Blockhouse by AZL Architects
Walls appear to be peeling back from the facade of this house by Chinese office AZL Architects, one of 24 architect-designed buildings underway in a forest near Nanjing, China.
Walls appear to be peeling back from the facade of this house by Chinese office AZL Architects, one of 24 architect-designed buildings underway in a forest near Nanjing, China.
The Museum of Handcraft Paper is among the top 20 nominees of the 2013 international Aga Khan Award, which presents a one million USD prize for first place.
The Aga Khan Award for architectural design recently announced its 2013 shortlist of nominees, with China’s Museum of Handcraft Paper in Yunnan province as the only East Asian country represented in the final top 20 candidates. We actually reported on the completion of this project in an architectural roundup earlier this year.
Read the rest of the article at CreativeHunt
While news of China’s luxury and fashion markets — and their consumers — often make for attractive headlines, one story often lost in the mix is the Chinese creatives powering the country’s burgeoning design industry. Here, we present a “mini-haul” of some of the most interesting industrial designers and architects that have caught — and continue to catch — our eye.
Read the rest of the article at Jing Daily
This asterisk-shaped restaurant and winery at the centre of a lake near Beijing is our second story in the last week about Chinese studio SAKO Architects.
Chinese studio MAD has unveiled the first photographs of its icicle-shaped museum for wooden sculptures in Harbin, northeast China.
This project is modest addition to the small village of Huairou on the outskirts of Beijing, just under a two hours drive from busy Beijing urban life.
On the one hand it forms a modern programmatic complement to the village by adding a small library and reading space within a setting of quiet contemplation. On the other hand we wanted to use architecture to enhance the appreciation of the natural landscaping qualities.
In Qinhuangdao, China the Tanghe River Park features a new installation of a red steel bench that runs for half a kilometre through the park.
The Red Ribbon project has won an honor award from the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was also selected by readers of Conde Nast Traveller magazine as one of the seven new wonders of the architecture world.
Via contemporist.com
Walt Disney chairman-CEO Robert Iger Wednesday unveiled the first images of a model of the Shanghai Disney Resort featuring the Shanghai Disneyland park that will likely become a hallmark of his tenure at the company.
Via Variety
The capital of the south central chinese province of Hunan is in the midst of incredible population growth and rapid urban development. At the center of a stimulus worth 130 billion USD is the idyllic MeiXiHu lake, now primed for an ambitious set of cultural projects. Zaha Hadid‘s winning design for the ‘ChangSha MeiXiHu international culture and art center’ broke ground in october after distinguishing itself as a composition of serpentine curves forming a complex that contains a contemporary art museum, a multipurpose hall, a hotel, and various ancillary facilities.
Via Design Boom
Perspective is the fundamental historic difference between Western and Chinese painting. After the 13th Century, Western painting developed vanishing points in fixed perspective. Chinese painters, although aware of perspective, rejected the single-vanishing point method, instead producing landscapes with “parallel perspectives” in which the viewer travels within the painting.
The new museum is sited at the gateway to the Contemporary International Practical Exhibition of Architecture in the lush green landscape of the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, China. The museum explores the shifting viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and water, which characterize the deep alternating spatial mysteries of early Chinese painting. The museum is formed by a “field” of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black bamboo-formed concrete over which a light “figure” hovers. The straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the figure above. The upper gallery, suspended high in the air, unwraps in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at “in-position” viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. The meaning of this rural site becomes urban through this visual axis to the great Ming Dynasty capital city, Nanjing.
The courtyard is paved in recycled Old Hutong bricks from the destroyed courtyards in the center of Nanjing. Limiting the colors of the museum to black and white connects it to the ancient paintings, but also gives a background to feature the colors and textures of the artwork and architecture to be exhibited within. Bamboo, previously growing on the site, has been used in bamboo- formed concrete, with a black penetrating stain. The Museum has geothermal cooling and heating, and recycled storm water.
Visit the website of Steven Holl Architects – here. Photography by Li Hu and Shu He
Via contemporist.com
The China (Shanghai) International Building & Interior Design Festival (abbreviated as IDF) aims to establish cooperation and exchange mechanisms for interior designers and architects from all over the world. It also continues to emphasis the design initiative as a key element influencing all aspects of industry, architecture, the economy, the city and people’s lives. Shanghai has been officially accepted into the Creative Cities Network endorsed by UNESCO, and was nominated as the UNESCO City of Design in 2010. IDF serves as the platform for establishing linkage mechanism inside design industries, cultivating design talents and introducing design masters, as well as extending cooperation and exchange both at home and abroad.
An unparalleled line-up of design gurus such as Marco Piva, and Chiara Cantono in 2013 will make IDF one of the must-attend design destinations worldwide.
Visit the official site
The team of architects at EXH Design created the interior for Swissnex Shanghai, Switzerland’s outpost for science, technology and culture in China.
From EXH Design:
In the design process we integrated the architectural logic with design sensibility, to arrive at rational conclusions by carefully considering and evaluating the evidence available. A big and flexible functional space is divided by a curved screen into 2 areas: public space for workshops, conference, exhibitions and reception, behind the screen is friendly working space also with a high flexibility for 7 to 14 workers. The screen flowing between ‘public’ and ‘private’ is the sensitive element plugged into the interior. The special attraction of this screen is its visual animation while you pass through.
Visit the EXH Design website – here.
Via contemporist.com
One Plus Partnership have designed the sales office for a real estate company in Chongqing, China
Via contemporist.com
It would be easy to make eyes at the recently built Lafayette 148 building in Shantou and not expect much play. To think, however, that it is simply another fashionable façade wrapping a dumb box would be a mistake. The building is not just a fling, and may be a long lasting affair.
“Yi Duo House” is exhibited in the “Moving Residence Unit” at the 2012 “Get it Louder” exhibition. This unit mainly expresses its concern for questions, such as “whether the house can be built without relying on land resources”, “how people enjoy the natural resources equally in the future”.
