hipercroquis » china

MAD: Hutong Bubble 32, nominated

javier milara — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:53:08 +0000

Hutong Bubble is nominated for Design of the Year 2010.

On January 18th 2010, The Design Museum in London have announced the shortlist for the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2010. MAD‘s latest finished project Hutong Bubble 32 is nomiated for the Brit Insurance Architecture Award.

[via MAD Ltd]

Year 2009
Location Beijing, China
Typology Courtyard Renovation
Building Area 130 sqm
Status Complete

MAD’s proposal for the future Beijing 2050 was first revealed at its exhibition MAD IN CHINA in Venice during the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. Beijing 2050 imagined three scenarios for the future of Beijing—a green public park in Tiananmen Square, a series of floating islands above the city’s CBD, and the “Future of Hutongs”, which featured metallic bubbles scattered over Beijing’s oldest neighborhoods. Three years later, the first hutong bubble has appeared in a small courtyard in Beijing.

China’s rapid development has altered the city’s landscape on a massive scale, continually eroding the delicate urban tissue of old Beijing. Such dramatic changes have forced an aging architecture to rely on chaotic, spontaneous renovations to survive the ever-changing neighborhood. In addition, poor standards of hygiene have turned unique living space and potential thriving communities into a serious urban problem. Hutongs are gradually becoming the local inhabitants’dumpster, the haven for the wealthy, the theme park for tourists.

Beijing 2050_The People’s Square

Beijing 2050_Future of Hutongs

Metallic bubbles scattered over Beijing’s oldest neighborhoods

The self-perpetuating degradation of the city’s urban tissue requires a change in the living conditions of local residents. Progress does not necessarily call for large scale construction—it can occur as interventions at a small scale. The hutong bubbles, inserted into the urban fabric, function like magnets, attracting new people, activities, and resources to reactivate entire neighborhoods. They exist in symbiosis with the old housing. Fueled by the energy they helped to renew, the bubbles multiply and morph to provide for the community’s various needs, thereby allowing local residents to continue living in these old neighborhoods. In time, these interventions will become part of Beijing’s long history, newly formed membranes within the city’s urban tissue.

Unexpectedly, a manifestation of this idealistic vision has sprung up in one of Beijing’s hutongs, just three years after the exhibition. Hutong Bubble 32 provides a toilet and a staircase that extends onto a roof terrace for a newly renovated courtyard house. Its shiny exterior renders it an alien creature, and yet at the same time, reflects the surrounding wood, brick, and greenery. The past and the future can thus coexist in a finite, yet dream-like world.

The real dream, however, is for the hutong bubble to link this culturally rich city to each individual’s vision of a better Beijing. The bubble is not regarded as a singular object, but as a means to initiate a renewed and energetic community. Under the hatchet of fast-paced development, we must always be cognizant of Beijing’s long term goals and the direction of its creativity. Perhaps we should shift our gaze away from the attraction of new monuments and focus on the everyday lives of the city’s residents.

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Construction Engineers: Beijing Nade Environmental Art Design Co., Ltd.
Design Team: Dai Pu; Yu Kui; Stefanie Helga Paul; He Wei; Shen Jianghai

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Studio Pei-Zhu: Art Museum of Yue Minjun

javier milara — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:35:25 +0000

Design: 2007-2008

Construction: 2008.04 – 2008.11

Location: Qing Cheng Shan, Sichuan, China

Related Links:
Studio Pei-Zhu
Yue Minjun

Art Museum of Yue Minjun

On one hand, there are fantastic landscapes for Qingcheng Mountain, with continuous brooks and wreathed mist…

On the other hand, there are private art galleries, with extremely personal art attitudes and contemporary features…

When tracing back to ancient times and dreaming of future, we find two contrary propositions that meet and collide in Qingcheng Mountain.

What type of architecture language can be used to tell such incompatible and interesting encounter?

Not far away, Dujiang Weir, with more than 2000 years of history, has been witnessing the thought of “complying with nature and combining human and nature” and also fostering a special natural and cultural environment for this area. In this project, we try to talk with nature in an inheritance way and try to create a medium to overlap reality and imagination, nature and technology, tradition and future which seem to be contrary.

The art museum, located by the Shimeng River, is designed into an organic form full of smoothness and diversity, reflecting a cobblestone taken from the river. A light metal coating is applied to this ancient natural form, mildly reflects surrounding scenes and melts into nature, which is like a piece of concealed clothes and full of sense of future, making the building suspend over the ground and be like a flying body from the future. Therefore, we present an art museum which features artists’ direct and affirmed personal attitudes, participating in nature in a “lost” way and starts a secret dialogue with ancient times through a language of future.

Project Team
Architect: Pei Zhu, Tong Wu
Associates in Charge: Zeng Xiaoming
Design Team: He Fan, Jiao Chongxia, Li Yongquan, Jiao Chongxia, Fan Xuelan
Structural Consultant: Rory McGowan(Arup)
Photographer: Fang Zhenning

Studio Pei-Zhu
Studio Pei-Zhu is a young practice of under 20 employees based in Beijing. For us, the challenge of design is to provide practical solutions while reflecting a strong and innovative conceptual thinking and a critical outlook.

Our projects, therefore, are an exploration of methods to connect process to product.

The framework for this investigation and the experimental nature of our work is formed by the context in which it takes place – Urban China. The recent rapid development of the country has created new urban environments that can certainly be described as modern but lack the vitality and soul of older districts. One of our main concerns in design is to reconnect modern urban china to its roots, reinterpreting the vernacular in a contemporary context to create architectural devices capable of energizing urban activities. In this way we hope to contribute to a regional variance of contemporary architecture appropriate to its local context.

Awards 2007 Design Vanguard, Architectural Record
2006 China Award, Architectural Record
2004 WA China Architectural Prize
2003 China Architectural Arts Award
1989 Award of Special Merit from UNESCO

Exhibition 2008 Solo exhibition RISD, University of Rhode Island, N.Y.
2008 China Construction, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, N.Y.
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Paris
2008 Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Barcelona
2007 China Production, Austria
2008 China Design Now, Victoria and Albert Museum, UK
2007 Xisi Bei International Invitation Exhibition, China
2006 1st Biennale of the Architecture and Art of the Canary Islands, Spain?participated together with Rem Koolhaas and MVRDV?
2006 Chinese contemporary architecture, Rotterdam, Netherlands Architecture Institute

Projects & competitions 2007 Guggenheim museum Beijing, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Guggenheim Art Pavilion Abu Dhabi, for Guggenheim Foundation
2007 Courtyard House Renovation for artist Cai Guoqiang
2004 Digital Beijing, an Olympic project for 2008, Beijing, won the first prize in national design competition

[via archinect]

Kowloon Walled City: la manzana más densa del mundo

javier milara — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:47:01 +0000

En Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, habitaban más de 40.000 personas hasta ser demolida en 1993…

¡Tremendo lugar!

Este video fue grabado con cámara oculta, y quizá lo más interesante son los últimos minutos, que recorre el interior.

El siguiente video se ve bastante mejor, al estar grabado para una película:

Secuencia del film Bloodsport, grabada en el interior de Kowloon Walled City.

OMA: CCTV (beijing)

javier milara — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 02:45:56 +0000

Central Chinese Television ( CCTV ), Television Cultural Center ( TVCC ), and Media Park

Beijing, China — Rem Koolhaas/OMA

Site: 10 hectare at new central business district

Program: 129.000sqm administration, 74.000sqm news, 57.000sqm broadcasting, 93.000sqm production, television cultural centre, 40.000sqm comprehensive area, 4.800sqm guard building, 4.800sqm parking, 7.200sqm other facilities

“When complete, the new television headquarters will be comparable in size to both the Rockefeller Building and World Trade Center” (Shohei Shigetmatsu, in cnn_02.12.06)