imperial Academy heritage. The site is one the so called“arrow factory”- old warehouses with immense space inside, and the ground floor has already been devided and enclosed as a“Siheyuan” type courtyard, due to the previous hutong re-development. This project is a regeneration-by-intervention, starting from the existing spatial framework, yet aiming at transforming it from a vast empty warehouse to a space that filled with unleashed vitality, for crowds of people from creative cultural industry to gather around and communicate. It will not only offer diverse programs such as: meeting, screening, library, bar, entertainment, co-working…but also become a“collaborative commune”of those who are interested in the innovation of media and culture. 

Following the old wall of Imperial Academy mottled by hundreds of years of history, the first space you enter is a proper-scaled“siheyuan”, reception and meeting rooms unfold around it. If you take the stairway to the deck above, you can actually see the “Biyong”-  the golden-roofed palace hall where the emperor used to give lectures to his students in the Imperial Academy - right in front of you eyes.

In order to fully exploit the height of the space, we added a mezzanine floor for extended program, and leave several voids connecting the double height space. Further more, we have inserted various wood attics (or boxes) into the space, in order to stimulate dynamic communication between the users.

If we simply follow the existing open but bland spatial framework, any“creative event”that happens within the huge space would have the danger of falling into a homogeneous setting and lost its focus, that’s why numerous “wood attics” are introduced as enabling devices. Activities could now follow different trajectories, unfolding around or within those attics. Once you are inside those small enclosed spaces, you would find many interesting window openings, like view-finders, targeted at specific views, which would re-link different threads of spatial narrative, and therefore, enable the user to experience the un-expected scenarios and exchange their thoughts.

Each Attic has a specific program: display, meeting, library, entertainment, bar…presenting itself in an unique and vivid form. Not only to just express them, each of these exquisite objects also evolves as an enabling device, or a switch that can turn on a tangible narrative experience. In the process of renovation, you may discover some interesting typology of intervention, yet at the end of the day, it all has to be combined with the usage of people.

The RESET Apartment functions as it’s name suggests: it can be arranged in many different ways according to the inhabitant’s usage, but when needed, it can be reset to the initial - most empty stage in a flash time.
 
The owner of this apartment has such a lifestyle that it requires two extreme layout to co-exist: at one hand the intention to leave the space as empty as possible, so it can be a public/event space; at the other hand the preference to maximize the flexibility of the space at no compromise of the amenities to serve all his life/hobbies, from the basics – bed /toilet/ shower cube / kitchenette, to working desk / meeting lounge /experiment lab / library / fish tank / cabinet for his collections / video gaming, and at times to turn the apartment entirely to a party place!

We have condensed all functions into two groups: the living and the extra-living, each group is build into one corner of the room as multiple sliding wall-shelf units, and can be pulled out and slides around when necessary, like the library shelves. By using a simple mechanism, the adaptive arrangementhas effectivelyanswer the inhabitant’s multiple needs to a single space. Once in a while, like pushing the ‘reset’ button, the apartment goes back to an empty studio.  

The project  is located in a narrow  base between XiHai east corridor  and Deshengmen Inner Avenue,  the homeowner hoped to renovate this land into a space with a kind of Beijing  Hutong  cultural characteristics, while meeting a series of contemporary mixed-use features.

META-Project combed through existing structures before conducting a detailed renovation and in- tervention. By forming a“three-step-courtyard “in a special sense, the courtyard has created a spatial experience with multiple levels and a rhythm between void and concrete.And by carefully constructed volcanic rock, catalpa wood and tube tile, it has introduced into the courtyard a feel as if walking in the alley with rich material experiences. In order to continue the daily hutong courtyard experience into the interior space, “golden brick” flooring and grey brick walling were introduced together with dark-colored wood grid screen defining a fluidized space. Also, different “windows” have become the “transformer” linking and mutually penetrating inside and the external environ- ment. Ongoing dialogue between the exterior city and the interior intends to find and elaborate a Beijing  hutong  life in contemporary qualities.

META-Project was invited to participate the AMI (Approporiate Mutate Innovate) exhibition during the Beijing Design Week 2013. The theme of the AMI exhibition was to showcase new designs, methods of fabrication and recycling or up cycling of commonly used and thrown away materials into designed objects.

As one of the submitted work for the AMI exhibition, META-SCAPE tries to extend the properties of the given material – chopsticks in a view of an architect. By using 2 types of knots, we developed multiple modules ranging from soft/flexible to hard/stable. The gradient in flexibility shaped the installation to the threshold between solid wall and soft arch.

META-SCAPE was exhibited at Cao Chang Di Art Zone during the Beijing Design Week 2013. After that, it was moved to our office in the Hutongs, and become part of the soft-SCAPE of the courtyard.

The project  is located in a narrow  base between XiHai east corridor  and Deshengmen Inner Avenue,  the homeowner hoped to renovate this land into a space with a kind of Beijing  Hutong  cultural characteristics, while meeting a series of contemporary mixed-use features.

META-Project combed through existing structures before conducting a detailed renovation and in- tervention. By forming a“three-step-courtyard “in a special sense, the courtyard has created a spatial experience with multiple levels and a rhythm between void and concrete.And by carefully constructed volcanic rock, catalpa wood and tube tile, it has introduced into the courtyard a feel as if walking in the alley with rich material experiences. In order to continue the daily hutong courtyard experience into the interior space, “golden brick” flooring and grey brick walling were introduced together with dark-colored wood grid screen defining a fluidized space. Also, different “windows” have become the “transformer” linking and mutually penetrating inside and the external environ- ment. Ongoing dialogue between the exterior city and the interior intends to find and elaborate a Beijing  hutong  life in contemporary qualities.

The Exhibit Center is based on a deserted land to the south of Huludao, it is built to re-establish the relationship between the cultural activities and it’s natural environment. 

The main volume of the building is a floating box with floor to ceiling glass curtain on the south side maximizing the panoramic view. The cast-in-place concrete stair-cube, which links the three levels of circulation, also functions as the structural support for the cantilever. It bluntly penetrates the floating box with a 25-degree inclination. 

The building as a whole is a result of the clear deduction and programatic-volumetric combination. Through this speculation, META-Project tries to demonstrate how to catalyze spatial complexity based upon a simplified dynamics, and how to address concerns for the public in a commercial-based project.

META-Project, a Beijing based research-practice studio has designed an exhibit center on the beach of Huludao, northeast of China, a project which re-established the relationship between the cultural activities and it’s natural environment. 

Previous a fishing village protected by the surrounding hills, a river running though the center, the Dragon Bay is the essence of Northeast-Chinese coastal idyll. Yet still scattered with fishing boats and nets, now it is facing the city’s upcoming development: situated on the west coast of Bohai Sea rim, with only 3 hours of traffic from Beijing, the site offers a natural resource that is so rare across the north of china due to its climate – “the beach”, which attracts tens of millions of people from Beijing and Northeast-China to spend their summer here. As the first building on the beach, META-Project’s Exhibit Center will vitalize the Dragon Bay into a new resort and residential hub for the Liaoning Province of China.

Public Stage:

The Exhibit Center is about creating a common base for the bay area that not only absorb the reserved visitors’, but also attract the public attention and generate more topics. In this currently deserted land, with only a few gigantic infrastructural construction sites, we choose to located the building next to the public beach activity zone – 100 meters from the waterline, so as to set the building as a “Public Stage”, turning each event into a public show. Thus, the center contains exhibition space, gallery, cinema, meeting rooms, café/bar, covered event space and even a beach-sport field in front, offering all sorts of activities for the visitors of the bay. While elevating their expectations, it also activates the cultural life of the entire city.

Simplified Dynamics

META-Project’s design is rather a clear deduction process, than a generalized solution. The panoramic sea view is of prime importance for the building, so the concept had to be decongested and cleared, emptied of any symbolic content, so as to stimulate a new reality, which enhances the experience of the sea.

Experiencing the sea horizon from multiple levels becomes the building’s own demand, such concept is deducted to a key section: to float the front 2/3 of the building – creating a cantilevered floor for the “stage” to catch more public attention, at the same time offering a covered space for outdoor event; and additionally, a roof-top viewing deck opening to the entire surroundings. 

Visitors entering the building, elevated to the cantilevered floor through the inclined stair-cube, then totally engulfed by the panoramic sea view, this simplified sectional dynamics is actually controlling the entire building, and to let the spatial experience unfold around the different level of views.

Spatial Complexity

The main volume of the building is a floating box of 35m x 35m, perpendicular to the seashore, with floor to ceiling glass curtain on the south side maximizing the panoramic view. 

The cast-in-place concrete stair-cube, which links the three levels of circulation, also functions as the structural support for the cantilever. It bluntly penetrates the floating box with a 25-degree inclination. To augment this conflict, 150 random ecllips holes are perforated through the concrete wall.

In shear contrast, the double-height exhibition space under the other side of the cantilever is totally transparent, with full-height glass on 3 sides to maximize the beach view. It does not collide into the floating box, but rather carved out a space from it.

Between the two cubes, where it supposed to be the center of the plan, the massing is unexpectedly empty, allowing light casting into the back of the building, at the same time adding another layer of nature into the complexity of space.

Other program includes ground-floor reception bar protruding out of the north facade, steel meeting-room box floating between the floor and ceiling, linear gallery and sky-bridge linking the model space to the west - Each program forms a clear defined volume that collides with one another in an almost “unresolved” manner. Such “collision”leads to rough but vital tension, through which a space of unexpected complexity emerges.

The building as a whole is a result of the clear deduction and programatic-volumetric combination. Through this speculation, META-Project tries to demonstrate how to catalyze spatial complexity based upon a simplified dynamics, and how to address concerns for the public in a commercial-based project.

Steel Boulevard, a street planned in 1955 by the soviet planner to be the public spine of the new garden city of Baotou, was a clear statement for the historical moment when the country is determined to build a new idealistic society for the people.55 years later, we are in a very different world than what the Marxist has envisioned. The city of Baotou, with the garden city structure of the 1955 has successfully built its image as a uniquely happy and livable example of an industrial city. However the agenda behind the original intent of steel blvd still hasn’t been fulfilled for its function as a cultural and public spine.

With this historical context, we envisioned a different Steel Boulevard for the future, which reinforces its function for cultural and public services, yet also introduce natural landscape as the medium to thread through the cultural, services, commercial and sport functions networked along the 7km space.

With the network of these excitements, and one of the longest and largest urban landscape...Baotou Steel Boulevard will serve as the social/economic/cultural energizer that invigorate the area around it, and the garden city beyond.

"Jewelry Box” is a planning proposal that aim at revitalize the Moganshan Power Plant campus to the north of the famous tourist destination "west lake" in Hangzhou. At the same time it offers an alternative commercial epicenter to the too-crowded historicsl city center on the east bank of the lake.

Formerly hosting several heavy industrial plants, the Moganshan Road area was once considered to be the service zone for the tourism city. While the new waves of development have pushed far outside the city core, this area has seen more and more residence relocated. The Moganshan Power Plant is right at the annex point of two major arterials: the vehicle traffic and the water way.

The proposal transfers the former power plant to a mega-complex of 300,000 sqm. It aims at conclude all aspects of the life for the surrounding neighborhood, from restaurants, cinema, supermarket, to high-end boutique stores.

[META-Evolution] project was invited to participate Design Shanghai 2013.

The project for the exhibition contains 2 parts: The first part, [WILD BEIJING] focuses on the street commerce in the micro system of the urban fringe in Beijing. [META:HUTONGS], the second part of the exhibition, is intended to reveal the unique quality of the urban emergence, that have grown out from the bottom of the alleyways and inside of the courtyard houses, by the individual people in a collective and constant effort.

This project is in collaboration with standardarchitecture.

The projectlocates in the Jiading New City, one of the most developed satellite cities of Shanghai, where a 4-kilometer long "central park" is planned right across the very core of the city. The site, which is a former plastic factory, will be revamped and altered to acomplex exhibition center that will host 4 independent functionswith vast public event space.
Site Strategy 
The location and program entail that the building needs to become a center for activities in the main axis of the green belt. It is envisioned as an enhancer for connectivity, that instead of acting as a destination, it condenses activities and connects the building with the park, and with the public buildings in the surroundings.

Connectivity 
The design takes into great consideration the building’s openness and permeability to its immediate context. As a result the building is a permeable sequence of spaces with entrances on all sides and that visually and physically links the building with the open space surrounds it, and invite people to come from almost all directions. A series of multiple entrances and several stances of the building help to frame the surroundings making the building a unique experience for and within the park.  

Building Programs 
The current building program is the result of an integrated consideration of the urban context in which the building its situated.  It will enhance the usability of the individual programs and add cohesion to the otherwise independent programs. These programs include: Planning Museum; Science Museum; Youth Center; Technical School; Public Auditorium and Offices; Public Café and Bookstore.

Green Design
The green architecture design is featured in the scheme. As an initiator for reclaiming farmland in the city, the current design offers 20 Chinese acre rice filed on top of the roof for real harvesting,at the same time it provides quite a lot of shaded open area under the roof. The roof is conceived as a continuation of the central green belt, and more than that, it open up more possibilities for people to enjoy the open space.

Existing Building Reuse 
The reuse of the existing building is a base point of the project. For us, preservation and construction are in fact twin phenomena, not opposites. They could be part of a single planning process that integrate the space yet keep the history. 

A multi-media installation project in collaboration with V2_ from Rotterdam, Shanghai eARTS and Cybercity Ruhr from Germany, presented during the 2010 World EXPO in Shanghai. It links the Shanghai exhibition location – Dutch Culture Centre – with an twin exhibition located in Rotterdam for a cross cultural exchange around the theme “virtual city in the future”.

Today’s cities are no longer limited to the experience of physical spaces. Digital technologies provide new ways for architects to design their buildings. At the same time they influence the way city dwellers organise their everyday life. Consequently, cities are now understood as ‘Cybercities’, ‘Sentient Cities’, or ‘Hybrid Cities’. But how do we design for Hybrid Cities or Virtual Reality in the future?

Video robots become a remote controlled “third eyes”. The video robots can be controlled online via Skype and at both exhibition locations. This way the audiences can explore the physical architecture model landscape of visions for the future virtual city remotely in the live exhibition in Shanghai, developed by students, artists and architects in two teams from Rotterdam and Shanghai.

Fashion, quite often is about the tension between showing and hiding. Tokyo is a city full of encounters and events. We are interested in making fashion physical in such a city – the building itself is switchable – transmitting live events from all over the city. The tower itself switches between showing and hiding, like the constant changes of fashion; or metaphorically, between mirrors that reflects reality in its glittering surface and a mirage of reflected desire in someone else’s space.

For centuries individuals have used clothes as a form of nonverbal communication to indicate social status. Fashion is considered as a mirror on the society with constant cultural changes.  The current age of global cities is marked by new social relations brought by advancing technologies and economic systems. Under such environment, we’re showing more and more things about ourselves to the outside world everyday, which makes quite a transparency and immediacy. Today fashion as a global phenomenon is accessible to and affordable for everyone.
 
The tower concept starts with the idea of the dispersion of perception in our society now. It compels fashion by means of architecture – through a museum that questions and explores the relationship between fashion and the city that surrounds it.
 
Dispersed, fragmented and instantly repeated. In this new urban experience fashion is not only drove by economic prosperity, but also fueled with the tension of city living: it’s hiding here and showing somewhere else…The Tokyo fashion museum will integrate fashion with the entire city, or, engage the whole city with fashion. It reflects the urban mirage that dispersed into events happening on the streets, in the stations, on top of the buildings; spaces that can observe, move, perform and transform.
 
The dispersion of perception also runs though the tower. Exhibition rooms are interlocked with one another, there are no fixed horizontal lines – spaces are distorted; boundaries between imagination and reality are blurred, everything reflects or shines and nothing is truly transparent…

The parking structure has captured the imagination of novelists, photographers and film-makers, and yet it re?mains peripheral to our culture, best understood as for?bidding fictional setting or as an often imposing silent building that we encounter along on the way. Car parks are not very appreciate by users (too cold, too dark, too insecure etc..) and this competition hopes to offer a new take on this type of building that is far too quiet.

The point of departure for this alternative parking tower is to understand parking not merely as infrastructural facility, but as an opportunity for redefining the relationship between transportation and public space – as the new metropolitan is anticipating an integrated solution that could combine both. 

Especially in the case of Hong Kong, with it’s hilly terrain, only less than 25% of the island’s land?mass is developed with a population of seven million people, resulted in one of the most extreme high density in the world. A network of pedestrian bridges have elevated the urban surface to a new level. Various activities, such as street bargains, performs, folk arts and crafts… flourishing along the pedestrian streets.
 
Under such premise, we question how could a parking tower enhance the urban experience. 

Through using parallel spiraling floorplates – parking under street -  the parking lots have switched from a static, dark space to a dynamic, lifted ramp that unfold along the lively urban life, with elevated view of Victoria Bay. 

On lower levels, pedestrian bridges connect to the neighboring buildings.  Residences and visitors from all directions can enter the public surface, on which  street vendors, shopping markets, noisy bars, open-air concerts, wedding ceremonies… all manners of urban life spiraling up in the tower. 
The proposed typology creates a public, complex, multi-use car park tower, which elevates the urban streets to an unprecedented new height. 

It is at the same time a metaphor for the future metropolitan scenario.

As an experimental model developed from the RESET Apartment, this show unit is designed to be adaptive using a simple ceiling track system. Based on the similar concept, the studio unit can switch from its natural condition – an empty rectangle space of 8.4m x 10.5m, to the condition that is ideal for the sales – a 2-bedroom apartment, while it also offers 4 other in-between conditions with customized spatial arrangement for use.

To this end, all functional elements are condensed into 2 sets of sliding wall-height panels/furniture, which on the initial condition, rest at the corner of the studio - sitting together with other service function, i.e. bathroom, shower and kitchen. These panels/furniture are quite handy to be slide along the ceiling track, and divide space according to the combination of their arrangements. 

While each of the element serves as a spatial partition, it is also functional furniture: bookshelf / TV wall/bedroom pivot door/bathroom pocket door, which make the transformation a “playful” process, instead of simply stiff movements.

The narrow alleyway connecting small courtyard residences, or Hutong [胡同], has been heralded as the definitive exemplar of Beijing’s urbanism since the city became the capital during the Yuan dynasty. To this day, legions of critics and writers have looked to Hutongs as a kind of architectural endangered species, evidence of how traditional urban fabrics have been crushed under the maw of modernization and construction. This explanation is too convenient, too simple, however, and does not capture the reality of the situation in Beijing, one that continuously defies categorization or explanation. 

Beijing is a city that has remained in a state of suspended animation, one that has been enduring massive political and social upheavals in ways others could not. Although the city did not being to truly change until the 1990s, a period marked by a massive influx of global capital, Hutongscontinued to play a constant and important role in the organization of urban space throughout this time. They not only defined administrative areas, but also became the nexus of socio-cultural life. And as urban demolition slowed in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games, Hutongs proved to be more resilient than ever. Besides few private owned, many would remain for use by the government or military. In all, Hutongs are here to stay: they not only provide a glimpse into Beijing’s long and heralded history, but they are also a cultural and physical reality providing a key to a prosperous urban life in the future.

[META:HUTONGS] recognizes that as Beijing changes so do Hutongs. In this vein, a different voice is needed, one that mediates between the utopian/preservationist impulses and dystopian/demolitionist realities! Beijing must no longer be caught between an idealistic, traditional model and a progressive vision of a city that answers only to a developer-centric outlook. An alternative model of regeneration is in order, one that looks at the CURRENT REALITY from the point of view of one on the ground, so to speak. This alternative model must consider the Hutong as a laboratory that experiments with the current Beijing, a city teeming with energy and passion. This model does not want to take sides. It seeks allegiance with neither preservationists nor with demolitionists. It does not want to resuscitate a utopian fantasy, and it certainly does not want to condemn the dystopian impulse. [META:HUTONGS] is this alternative model. It is a cross-disciplinary investigation whose purpose is to create an exploratory atmosphere via workshops and charrettes: all with the goal of creating a new understanding that celebrates the unique quality of Hutong culture, and which creates PROJECTIVE FUTURE possibilities.

Date: Sep 26th – Oct 7th 2013
Venue: No.3 Cha’er Hutong, Dashilar, Xicheng District, Beijing
Time: Daily from 10:00am to 8:00pm
Openning: 6:00pm Sep 25th 2013
Post-openning party at The Other Other Place at No.31 Yangmeizhu Xiejie

Website: www.meta-hutongs.org
Organizer: META-Project + CC:LTD
Curator: Wang Shuo + Andrew Bryant

META-Project space is another attempt  on regeneration-by-intervention. Beside the open  office space, the original “kitchen box”was transformed into a “chat room”,  and a looftop was  added above-together they become a spatial device which enable the outdoor  activity to happen within the courtyard.

part of the Across Chinese Cities – Beijing
An Collateral Event of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition

Address: Venice, Italy
Venue: Arsenale Nord. Tesa 100
Date: 6/7/2014-11/7/2014
Opening: 11:00 (10:30 Registration)

Curator: Wang Shuo, Anderw Bryant
Media Director: Wun Yip
Co-Curator: Enrique Ramirez

META-Project designed Vanke NEW YOUTH residence project covering 150,000 square meters in Yizhuang New Tech Development Zone also called for a temporary Sales Gallery Prototype inside the city park nearby the project site, and when its sales functions fulfilled, this temporary construction would become a subsidiary public space for the park. 

The solution is to adopt an architectural prototype with a clear design point to practice a highly modular and a whole easy-to-assemble design –built process. 

This prototype of sales offices, after a series of space creation, is presented as an entity with strong volume and a strong sense of presence, floating above the almost disappearing and completely open ground floor; generating a strong contrast and tension on the outside, while inside displayed with rich and varied spatial characteristics. And with the highly modular construction system, it has very strong adaptability and enforceability.

META-Project designed Vanke NEW YOUTH residence project covering 150,000 square meters in Yizhuang New Tech Development Zone also called for a temporary Sales Gallery Prototype inside the city park nearby the project site, and when its sales functions fulfilled, this temporary construction would become a subsidiary public space for the park. 

The solution is to adopt an architectural prototype with a clear design point to practice a highly modular and a whole easy-to-assemble design –built process. 

This prototype of sales offices, after a series of space creation, is presented as an entity with strong volume and a strong sense of presence, floating above the almost disappearing and completely open ground floor; generating a strong contrast and tension on the outside, while inside displayed with rich and varied spatial characteristics. And with the highly modular construction system, it has very strong adaptability and enforceability.

New Youth Commune, a mixed youth community on the edge of Vanke Songhua Lake Resort bordering natural villages, contains 800 people with the upper space for Vanke staff, the middle rented to self-employed townspeople and the ground facilitating camping students and open to surrounding villagers.

Addressing the ant tribe problem, having investigated China's mixed dwelling phenomena from hutong, tube-shaped apartment to village-in-city and comprehended the inner dynamics of youth communities, the architect proposes a new spatial paradigm restructuring interpersonal relations in a gesellschaft.

The residential stereotype is mutated into a quartet, externally undulating and internally interlocked. Bridges, stairs and tiered seating around the full-height atriums compose an open-street-like route articulating various public spaces. A simple and flexible framework blends innovative spaces into daily lives, encouraging encounters among private, shared and collective zones and finally the community growth.     

The project responds to the hybrid contemporaneity and proposes a new community symbiosis: mutual cooperation and positive environmental interaction through inter-spatial sharing based on equality – a prototype community.

The practice continues Meta-Hutong and Reset Apartment, an experiment series that analyze spontaneous evolution of urban space production and elicit a valid composite approach. 

New Youth Commune, a mixed youth community, located on the edge of Vanke Songhua Lake Resort and bordering natural villages, contains 800 people with the upper space for Vanke staff, the middle rented to self-employed town people and the ground facilitating camping students while open to villagers.

Substantial studies of mixed dwelling phenomena since long peculiar to China, from hutong, tube-shaped apartments to village-in-city, help the architect comprehend the dynamics of youth communities and conduct a nuanced spatial grading according to living schedules and neighborhood relationship, finally arrive at a flexible logic of public space organization that redefines the ‘dormitory’ in a new, plural and socio-ecological way.

The corridor-rooms monotony is inflected into a quartet externally undulating and internally continuous. Each corner opens to natural sceneries and nourishes public activities: dining and kitchen, shared office and party terrace. Every quarter encircles a bright and draughty atrium with bridges, stairs and tiered seats composing an open-street-like continuous route inspiring encounters, chatting, working, dining and spending. Color and material take on the spatial signs and direction despite a limited cost. Thus, a simple and flexible framework combines spatial innovations with daily scenes, differentiating and articulating private, shared and collective zones and facilitates community growth.   

Though already transited from a uniform collective era to the flexible plural, the residential typology remains narrow-minded, to which the architect responds powerfully: mutual cooperation and positive interaction with environment through inter-spatial sharing based on equality and self-sufficiency – the ‘New Youth Commune’.

Video installation: a process-based investigation of the hutongs as a laboratory for knowledge production

Venue: The China Millennium Monument, Beijing
Opening: 9/26/2014-11/7/2014

Curator: Wang Shuo+Andrew Bryant
Media Director: Wun Yip
Co-curator: Enrique Ramirez

Situated at the edge of the forest next to the ski slope, while sitting on the hillside, it captures a panoramic view towards the mountain range and the Songhua Lake between its peaks. The site is surrounded by luscious greenery in summer and covered by an overwhelming white snow in winter.

The building combined rough materiality with its sensuous form，and it's space is choreographed through a carefully plotted experience. Seen from afar, the “stage” is a dark, free-floating monolith in the landscape, with a heavy concrete “base”. 

Designing in nature is to introduce an enlightening medium between nature and people. The “Stage of Forest” is intended to stimulate people to come up with more ideas of exploring their relationship with the nature, and itself also becomes part of the nature. 

"Yan Jing Lane", homophonic to "extended quietness" (in Chinese), is at the address of 20 Mid Yanjing Li St., Chaoyang District, Beijing. It is located on the East Fourth Ring Road, very close to several important areas in the centre of the city, convenient for resident of the community to reach these places Up to now, "Yan Jing Lane" includes an apartment (co-living) and an office building (co-working).

The apartment space contains 5 floors and 70 rooms, with a total space of about 2500m². The architect designed a large living room for it that can accommodate dozens of people, and a large open kitchen.

This big house is divided by static and dynamic, inside and outside: on the first floor are the large living room and gym shared with the offices; on the second floor and above are the exclusive spaces for friends sharing the flat, with a convenience store “HAYMANSHOP” exclusive to residents, in order to ensure privacy of users while maintaining vitality of the area. In this big house, the bedrooms are fully furnished and divided into two main housing types: "SOLO" and "DUO". There are in-dependent bedrooms for one, and also shared spaces for 2 sisters. It meets all the basic needs of a person in a private space.

"Yan Jing Lane", homophonic to "extended quietness" (in Chinese), is at the address of 20 Mid Yanjing Li St., Chaoyang District, Beijing. It is located on the East Fourth Ring Road, very close to several important areas in the centre of the city, convenient for resident of the community to reach these places Up to now, "Yan Jing Lane" includes an apartment (co-living) and an office building (co-working).

Co-working spaces provide workplaces for freelancers or small teams, as well as the opportunities to meet and communicate.

birdesk

"birdesk" provides a variety of coworking environments with unfixed seats. It retains all the advantages of cafes, and meanwhile complements the shortage of work environment and hardware in cafes. It also includes different kinds of seats for 5 circumstances, including window view, ladder, sofa, group work and personal workbench. Each birdesk is equipped with a power supply, a USB port and a storage space. Each member has his own broadband internet account, and shares all the conference rooms, printer, Yanjing living room, public leisure area, the inner "Neige" cafe and gym. The space that contains birdesks is called the "cloud collection". It is not just a workspace that looks like a cafe, but can also be converted into a theatre, a bar, or an auditorium.

nestudio

As for small studios, there are also fixed offices called "nestudios". This kind of low-cost, high-configuration private office spaces can accommodate 3~6 people working together.

loffice

Loffice on the third floor provides spaces for medium-sized teams. Each of them has a usable area of 60~80m2 and can accommodate 12~18 people to work freely.

The existing on-site structure was reclaimed and altered to allow an open-plan for more living spaces. In a sustainable way, we re-create a new spatial experience that flows “through” the building.

The north façade is reconfigured with two volumes interlocking together: a thickened white T-shape cast-in-concrete wall sitting on a dark layered rock plinth. Local craftsmanship was adapted to realize the façade.

The House T is intended to create a series of dynamic spaces that defined by the spectrum of natural environment and communal life which characterizes the wonderful setting of the site. 

The existing on-site structure was reclaimed and altered to allow an open-plan for more living spaces. In a sustainable way, we re-create a new spatial experience that flows “through” the building.

As one wandering into the House from the entrance, diffuse light streams in from all sides through the building, as well as the airflow, gives a feeling of openness which embraces the views of sea and sky.

The House T is intended to create a series of dynamic spaces that defined by the spectrum of natural environment and communal life which characterizes the wonderful setting of the site.  

The Arrow Factory Hutong Media & Culture Creative Space is symbolically right next to the wall of the Imperial Academy heritage. The site is one the so called“arrow factory”- old warehouses with immense space inside, and the ground floor has already been devided and enclosed as a“Siheyuan” type courtyard, due to the previous hutong re-development. This project is a regeneration-by-intervention, starting from the existing spatial framework, yet aiming at transforming it from a vast empty warehouse to a space that filled with unleashed vitality, for crowds of people from creative cultural industry to gather around and communicate. It will not only offer diverse programs such as: meeting, screening, library, bar, entertainment, co-working…but also become a“collaborative commune”of those who are interested in the innovation of media and culture. 

Following the old wall of Imperial Academy mottled by hundreds of years of history, the first space you enter is a proper-scaled“siheyuan”, reception and meeting rooms unfold around it. If you take the stairway to the deck above, you can actually see the “Biyong”-  the golden-roofed palace hall where the emperor used to give lectures to his students in the Imperial Academy - right in front of you eyes.

In order to fully exploit the height of the space, we added a mezzanine floor for extended program, and leave several voids connecting the double height space. Further more, we have inserted various wood attics (or boxes) into the space, in order to stimulate dynamic communication between the users.

If we simply follow the existing open but bland spatial framework, any“creative event”that happens within the huge space would have the danger of falling into a homogeneous setting and lost its focus, that’s why numerous “wood attics” are introduced as enabling devices. Activities could now follow different trajectories, unfolding around or within those attics. Once you are inside those small enclosed spaces, you would find many interesting window openings, like view-finders, targeted at specific views, which would re-link different threads of spatial narrative, and therefore, enable the user to experience the un-expected scenarios and exchange their thoughts.

Each Attic has a specific program: display, meeting, library, entertainment, bar…presenting itself in an unique and vivid form. Not only to just express them, each of these exquisite objects also evolves as an enabling device, or a switch that can turn on a tangible narrative experience. In the process of renovation, you may discover some interesting typology of intervention, yet at the end of the day, it all has to be combined with the usage of people.

This water tower is located in the campus of a run down military factory; the cautions with which specific renovation measurements are made demonstrate circumspection. They are positioned thoughtfully with the intent of embedding a new reality in a historical sample.

On one hand, we want to keep the original water tower intact, only allowing necessary structural reinforcement and minor treatment on the existing window openings; on the other hand, the new installation – quite an exquisite device – was inserted into the interior tunnel of the tower.

Two end-to-end funnels form the main part of the installation. While the smaller funnel on the top reflecting daylight into the lower parts of the tower, the bigger one shapes the space in the middle, giving it a seemingly endless depth, and is linked to many camera-lens-like window frames, which grow out of the tower body from every possible opening. On the bottom of the tower, theater steps are made to link the entrance and the view platform.

The site is located only 5km east to Beijing’s CBD, and is right in the middle of an isolated and forgotten diamond-shaped land intersected by serval railroads and divided into fragments. While the rest of the city undergoes a rapid development, this urban enclave hidden in some declining industrial plant buildings have remain uncultivated in the past 3 decades.

The client’s long-term goal is to regenerate these spaces though bringing in cultural and creative industries, so that it connects the surrounding neighborhoods currently separated by the railroads, and gradually building up a mixed-use community of 140,000 square meters.

As the lead architect for the 2nd stage of the community, we try to revitalize this urban enclave through weaving together retail, recreational, F&B, and creative spaces for people with different needs. This Art Center was proposed in the core of the creative industry zone that infused diverse public program into a larger mixed-use community.

“spatial prototype shift”: which appropriates the prototype of the saw-tooth shaped plant buildings, and adapts it to suit for the multiple program for the art center, and then translates it into a new composite spatial prototype designed to maximize the creative vitality that it will generate for the urban block.

Sbra Sanctuary is an initiative aimed at revitalising the indigenous Tibetan nomadic community amidst rapid cultural shifts and environmental degradation. Tailored for and developed with the local community, it transforms the traditional Sbra ('black tent' in Tibetan) into a communal hub. It seamlessly bridges various aspects of nomadic life, facilitating the revitalisation of traditional crafts and skills, restoration of religious beliefs, and reconciliation of fractured cultures across generations. Eventually, it aims to achieve ‘Jeud’, the vitality cherished in Tibetan belief.

Sbra Sanctuary’s portable tensile structure echoes with the sacred mountain and leaves no permanent ecological footprint. It immerses people in nature, fostering a profound dialogue with the environment through its filtered views and modulated light and airflow. The project presents an alternative to unsustainable patterns of spatial production and consumption.

Through this project, we propose a new way of diverse practice in which architecture is not a static object but a dynamic process of reweaving the broken socio-cultural-ecological network, empowering indigenous nomads to be proactive in caring for their homeland — our shared nature.