Foreign architects put stamp on Chinese skyline
Drawn by a building boom unmatched in the world in recent decades, U.S. and European architects are flocking to China, turning Chinese leaders' bold visions into concrete and steel realities and giving Chinese cityscapes a distinctly foreign signature.
At a time when many Western economies are stagnant and many construction projects have been delayed or scaled back for lack of financing, China is on a major push to urbanize - building new office towers, apartment blocks, exhibition halls, stadiums, high-speed train stations and nearly 100 new airports. The boom is offering U.S. and European architects new opportunities and an economic lifeline, as much of their industry is struggling....
And, while many U.S. developers have been wary of skyscrapers since the Sept. 11 attacks, China is a place where American architects say they can build big and tall.Paul Katz of the New York firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, or KPF, said, "When people in the U.S. were not building tall buildings, we were here building tall buildings." Standing on the firm's Shanghai office balcony, with sweeping views of the city, Katz said, "There's hardly a building you see today that stood 15 years ago."
On one hand, some people think this open field is a good thing:
In China, "people have no preconceived notion of what building development should be," said Silas Chiow, China director for the U.S. firm Skidmore Owings Merrill, or SOM. "That gives young architects an opportunity to try new ideas... China is almost like an experimental laboratory for different architects."
On the other hand:
That has drawn some criticism. A few high-profile Chinese architects and critics say some foreign designers are ignoring Chinese culture and traditions and turning China into a showcase of weirdly shaped structures better left on the drafting table. "They're using China as their new weapons testing zone," said Peng Peigen, a well-known architect and professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "These kind of stupid things they build could never be built in their own countries, in this life, the last life or the next life."
Peng praised "95 percent" of the many foreign architects in China. But he said the other 5 percent are ignoring the basic design rule that "form follows function." He criticized the Swiss-designed "Bird's Nest" stadium, used for the 2008 Olympics, as an "atrocious design" with a top-heavy roof, and called the French-designed National Grand Theater, known as "The Egg," a dysfunctional and "almost dangerous" eyesore....
some foreign architects are designing buildings that Chinese simply find odd or aesthetically inaccessible. "When they're finished, people don't always have a relationship with them," said [an MIT-trained architect] Shen.
To be honest, I don't see why we have to let whoever come in and build whatever they want just because we think it's "modern." Why are we chasing the West's vision of modernity? They don't even build some of this crap at home, because it would be criticized and blocked by civic groups.
Why is China the place where they can come and do whatever they want, with no repercussions? It's because Chinese people seem to think that because it is "foreign" and ostensibly "modern", it is good.
The pace of development is problematic, and "foreign" does not always mean quality, either:
The speed of development brings its own challenges, several architects said. Among them, the foreign architects' desire to build environmentally sustainable buildings and cities often run smack into the local imperative to build it quickly - and often build it cheaply. For example, an American architect said that in the United States, buildings are typically designed to last 75 to 100 years, with many of the best-known and best-loved buildings, such as New York's Empire State Building, gracefully entering late middle age. But in China, he said, the private developers often want "a building to last 30 years" maximum. "Their idea of a building is like a commodity. It's disposable."
Part of the problem is this:
Many of the largest, most visible projects designed by foreign architects are government-funded, and Peng and others said Chinese officials - and some private developers - often prefer to see an international name on a structure that they hope will become a landmark. China has its own architects, but, as Peng noted, the communists who came to power in 1949 did not respect architecture as a profession. Since then, it has been officially recognized only since the 1980s, leaving too few experienced local architects.
Well, China has a proud tradition of architecture and timeless ideas for how you can construct buildings. But if you rejected all of that during the Cultural Revolution as "feudal" and tried to smash and burn what was ancient, what can you do?
And now everyone is in a headlong rush to "modernity" -- to make Chinese cities look like downtown Manhattan or Chicago. Why can't they find their own identity that draws from their own culture? I would love to see more buildings that are inspired by China's own traditions, rather than buildings that take on an "international" style that simply follows in the footsteps of the West. (Discards from the West in some cases, or way-out-there disasters that people wouldn't actually want to use or live in).
Most of all, I wish that China's cities could preserve what is unique, to treasure the past and keep it intact, instead of bulldozing and demolishing and evicting the populace. For example, Paris is a modern city in every sense of the word -- yet they preserved the facades of the old city structures, so while the interiors are refined and conducive to human use, the feeling of Old Paris is alive and well today. And Parisians are proud of it!
Think what might have happened in China: if Liang Sicheng's plan for Old Beijing had been adopted, it might truly be a garden City with walls, gates, temples and neighborhoods intact. No other Capital would have looked like it; it was unique.
Instead, we pulled down the gates, destroyed the city wall, demolished temples and homes, to build shopping malls and skyscrapers. It looks like a faceless urban mass of concrete and steel. People are dislocated and it feels hugely impersonal. Is that appealing to live in?
In the end, we will know China has matured and culture has come into its own (some may say returned to its former glory) when we start to see Chinese influences on what constitutes an "international" style. That will indicate that China is seeking its own definition of modernity, and sharing its ideas with the world.
