人物訪談

Camouflage House

510 House

1、兩位生活背景截然不同：一個(gè)來(lái)自芝加哥，一個(gè)來(lái)自德國(guó)柏林。是什么時(shí)候，又是怎樣決定開始這種創(chuàng)造性伙伴關(guān)系的？

我們是在大學(xué)里讀研究生的時(shí)候認(rèn)識(shí)的，很快就成為了朋友，因?yàn)槲覀儼l(fā)現(xiàn)各自對(duì)建筑的看法很相似。雖然文化背景不同，但我們有著非常兼容的設(shè)計(jì)議程，并且都在探索解決類似建筑問(wèn)題的答案。畢業(yè)后，我們都在其他建筑師事務(wù)所工作，但很快我們就意識(shí)到只有完全掌控自己的工作，才能創(chuàng)造出我們所感興趣的建筑。于是，我們?cè)?003 年創(chuàng)辦了自己的工作室。多年來(lái)，我們開發(fā)了一種非常高效的方式來(lái)一起設(shè)計(jì)，相比較語(yǔ)言交流，我們更喜歡通過(guò)學(xué)習(xí)模型和草圖來(lái)相互交流想法。

2、如今當(dāng)代建筑似乎沉迷于美學(xué)奇觀和算法造型，在這樣一個(gè)時(shí)代，你們的作品以其形式上的簡(jiǎn)潔，概念上的清晰，以及與自然環(huán)境和諧的融合而脫穎而出。你們的設(shè)計(jì)過(guò)程是如何促進(jìn)這一點(diǎn)的？

我們對(duì)現(xiàn)在建筑高峰的激烈競(jìng)爭(zhēng)并不感興趣，這種競(jìng)爭(zhēng)通常只會(huì)留下表明自己在專業(yè)上高人一等的無(wú)用紀(jì)念碑，不是對(duì)真正的設(shè)計(jì)創(chuàng)新感興趣。我們覺(jué)得這種建筑屈服于標(biāo)志性建筑物的首要地位，充滿了普遍性和隨意性。相反，我們總是在自己的實(shí)踐中尋找一種更微妙的方法；前提是找到安靜和精致的建筑方案，這一點(diǎn)是不容妥協(xié)的。從第一個(gè)項(xiàng)目“迷彩屋”開始，我們就專注于不同的文脈概念，所有這些概念都以一個(gè)原則問(wèn)題為指導(dǎo)：我們可以設(shè)計(jì)出這樣一個(gè)建筑嗎？它不是一個(gè)孤立的、自我參照的物體，它的形式和物質(zhì)性能夠得到發(fā)展，最終整個(gè)外觀獨(dú)立于它所在的這片土地。換句話說(shuō)，我們?cè)噲D在鄉(xiāng)村和城市文脈中識(shí)別一個(gè)特定地點(diǎn)的特殊性，促進(jìn)建筑設(shè)計(jì)的有意義的演變，從而使它成為文脈中直接的，似乎不可避免的一部分，傳達(dá)對(duì)一個(gè)地點(diǎn)的歸屬感，甚至是歷史感——但所有這些都不會(huì)屈服于字面上的模仿或落入任何風(fēng)格的陷阱。

3、既然提到了文脈因素，那么你們的作品是否符合肯尼斯·弗蘭普頓（Kenneth Frampton）“批判性區(qū)域主義”理念?

不，我們對(duì)文脈的理解與“批判性區(qū)域主義”有著本質(zhì)區(qū)別，后者可以說(shuō)是通過(guò)一個(gè)更廣闊的地理視角來(lái)看待文脈。相反，我們感興趣的是在一個(gè)特定地點(diǎn)的尺度上，那些細(xì)微的、有時(shí)甚至是隱藏的品質(zhì)，甚至是特質(zhì)——這些東西幫助我們建立一種建筑敘事，以一種安靜、有意義和特定地點(diǎn)的方式為我們的設(shè)計(jì)過(guò)程提供信息。正因?yàn)槿绱?，最初的?shí)地考察在我們?cè)O(shè)計(jì)的概念演變中起到了重要的作用。正是在那些考察中，我們才第一次面對(duì)和體驗(yàn)未來(lái)項(xiàng)目的環(huán)境，仔細(xì)傾聽那些存在的東西。然后，我們基本上將我們個(gè)人的感官體驗(yàn)和對(duì)現(xiàn)場(chǎng)氣氛的記憶進(jìn)行提取，并將它們轉(zhuǎn)化為抽象的建筑操作調(diào)色板，指導(dǎo)我們完成整個(gè)項(xiàng)目開發(fā)，從方案設(shè)計(jì)到具體建筑細(xì)節(jié)的工藝。（注：本段附帶的圖片可能是Blatz Bottle Doors 的圖片）。所有這些都給我們的建筑注入了某種氛圍，這種氛圍的靈感來(lái)自于我們主觀的、有目的的選擇性回憶。或者，用海德格爾的術(shù)語(yǔ)，“感念（Andenken）”，特定地點(diǎn)最顯著的特征，包括物理、歷史、氣氛和社會(huì)特征。同時(shí)，我們對(duì)離開可構(gòu)造性和功能邏輯的領(lǐng)域沒(méi)有興趣，因?yàn)槲覀兊淖罱K目標(biāo)是創(chuàng)建一個(gè)能達(dá)到預(yù)期目的的物理建筑。

4、Topo 住宅是一個(gè)似乎能體現(xiàn)你對(duì)文脈態(tài)度的項(xiàng)目，它似乎與其所在土地完全融合，受到了廣泛好評(píng)。這個(gè)設(shè)計(jì)的靈感來(lái)源于什么？

多年來(lái)，我們嘗試了不同的策略，讓建筑物融入周圍的環(huán)境。以前面提到的“迷彩屋”為例，其解決方案是將文脈抽象地投射到建筑體積上——建筑表皮基本上起到了偽裝的作用，以隱藏森林中房屋的存在。對(duì)于Topo 住宅，我們以不同的方式處理了文脈問(wèn)題，根據(jù)場(chǎng)地獨(dú)特的地形規(guī)劃建筑的所有形式；它變成了我們實(shí)踐中的一個(gè)關(guān)鍵項(xiàng)目，通過(guò)它，我們可以在三維上探索文脈反應(yīng)。該項(xiàng)目位于威斯康星州北部，座落在一片開闊的大草原上，鑲嵌在該地區(qū)柔軟起伏的山丘和緊密的山澗的自然景觀中。我們開始設(shè)計(jì)探索，把環(huán)境中的體驗(yàn)注入一個(gè)概念模型里，使一系列折疊平面能夠相互移動(dòng)。這個(gè)模型激發(fā)了建筑聚集的靈感。兩條平行的鋼筋與一個(gè)從地面升起的銅屋頂平面連接在一起，其平緩的斜坡與周圍的地形相呼應(yīng)。這是一座低調(diào)的建筑，一座沉靜，陰沉的建筑，盡可能地不顯眼地融入風(fēng)景中。

5、2010 年的OS 住宅被認(rèn)為是美國(guó)第一批真正可持續(xù)發(fā)展的私人住宅之一。它和Topo 住宅最大的區(qū)別是什么？

很明顯，這兩個(gè)項(xiàng)目之間存在一些形式上的差異。我們各自的設(shè)計(jì)探索由完全不同的背景參數(shù)指導(dǎo)，差異由此產(chǎn)生：一個(gè)是一所深植于鄉(xiāng)村環(huán)境中的房子，另一個(gè)則坐落在一個(gè)歷史悠久的城市街區(qū)。但更重要的一點(diǎn)，OS 住宅最初是考慮環(huán)境和高水平技術(shù)因素。該項(xiàng)目于2010 年完工，那時(shí)技術(shù)已經(jīng)取得了巨大的進(jìn)步，但在當(dāng)時(shí)，它依然是美國(guó)最先進(jìn)、最可持續(xù)發(fā)展的住宅建筑之一。同時(shí)，文脈因素對(duì)于OS 住宅也起到了重要的作用；在其他當(dāng)代建筑的襯托下，這座建筑看起來(lái)非常現(xiàn)代。它修復(fù)了城市肌理，毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)，其多色立面框架迎合了該地區(qū)維多利亞時(shí)代住宅的色彩。

Belay MKE

Topo House

6、你們的作品包括一系列珍貴的小森林休息處，像線性小屋或堆疊小屋。這些美麗的建筑明顯是現(xiàn)代建筑，但極賦古老、富有地域特色的建筑風(fēng)格。能講一下傳統(tǒng)和創(chuàng)新是如何影響你的木屋設(shè)計(jì)過(guò)程的嗎？

實(shí)際上，我們相信“傳統(tǒng)”和“現(xiàn)代”這樣的標(biāo)簽非常武斷，這在建筑語(yǔ)言中完全沒(méi)有意義。建筑一直是歷史延續(xù)中的一部分，認(rèn)為當(dāng)代建筑完全新式才有意義的設(shè)定是目光短淺且幼稚的。沒(méi)有哪一個(gè)建筑不受先前建筑的影響，不管是好是壞，都要受到過(guò)去文化的影響。重要的是要認(rèn)識(shí)到，即使是在建筑現(xiàn)代主義出現(xiàn)時(shí)美學(xué)范式上的轉(zhuǎn)變，也只不過(guò)是幾個(gè)世紀(jì)以來(lái)的建筑鏈排列的有序總結(jié)。以密斯·凡·德羅的建筑為例，他的建筑當(dāng)然是完全現(xiàn)代化的，但同時(shí)也兩百年前弗里德里?！ば量藸柕墓诺渲髁x作品的影響。從這種意義上說(shuō)，我們認(rèn)為，傳統(tǒng)和創(chuàng)新并不是對(duì)立的，它們不可避免地存在交集，事實(shí)上是相互影響的。因此，我們很欣賞鄉(xiāng)村鄉(xiāng)土建筑，它們的時(shí)代特征給我們的設(shè)計(jì)以敏銳的直覺(jué)和明確、驚人的解決方案，這啟發(fā)了我們的木屋設(shè)計(jì)。通過(guò)仔細(xì)研究中西部木屋建筑類型的歷史，以及弄清楚它們的建筑結(jié)構(gòu)和組織結(jié)構(gòu)，我們學(xué)到了很多東西——細(xì)節(jié)的約束，對(duì)氣候條件做出的調(diào)整，以及和田園環(huán)境的聯(lián)系。在確定了一些歷史先例主導(dǎo)的設(shè)計(jì)的基本規(guī)則之后，我們?cè)诟攥F(xiàn)代元素的文脈下重新闡釋了它們，重新根據(jù)具體的場(chǎng)地條件和場(chǎng)地特征適當(dāng)?shù)夭贾媒M成部分，如景觀、現(xiàn)有植被，以期能夠更廣泛地回應(yīng)現(xiàn)代生活方式的要求和期望。

7、您的事務(wù)所和設(shè)計(jì)流程是如何受到當(dāng)前學(xué)界趨勢(shì)影響的？反過(guò)來(lái)說(shuō)，您目前的項(xiàng)目和流程是如何指導(dǎo)正在發(fā)展的學(xué)術(shù)課程的重組和發(fā)展的？

我們都是威斯康星大學(xué)的教授，經(jīng)常被邀請(qǐng)到這里以及歐洲的其他建筑學(xué)校教授設(shè)計(jì)課程。教學(xué)允許我們以一種更加嚴(yán)格和不妥協(xié)的態(tài)度，更深入地探討建筑問(wèn)題，這是我們?cè)谌粘?shí)踐中可能做不到的。我們?cè)诖髮W(xué)的高級(jí)設(shè)計(jì)工作室往往是密集的實(shí)驗(yàn)室，通常專注于我們自己工作中令人感興趣的具體建筑問(wèn)題，例如緊湊的住房，新興的城市建筑形式，或者更細(xì)致的層面上的問(wèn)題，如材料處理和建筑表皮。我們?cè)噲D超越純粹的學(xué)術(shù)思辨，用以實(shí)踐為基礎(chǔ)的參數(shù)來(lái)調(diào)節(jié)概念上的開放式主題，我們相信這種方法帶來(lái)的好處是相互的。我們?yōu)樽约旱难芯恳肓顺跏嫉闹R(shí)框架，它引導(dǎo)著我們與

學(xué)生進(jìn)行為期一個(gè)學(xué)期的創(chuàng)造性對(duì)話，這讓我們對(duì)建筑的可能性充滿信心和希望。自然，可持續(xù)性的問(wèn)題已經(jīng)不可逆轉(zhuǎn)地在過(guò)去十年中改變了學(xué)術(shù)界，環(huán)境責(zé)任已經(jīng)成為我們學(xué)生真正關(guān)心的問(wèn)題；他們希望確保自己對(duì)建筑的貢獻(xiàn)不會(huì)出現(xiàn)前幾代人的錯(cuò)誤。這些學(xué)生現(xiàn)在開始加入工作大軍，并正在迅速加速建筑向更有生態(tài)意識(shí)的專業(yè)方向的轉(zhuǎn)變，造福所有人。

8、約翰森-施馬林建筑事務(wù)所未來(lái)將面臨哪些挑戰(zhàn)？

隨著這些年來(lái)委托業(yè)務(wù)和規(guī)模的穩(wěn)步增長(zhǎng)，現(xiàn)在我們的項(xiàng)目遍布美國(guó)各地，最大的挑戰(zhàn)是管理我們事務(wù)所的業(yè)務(wù)增長(zhǎng)，并在密爾沃基的辦公室保持高度協(xié)作的設(shè)計(jì)文化，這對(duì)我們的創(chuàng)作過(guò)程至關(guān)重要。事務(wù)所現(xiàn)在有十位建筑師，我們都在一個(gè)巨大的開放空間里工作，這個(gè)空間鼓勵(lì)所有人相互進(jìn)行持續(xù)、內(nèi)容豐富的對(duì)話，這種對(duì)話可以培養(yǎng)一種優(yōu)秀文化。對(duì)于我們來(lái)說(shuō)，即使項(xiàng)目不可避免地變得更加復(fù)雜，也要能夠在事務(wù)所中保持這種富于創(chuàng)造性的親密感和思維的嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)，這至關(guān)重要。

9、你們對(duì)中國(guó)建筑的印象是什么？會(huì)接受在中國(guó)設(shè)計(jì)建筑的機(jī)會(huì)嗎？

盡管中國(guó)的很多建筑作品都出自西方建筑師之手，我們也認(rèn)識(shí)許多優(yōu)秀的中國(guó)建筑師，關(guān)注他們的作品并且非常欣賞。很明顯，我們正在見證年輕而自信的一代中國(guó)建筑師的出現(xiàn)，他們創(chuàng)造出了非常有趣并在美學(xué)上具有革命性的作品。這是一項(xiàng)我們極為尊重和特別喜愛的工作，因?yàn)樗瑯诱故玖宋覀冊(cè)谧约旱墓ぷ髦兴非蟮恼鎸?shí)一面。在某些案例中，我們看到在美國(guó)或歐洲會(huì)因?yàn)楦叩膭趧?dòng)力成本和更嚴(yán)格的建筑規(guī)范而無(wú)法實(shí)現(xiàn)的建筑設(shè)計(jì)?？紤]到所有這些問(wèn)題，對(duì)于我們來(lái)說(shuō)，在中國(guó)開展一個(gè)項(xiàng)目是極其有吸引力的，并且可以測(cè)試一下在目前的有利條件下，如何能夠以在美國(guó)不可能實(shí)現(xiàn)的方式推動(dòng)我們的設(shè)計(jì)事項(xiàng)。也許更重要的是，這將是一個(gè)在根本不同的文化文脈下，重新應(yīng)用我們適配文脈的設(shè)計(jì)流程的機(jī)會(huì)。

10、你對(duì)在中國(guó)學(xué)習(xí)建筑學(xué)的學(xué)生有什么建議嗎？

我們給中國(guó)學(xué)生的建議與我們給自己學(xué)生的建議相似：走出去看看世界，體驗(yàn)現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中的建筑，而不僅僅是通過(guò)電腦屏幕或書籍來(lái)了解建筑。如果有機(jī)會(huì)去國(guó)外學(xué)習(xí)，就好好利用這個(gè)機(jī)會(huì)——這將挑戰(zhàn)你自己的先入為主的觀念，同時(shí)能夠拓寬你對(duì)世界各地建筑豐富元素的理解。

1.You both come from very different backgrounds: one of you is originally from Chicago, the other from Berlin, Germany.When and how did you decide to start your creative partnership?

We met as graduate students in college and immediately bonded because we noticed great similarities in the way we approached architecture. Despite our different cultural upbringings, we shared very compatible design agendas and were exploring answers to similar architectural problems. After graduation, we both worked for other architects but soon realized that we needed to be in full control of our work in order to create the kind of architecture that we were interested in, so we started our own office in 2003. Over the years, we have developed a very efficient way to design together, relying less on words than on study models and sketches to communicate our ideas to one another.

2.At a time when much of contemporary architecture seems obsessed with aesthetic spectacles and algorithmic form-making, your work stands out for its formal simplicity, conceptual clarity, and an ability to quietly harmonize or blend in with the natural environment. How does your design process facilitate that?

We have never had any interest in today’s breathless race for architectural superlatives that usually leaves behind vain monuments speaking more of professional one-upmanship than a sincere interest in genuine design innovation.We feel that this kind of architecture merely subjugates itself to the primacy of the iconic, thus making it completely generic and arbitrary. We have instead always been looking for a more subtle approach in our own practice; our premise is to find architectural solutions that are uncompromisingly quiet and restrained. Starting with our very first project, the Camouflage House, we have focused on different notions of contextuality, all guided by one principle question: How can we design a building so that it does not just sit on the land as a solitary, self-referential object but instead develops its form, its materiality, and ultimately its entire appearance out of the land it occupies? In other words, we try to identify the particularities of a specific site,in both rural and urban environments, to help inform the meaningful evolution of a building design so that it can become an immediate and seemingly inevitable part of its context, to convey a sense of belonging to a site, perhaps even a sense of history– but all that without succumbing to literal mimicry or falling into any stylistic traps.

3.When you mention contextuality, would it be fair to position your work within the trajectory of Kenneth Frampton’s concept of “Critical Regionalism”?

No, our understanding of contextuality is fundamentally different from “Critical Regionalism,” which arguably looks at context through a geographically broader lens. Instead, what we are interested in are the subtle, sometimes even hidden,qualities, maybe even idiosyncrasies, at the scale of a particular site — something that helps us develop an architectural narrative that informs our design process in a quiet and meaningful and site-specific way. Because of that, our initial site visits play an instrumental role in the conceptual evolution of our designs.It is during those visits that we first encounter and experience the surroundings of a future project andcarefully listen to what exists. We thenbasically metabolize our very personal sensory experiences and atmospheric memories of the locale and translate them into an abstract palette of architectural operations that guide us through the entire project development, from schematic design all the way to the

crafting of specific construction details.(note: an image that might accompany this paragraph could be of the Blatz Bottle Doors).All this imbues our buildings with a certain aura that is inspired by our subjective and purposefully selective recollection, or, to use a Heideggerian term, Andenken, of a particular site’s most striking characteristics, both physical, historic, atmosphericand social. At the same time, we have no interest in ever leaving the realm of constructability and functional logic, because our ultimate objective is to create a physical building that works for its desired purpose.

4.One project that seems to exemplifyyour attitude toward context is the Topo House, which appears to literally merge with the land it occupies and has received wide critical acclaim. What inspired its design?

Over the years, we have experimented with various strategies to allow our buildings to virtually disappear within their respective surroundings.In the case of the previously mentionedCamouflage House, the solution was an abstracted projection of context onto the building volume – the building skin basically functioned as camouflageto hide the presence of house in the forest.For the Topo House we approached the issue of contextuality differently and developed the entire form of the building out of the site’s distinct topography; it became a pivotal project in our practice because it allowed us to explore a contextual response in three dimensions.The project is located innorthern Wisconsin and sits on a wide-open prairie field,embedded in the region’s natural landscape of softly rolling hills and tight ravines.We started our design exploration by turning our experience of moving through this landscape into a conceptual modelfeaturing a series of folding planes shifted againstone another. That model inspired the massing of the building, two parallel bars tied together with a copper roof plane that rises out of the ground, its gentle slope echoing the surrounding topography. It’s a building with a low profile, a calm,somber building that sits in the landscape as inconspicuously as possible.

5.The OS House from 2010 is considered one of the first truly sustainable private residences in the United States. What are the biggest differences between this house and The Topo House?

There are obviously a number of formal differences between the two projects, which are the result of the fundamentally dissimilar contextual parameters that guided our respective design explorations for each: one is a house embedded in a deeply rural environment, the other sitting in a historic urban neighborhood. But perhaps more importantly, the OS House was primarily conceived as a case study for an environmentallyresponsible and technically high-performing urban residence.The project was completed in 2010, and technology has made tremendous strides since, but at the time, it was one of the most progressive and sustainable residential buildings in America.At the same time, contextuality played an important role for the OS House as well; as contemporary as it looks in the context of its historic neighbors, the building repairs the urban fabric, and its polychromatic fa?ade frames are an unapologetic nod to the cheerful polychrome of the area’s Victorian homes.

6.Your body of work includes a series of precious little forest retreats, like the Linear Cabinor the Stacked Cabin.These beautiful buildings are decisively modern and yet seem to be steeped in the regional architecture of the past.Can you describe how both tradition and innovation influenced your design process for the cabins?

We actually believe that labels like “traditional” and “modern” are arbitrary terms and entirely meaningless in architectural discourse. Architecture has always been part of a historic continuum, and the premise that contemporary architecture needs to be entirely novel in order to be relevant is short-sighted and na?ve.There simply is no architecture that is not informed by precedents or influenced, for better or worse, by cultural preconceptions. It’s important to realize that even the aesthetic paradigm shift at the emergence of architectural modernism was nothing but the logical conclusion to a chain of architectural permutations that spanned centuries.Take, for example,Mies van der Rohe’s buildings, which were of course radically modern but simultaneously deeply indebted to the classicist work of Friedrich Schinkel from two hundred years prior.In that sense, we believe that tradition and innovation are not antithetical but inevitably intertwined and, in fact, reciprocal.We therefore havea sincere appreciation of rural vernacular architecture and the often intuitive and astonishingly unambiguoussolutions it offered to the design problems of its time, and it is what inspired our designs for the cabins. We learned a lot fromcarefully studying the historic typology of Midwestern cabin compounds and the structural and organizational clarity with which they were constructed – the restraint of their details, their response to climatic conditions, their relationship to their bucolic settings.After identifying some elemental rules that governed the design of the historic precedents, we re-interpreted them within the context of a more contemporary vocabulary, re-arranging the component pieces in a way that would allow us to respond appropriately to specific site conditions and site features like views and existing vegetation, and more general, to the demands and expectations of a modern lifestyle.

7.How is your office and design process being influenced by current trends in academia? ln turn, how are current projects and processes guiding the ongoing reformulation and development of academic curricula?

We are both Professors at the University of Wisconsin and frequently invited to teach design classes at other architecture schools here and in Europe. Teaching allows us to explore architectural issues in more depth, and at a somewhat more rigorous and uncompromising level, than is sometimes possible in our day-to-day practice. Our advanced-level design studios at the university tend to be intense laboratories that focus on the specific architectural problems that we are interested in our own work, such as compact housing, emerging forms of urbanism, or, at a more detailed level, material manipulations and building skins. We try to transcend pure academic speculation by tempering conceptually open-ended themes with praxis-based parameters, and we believe the benefits of this approach are reciprocal.We introduce the initial intellectual framework for our investigations,which guides a semester-long creative dialogue with our students that usually leaves us invigorated and hopeful for architecture’s possibilities.Naturally, the issue of sustainability has irreversibly changed academia over the last decade or so, and environmental responsibility has become a genuine concern of our students; they want to ensure that their contributions to the built environment will not repeat the mistakes of previous generations. These students are now starting to enter the workforce and are rapidly accelerating the transformation of architecture into a more ecologically aware profession, to the benefit of all of us.

8.What are the challenges that Johnsen Schmaling Architects will face in the future?

With the steady increase in the number and size of commissions over the years,and with much of our projects now spread all across America, our biggest challenge is to manage the growth of our office and maintainthe highly collaborative design culture in our Milwaukee-based office that is so critical to our creative process.We are currently ten architects, and we are all working in a large open space that encourages a continuous and fertile dialogue between all of, a dialogue that fosters a well-calibrated culture of excellence. It will be critical for us to be able to preserve that kind of creative intimacy and intellectual rigor in studio, even as our projects become inevitably more complex.

9.What is your impression of Chinese architecture? Would you embrace an opportunity to design a building in China?

Even though a lot of the published architecture in China is by Western architects, we know a number of terrific Chinese architects whose work we follow and very much admire. It’s clear that we are witnessing the emergence of a young and confident generation of Chinese architects who produce extraordinarily interesting and aesthetically revolutionary work. It is work for which we have tremendous respect and a special affinity because it exhibits the same sense of authenticity that we are pursuing in our own work. In some cases, we have seen architectural experiments that would be prohibitive in America or Europe because of higher labor costs and more restrictive building codes. Considering all this, it would be immensely interesting for us to work on a project in China and test how those favorable conditions we have observed could propel our design agenda in ways that would be impossible in America. Perhaps more importantly, it would be an opportunity to re-apply our design process of contextual metabolism in a fundamentally different cultural context.

10.Do you have any suggestions for students who are studying architecture in China?

Our advice would be similar to the one we have for our own students: Go get out and see the world to experience architecture in real life, not just through the mediating lens of a computer screen or book. If you have the opportunity to study abroad, take advantage of it – it willchallenge your own preconceptions and broaden your understanding of the rich DNA that architecture around the world can offer.

Topo House