 Thank you so much for coming. It's incredibly exciting to welcome Lou Wenyu and Wang Shu here to Columbia after 10 years since the last time you spoke here in this auditorium. And Lou Wenyu and Wang Shu founded their office for amateur architecture, the amateur architecture studio in 1997 in Hanshou. And for me, the name of their office is incredibly inspiring, identifying the limits of the expert knowledge and adventuring, I would say, architecture into a process of tentative experimentation and very much in a journey way of learning to doing things and giving design a very exploratory capacity as you've done. But what is also very exciting for me from your work is that that experimentation was not necessarily futuristic, but was rather thinking about the past and the memory and the traditions and the ways of doing the materialities that were inherited and how to deal with them in the present and project them to the future. This notion of experimentation I think is very much also putting value to this amateur architecture that questions the tyranny of expert knowledge, though of course that requires so much expert knowledge that you develop. The ones who spent eight years actually working with craftsmen in construction, right, from 1990 to 1998 before you opened your office and you both studied at Nanjing Institute of Technology. The first project that I saw from your office in person was in the 2006 Venice Biennial, the Tile Garden, the beautiful garden that probably all of you know, composed by tiles, pile tiles that produce this surface and this bridge that could allow to walk on them, right? A beautiful project that was talking of a very different way to address contemporary architecture and very different ways of understanding what nature could be and what a garden would be. In 2008, the same year that actually OMA opened or completed the CCTV headquarters, you completed actually the Ningbo Historical Museum. It was open to the public that year. And I think that is a project that was very much showing that very different things were happening in China, in the world of architecture and through your work and through your approach to architecture. The Ningbo Museum was actually reflecting of the whole process of urbanization rapid and President I would say urbanization that had happened, that China had gone through and what was the trauma that inflicted in rural areas and how architecture could actually bridge that trauma and operate there. Something that was very different to the way architecture was from China and producing China was circulating at that time and that immediately allowed us to see that something different was growing from your office in China in conversation with other of your colleagues there. And rapidly, of course, you got all recognitions. The Ningbo Museum won the Luban Prize in 2008 which is considered the top architecture prize in China. In 2010, you were awarded the selling prize and in two years later, once you won the Pritzker Prize. I also loved that that very year after the Pritzker Prize, you were called to start the conversations for the Venkom Village Project, right? A project that again was shaking the way we would discuss architecture across the world and you were invited to intervene in this village that was, as you described, the mixture of very beautiful old buildings with not that beautiful old buildings but that you carefully care for creating 14 new houses on the west limit of the village that would somehow reflect and mobilize the traditional construction, the craftsmanship that still was present in the village as a way to operate change that would permeate and infiltrate the conservation and the preservation of the rest of the village. I read many of the interviews that you gave explaining this project that was very much moved. By the way, you explained that you had conversations and you ended up having an influence in how other people would think about their homes and how to preserve them and how to intervene them. This way of doing architecture, of course, was identifying architecture and architectural materiality not that much just as the election of texture or color but rather understanding that materiality is a broader social construction that was connected to also labor, to traditions, to knowledge and to the construction of communities and societies. And actually, I would like to say that also for us, it was very important to see that what we do here reflects on your own interest. That your dedication to teaching and research is something that also shaped your practice. And once you're the dean of China Academy of Arts, and you were telling me that you keep making time to meet with your students in your busy agenda and have periodic conversations with them and being in touch with younger people that started to discuss their process to architecture. I would like to finish this introduction before I invite you to come here to the podium by reading some words that once you said when you were awarded with the Pritchler Prize. Everywhere you can see, they don't care about the materials. They just want new buildings. They just want new things. I think the material is not just about materials. Inside, it has the people's experience, memory, many things inside. So I think it's for an architect to do something about it. Please help me welcome Lou Wenyu and Wanxu to this podium. Thank you. We are very happy to come back because I gave the speaking here, I think, 10 years ago. Now, this time, especially after the pandemic, and we can go out of China and come to here. So it's really been very happy. And today, we want to speak something. The topic is about co-exiting with nature. Yeah, this is our basic way in the past 20 years, what all our work to do something about this topic. Today, I will speak first because I can speak a little bit English. So after my speaking, Lou will speak in Chinese, and maybe they need a translator. So I will speak first. So usually, when the people discuss our works, they will talk about the materials, about the Chinese tradition, about some of the poetic way. But in fact, for us, most important thing is reality. Yeah, all our work is have the background. The background is China's reality. What is the real social reality in China? What's the basic background in China? First, we should talk about the big city. When all of the world and people talk about China, I think the first thing we'll talk about big city, huge city. And I think first of all, it is a scale. And how many big cities in China? A lot, yes. I think at least we have more than 100 cities, the population larger than 1 million. And top 10, maybe top 10. We can find Beijing, we have 21, 22 million. And Tianjin, we have 13 million. Xi'an is about 13 million. Shanghai, about 24 million. Wuhan is about 30 million, 40 million. Wuhan, you know Wuhan. It's COVID-19, it's here. And Chengdu, 21 or 22 million. And Chongqing, 32 million. And Guangzhou is about 18 million. And Shenzhen is about near 18 million. It's very funny. For example, Shenzhen in the 1980s, it's a small village, about several hundreds of people. Then China want to build a new city near Hong Kong. Then they have an urban planning after 10 years. They imagine about 30 years later, Shenzhen will become a city more than 10 million people. This is the urban planning. And just 15 years later, they found, they have more than 10 million. Now they have 17 or 18 million. It's incredible. Even for Chinese, it's incredible development. Of course, Hangzhou, our studio is in Hangzhou. Hangzhou is a small one. They only have 30 million population. So they can give a directly feeling about China city. For example, this is Beijing. It's a, usually people know Forbidden City. But in fact, Forbidden City is only a small thing in Beijing. This Beijing is totally different things. When they think about Chinese tradition, it's this, Forbidden City and Hutong, something like this. But in fact, majority Beijing people living in something like this, this is the Beijing. So it's a real reality. So the people start to thinking about what the Chinese city, for example, all this photo is about Beijing, but only the small square within the red line is a bit old Beijing. But in the past 30 years, at least 10 times, extend the city, extend. When I'm the childhood, I live in Beijing. That time, I live very near the red line. Out of the red line, oh, it's a farmer field, no building. But now it's incredible. Similar to a bomb, boom, there's something happening. For example, there's Shanghai. But the people talk about Shanghai, an old Shanghai is only the bank along the river like this. The first come to China, they built this city, the European Stale, that's Shanghai now. It's not the Photoshop, it's a real thing, it's Shanghai. So I think the people, the first feeling about China, it's the scale of the city, the scale. I think another feeling is about the density. That's Chongqing in the west China. It's a very beautiful city along the Yangtze River. The same place, that place is the city gates. The people take the boat to come to here along the river. The same place, seven years ago, they want to build some amazing things here. Now, this is Chongqing. It's similar to some AI works. They copied Singapore, they roughly copied something here. But the architect is the same. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's a Shenzhen, it's a Shenzhen. That was 30 years ago like this. It's just the beginning of the city. They want to build new city to some new urban planning plan. This is a Shenzhen now, 30 years. I think of the architect, when they see the photo like this, they will have the people will have the incredible confidence. The human, they can do something like this. Just within 30 years, they can build a huge new city like this. But I think even Chinese will be shocked. That's our city. It's a beautiful landscape city. We have in the city center, we have, it's a lake, beautiful lake. That's why our studio is in here. I think it's the most beautiful city in China. We get a lot of feeling from our city. For example, in China, the Hong Kong have a special position in the past thousands of history. And especially it's the city's structure. Usually we talk about half is the landscape, half is the city. Combined together is the complete meaning for Chinese. What is the city? City is something like this. Half is 50% is the landscape. 50% is building. Combined together is the beautiful city. So Hong Kong in fact for many Chinese city in the history. Hong Kong is a perfect model. That's Hong Kong. I just give the photo is about small things within the red line. But now all the yellow things is our new city like this. It's also happened in the past 30 years. But now things about the density. That in the China, every city now like this. Something is old, something is new, totally mixed together. Usually the people will give the critic about where is our urban planning? It's something, everything developed a very little bit of disorder like this. There's Shanghai. Yeah, Shanghai, it's the Chongqing. I just talked about something similar to Singapore like this. Nothing about countryside. But the China, in the China's reality like this, the city and the countryside are totally separate. It's a different world. For example, usually architects only can work in the city. In the countryside, the farmers do everything by themselves. They don't need architects. So they totally different world. But usually we have a more traditional village building things in countryside. But in fact, in countryside we also have a big chain. This, the off is a traditional village, incredible, beautiful. And the dong is a new village, everywhere, all of the China. You will find that all this country, they have some incredible decision. They want change. Yeah, they want, in fact, they want to abandon, totally abandon their tradition. They want to become new, totally. So the begs the question in China, I think for architects, the begs the question, one of these question is this, is urbanization is the only parts for China's development? Usually I asked myself this question. This question. Another very obvious thing is everywhere you will find the buildings, especially large or huge structures, manmade structures in opposite position on the nature. It's the basic things like this. So usually when the people have the, with the very poetic way to think about, to talk about China, we will think, oh, China is a poetic country. We have a lot of things about nature. For example, landscape paintings, landscape poems, something like this. It's the imagination. Of course, in the past time, it's also the reality. For example, everywhere the village like this, it's incredible, beautiful, high density, and with the nature together, something like this. The building is, every building is very small, but they compose to something similar to the, what we call it, fabric or the carpet, something like this. About the village, another very important historic result is the garden. Yeah, in other way, I think the most beautiful architectural language is the Chinese garden. In the cities, with a very high density, because usually in China, even in the history, our cities have a lot of population. So we have a very high density, even in the history. Yeah, so that's the very beautiful gardens in Suzhou, another city near our cities. You are fine. It's the basic language, the building, small buildings, similar to some network, with the natural things, the trees, waters, totally mixed together. It not just means park, it's not park, it's a garden. The garden also, it's architecture, in fact, for me. Yeah, it's some different kind of architecture like this. It's incredible, beautiful, models, a little bit similar to our city, Hangzhou. I just talk about half is the landscape, half is the building, mixed together. The city like this, architecture also like this. They have the same language, same structure of the language like this. Our studio gets a lot of ideas from this tradition. For example, this painting is about our city, Hangzhou. The main thing is you almost can't find buildings. All these cities are totally mixed in the nature. You just can't find some things similar to the air. Nothing, air, just the air, the feeling like this. I get the basic feeling about architecture from these paintings. For example, there's another famous painting about Chinese countryside, various buildings, various people. In fact, you are fine. The building, similar to some secret, is there. It's a basic feeling about architecture in the traditional Chinese imagination. I think it has a very big influence for us, for our studio's work. How, what's our basic attitude to the nature? So usually we're thinking about, when they face to such a major country, flash, and what we can do. Another basic thinking is usually we can't believe urban planning. If architects don't believe urban planning, how we can use the architectural way to repair the relation between the architecture and the nature? Our studio is in here, near the lake, some buildings inside. It's our studio. I remember before the 20 years, some people asked me, why you are so good architect, where you stayed in Hangzhou? You are so stupid, you should stay in Beijing or Shanghai. Or change, where you stayed in Hangzhou? It's a countryside. But now people usually say, oh, why you are so smart? Because this is our background. Of course, Hangzhou also has big change. Incredible things is they demolish those every old things. Even something be built just 15 years or 20 years ago in Chinese city, it means old. So they want to demolish and rebuild. Of course, for architects, that's good things. You have a lot of jobs, but they're really a good job, I don't know. For example, after 2000, that's the hundred, old Chinese big city like this. They demolish the small things and they build high-rise, huge things. And the building become bigger and bigger, higher and higher, something like this. And when the city become like this, we all find that the nature gradually be, how to call it, the city become bigger and the nature go back. After demolition on the city to build something like this. It's Hangzhou, where is the lake, where the landscape, you have a lot of building here. It's our new transportation for the high-speed train. In fact, we have two. This one is very huge. And we just finish another huge one like this. It's another new transportation about high-speed trains. So, where is China? The China has a poetic history, we have the high quality of our landscape, paintings, cities, where is China? In fact, China disappeared. So, all our works have some dream. We've found some different China come back. The China still can keep very beautiful relation to the nature, yeah, this poetic way. For example, it's our campers. We finish, we do this work between the 2001 to 2007. You can see the middle part is our architecture school. I and Lu, we also teach, we all teach here, yes. And it's a campers, but it not just means the campers. We want to try some different city architecture language here. And you will find, we keep the very high density building along the boundary, fast to the cities. Then we keep the large space between the mountain and the buildings, yeah, we create landscape area. You can remember, I just talked about Hongzhou city structure. Half is the landscape, half is the buildings. The basic language like this. In fact, we can design the building here for the urban planning, 100 meters is no problem. But architect, we do that. We control those buildings very low. Then they can mix with the nature together. We also cut the building to small pieces. There's also one that the building be mixed with nature together. In fact, for architects, it means almost 10 times work. Yeah, if you're just in other China's university, maybe we can design two or three buildings finished. There's work, it's huge buildings, two or three, enough. But here, we separate the building to 20 or 30 small pieces. Yeah, it means we create a large amount of work for ourselves. Yeah. Another one is this, it's a tail scale, this product. It's our expert reception center. We built another building. They have, it's very long. More than 130 meters long buildings along the mountain and the river. And you have one big roof with the tails. Yeah, a little bit people will remember our another work in Venice Biennale, the tails garden here. We like to tails garden become real building. And under this one roof, they have a very complex inside building that is similar to a village. Yeah, one roof and the one roof is the village. Incredible rich experience. Of course, we also do something real, real things in the village. We do this Wen Chun renovation between the 2012 to 2016. And you know, and usually architects, we come from in the countryside. But now more and more architects go into the village. But usually they do some coffee bar, gallery, something like this. Yeah, but few architects really design or build some building for the farmers housing. Yeah, this project is a special, is everyone is farmers housing. Yeah, we want really fast too. The problem about the social reality, social problem. For example, all the new farmer house in the village, they abandoned the courtyard. Originally every Chinese house, it has courtyard inside. But now the new tradition, no courtyard. No courtyard almost means no Chinese country, no tradition. So we rebuild this small courtyard system, the new building system. And like to, sometimes I think maybe we can use the architecture way to be influenced people's idea. Yeah, it's our another museum project near Hangzhou. They also, the huge ones is about 40,000 square meters. But we also want how like the huge building really can mix with the landscape. Sometimes we want that building, the people can feel is almost disappeared. For example, you will find this building with the nearest city street, it's very low. It's about six meters high, similar to the two floor high. And gradually they become higher and higher. But if you stand it along the street, you just feel it's a very low building. And we don't really go into, you'll find it's a landscape and it's similar to a mountain, you'll go up, go in, go around, finally when you go up from the roof to see back to the, yeah, yeah. So all the city, all the building you'll find. Oh, it's huge, something like this. Yeah, it's another one, another museum. We finished in the 2018. It's about one or two floor buildings. It's also similar to, it's a building, it's also similar to something like a small city or a village. Yeah, it's made the structures like this. And very different, so many different layer and the people that gradually go in, you'll find they have a rich feeling about the materials and the space inside. We get a lot of feeling from a Chinese landscape painting. Yes. For example, it's another new museum, about three, 30,000 square meters buildings. We also built this, like this is, every building is different. But this, the basic language is the same. It's about landscape and the buildings, about half and half, something like this. And we like the building high density near the city and keeps the landscape space, leaves the landscape space like this. Now, we will talk about our new works. Yeah, in the pandemic times, in the past three years, we can't go out of China. For us, it also means some lucky things. We can stay in our cities, very focused on one project, spend a lot of time on site. It's our just finished this new building as well as the 100,000 square meters new national archive of publication and the culture. And this work, I spent a lot of time. Lou spent more time than me, because he's responsible for the site control. It's a very fast project. We spent one time about design and we spent two years, one year for design and two years about construction. Very fast, but very high quality, I think. To do now is the most high quality work of our studio is this. This is a new building like this. And some people visit the building, they are fine. When they begin, you'll see the building is very simple. Just means horizontal one layer after another one, something like this, very simple. If you go in, go to the site, you are fine. Gradually you are fine. It's not simple. It's a simple, but it's not simple. And maybe Lou can start from here. Oh, I can talk about more. The basic idea is how to talk, how to do the conversation to the nature. Yeah, we have a long, long tradition about this. For example, this is a very famous landscape painting, but we will find the basic way here. What about this? Is the landscape with something strange? In fact, it's a school. You are fine. This is a school. For me, this is the architecture of a school. And the teacher here, and the students here, they have a teaching, it's a teaching place, right? It's a teaching place. This is a school, for what? For PID students, you are fine. It's a professor, it's a students, students here. They also bought the space of the building. And on the other side, you will find it. It's a totally different way of a different form of architecture, different experience. This means something between artificial and nature, something like this. Yeah, the people find some place, we can do something like this. So if you don't know how about the campus architecture, you will find this is the campus. It's the building, it's the architecture. All this painting is not just about nature. It's just, it means something, the people have some philosophy or realization about how the people can work, living, teaching inside nature. So when do this work, I think the basic way we should talk about where is the boundary of nature? Between the nature and the artificial, man-made things, where is the boundary? The boundary become very important. Yes, when we do this building, first we see the site like this. In China, I have many places like this. We dig out from the mountains, but we need a small stone to make the concrete. So when the high-rise building in the far-distance vision, the material come from here. Yeah, so many beautiful mountains be dig out like this. Then for architects, for us, when we see the site like this, the first feeling is how we can rebuild the boundary between the architecture and the nature. That's our, it's my sketch. It just means something not so huge. We control the building not so huge. It's a huge building, in fact. Very thousand square meters, this means huge. It's so small site. And we do this, but we think about how we can, like the building gradually disappeared and mixed with the nature. The basic idea, then you will find they have a basic way is about the layer. Different layer from the south to the north when the people go into, and you can feel the building landscape again, again, something like this. The building be finished, they are fine. The sketch become reality. There's different layers, something like this. And very carefully, all the boundary, all this boundary, be very carefully to design. You'll find this boundary, you can see. We have a very carefully boundary between the artificial and the nature. And then we want to keep everything, natural things on site can't be destroyed. Even one small trees can't be destroyed. Yes, everything should keep on the site, how we can do that. So huge buildings, how we can deal with this, the things, for example, this is the boundary, this is a mountain, this is a storm mountain. We designed this system, like the building very near the nature, but you keep the difference, keep the separate. When people walk, you can see the mountain, but you can't touch, you can't touch. That's something like this, because this building will be opened to the public people now, every day, more than 5,000 visitors will come to here. There's a lot of people, so we should very carefully control the boundary. For example, I also designed this boundary for the city street, like this. When the natural mountain is fast to the city, the different things, we have different ways. Another thing is about the density. In fact, high density for China is a tradition. People have the high density, buildings have the high density. When they face to the nature, we also have the high density. The art building mixed with the nature. And they have some of the basic model. For example, all this, our new building, we use this basic model. We all finally have a different part, the part in the front and the part at the back, the part on the down and the part on the up. They have a different meaning. In this part, you'll find is the lake, it's the water, they have pavilion, they have a scholar thinking here, something like this. It's the basic model. On the up part, it's a very high density, dramatic structure here. It's a very beautiful painting, collected in the map. It's very famous called Riverbank, this painting. When you are fine, our building also uses the basic model. But another side, usually when I talk about here, it's a reality that people can't be directed to see. When this part is some different things, more similar to some philosophy, it's similar to something like the secret, something view from a distance, like this. It's a totally different feeling. So you can find, they have this part, they have water, they have pavilion, these are pavilions. On the up part, we have very dramatic structures and the stories about the books, publications is in here. They also designed something similar to the garden system. Floating on the up space, it means the exhibition open to the public people. We control a very special system to separate the storage space and the exhibition space. Because usually this part can open to the public, this part should be closed because it's a storage space. But we designed this new system like the public space floating on the second floor and the people can go around, they can see every corner about this landscape architecture, but finally they can go down to here. The entrance, usually public entrance from this part and go into and go up, go around, finally they go down here and see the landscape. The basic logic like this. Yeah, similar to Chinese garden, it's a new garden, not fine. It's the entrance is not for public people, it's the entrance for the traditional ceremony or something like this. But the real entrance is here, directly go in. This garden is also the garden, but a different garden. Yeah, it's a very relaxed garden. It's a high density garden, it's different. Of course, it's not easy, it's a national project. In China, when something talk about it's a national, it means something, it's a trouble, it's very difficult. So for example, we designed a small pavilion on the hills. We designed so many different tiles. Why? Because very difficult to let our client to agree our crazy idea. So we just taste the plant. But finally, we get, which one is the last one? No, this is the last one. From the beginning to the last one. We struggled. This is our basket feeling. We want when the people from the gate, from this vision, you are fine. The building is not so big. All this building makes a little bit disappear from the landscape. That's the basket feeling. In fact, the building is huge. So we want people's basket feeling like this. I think maybe who can start from here? I'm talking about money. Okay. Another side, when we talk about the gardens, for the Chinese tradition, when we talk about gardens, we talk about landscape paintings. Yeah, we need some special man-pick. It's similar to a movie. You need a star. Something like this. For the gardens, we also need some center things. When the first time I come to the site, I see this pick. Well, I find out. Yeah, I can do that because we have this pick. It's very important thing. It means some beautiful story. This can start. Yeah. If you have knowledge about art history, you'll find something similar to each other. It's very famous painting. Chinese landscape painting thousands of years ago. And they have this pick, a little bit similar to this one. You'll find it. And it's very special things. It's very high pick, maybe a thousand meters high, very high, but usually the people, our real reality vision is about this part. It's a lower part, the real. You can see that. And this part, usually you can't see. It's in the far distance. You see, this feeling is totally real. In fact, Chinese, when they join this, they're most similar to some philosophy discussion. How you can let the far distancing come to your eye. And how you can let the near things and the distance things can coexist on one painting, something like this. Yes. So for me, if I have this pick in a far distance. So the basic things, how we design this part, this lower part, this architects work. And how you can create this air layer here. You can get a lot of air here. How you can let the people feel between this small part and this far distance pick is something no form. It's most similar to some atmosphere, air, something like this. Yes. This finish, when the building be finished. So my client is very interesting. They tell me, when they agree our design, in fact, they still have some, they worry about the future. Because they can't imagine how you can let these small ugly hills become this, become this painting. Yeah, they can't, they can't imagine this. What, how you can do that? And finally, when they finish the building, they tell me, we really taught this. The people feel it's become true. So, not very easy to talk about this, but if you really want to get this feeling, come to site, come to Hangzhou, to visit the building on site. Another things you can see, this is a real hill, small hills, yeah. How we can build this large scale buildings with the nature together, we have two. That is a high density mix together. So we, especially for example, this building, this building inside is have a hill. Yeah, we directly build the building with the hills together. You can see, this is a real hill. It's not that thick, it's not artificial, it's real. Yeah, with this, we're building this, in fact, the most similar to the traditional pavilion, but here become some new things. It's a pavilion, but it's not similar to the traditional pavilion. You will also have some column like this. Yeah, because we show like the column to, sometimes they show, when they meet the mountain, the hills, they show move. When they meet the route, they show move. So finally, they become something like this, yeah. Because it's very difficult is when we do the design, suddenly we got the news very near our side. They have a UNESCO historic heritage, they just become a heritage. So it means all is our building have been controlled at below the 15 meters below. So this, for us, in fact, it's a good news. We can like, more easily like the plan, understand what I was thinking. It's the entrance, when they go in, you'll find very near you meet the hills because our side is a small. When you are fine, they have, there's also the boundary, just beside the hills, there's a very complex system about this. Yeah, it's a boundary between the nature and our building. And they have many different vision to see. That's similar to the painting, the vision like this. You create many different vision, more similar to the painting. It's main building like this. It's, we call this main reading room. In fact, it has a different function. They can do the exhibition, have a meeting, have a lecture on the, you can do the cocktail and a big dinner, many different way. And you will find that they have a beautiful material on the facade. It's that we create new way about Chinese ceramic, local ceramic, very beautiful ceramic. They also talk about how to build a new system, how to control the temperature is a very hot area. Because we have a lot of running, how to use the architecture way to protect the building, how to control the speed of the wind inside the building because we don't want to use too many air conditioned system. And how to, we can control the song like the song become a more soft. So we directly use architecture way. We don't, we almost don't use any interior decoration. Yeah, all, every way is about architecture. It's our basic thinking is every detail you'll find is architecture way because now all over the China architecture become, in fact, decoration. This means you can design very rough, construct very fast. Then you can have outside decoration system. Then you have inside decoration system. This means the architects become interior designer. Something like this. It's very incredible things. So that's why we show insist. We show insist of thinking. What's the architect's words? What's the meaning about architecture? That's the basics. I think it's basic thinking for architects. For example, all these doors, it's been be open except it can be closed because it's all be controlled by the computer. And also it's also can be controlled by hand. Yeah, when we have the big grinding, for example, taifeng time, we can close these buildings. And when they have, we need a vent. We open the doors. So this means all the every building, they have a set two layer facade. Once up, for example, this main reading room, the first start is the ceramic doors. The second facade is the rampers. They have two different layers. And they have many this system. They call the corridor. In China, for the traditional building in South China, the corridor is very important element. It just means the space about layers. Also means the space you can feel some outside inside feeling some very typical Chinese lifetime. We are fine in this area. So this is why in our studio, almost after our work, we have full cost on this system. And it's similar to the landscape painting, you are fine. Every, we very carefully to design from one building to see another one. This means everyone become, the building become another one, another building's painting. Yeah, you can see the very carefully layers. Of course, high density, high density with the natural scenes. Yeah, we can find this way in our village. They also can find this way in our buildings. But the high density part looks like this. Sometime like this, it's a Chinese garden, very famous. But now, originally it have one or two scholar on the hills, a lot of public people. It seems to different things, but it still means high density. Chinese, we lack this feeling. We have to lack this feeling. This means high density, high density, high density. High density, no? I don't know. In the, when they go into the most deep corner, you will find a small pavilion here. It's very, I think it's very beautiful. And you can find the beautiful reflection of the waters. It's incredible, even you're really on site, you are fine, it's incredible scenes. Of course, we created a new system about more poetic dialogue between the architecture and the nature. This painting about our city, Hangzhou, 1000 years ago, and it's not just means landscape painting. It's means, when you see the basic painting, I just talk about all the city disappear. They totally mix with nature. How they can do that. When you really go into the city, you are fine. Every corner like this, as a thousand corner like this. Finally, they co-pulse together, become incredible, beautiful city like this. It's very high density. What meaning, every this painting, it's just a very near co-exist together. This means every corner, every corner, again, again, repeat, and you will find what is the best way, architecture, nature, architecture, nature, and architecture, nature. This means half and half, 50% and 50%. Yeah, when you have 2000 corner like this, 10,000 corner like this, something happens. So it's a city structure. It's not just means landscape painting. Yeah, it's our way, you can find nature, buildings, nature, buildings. It's another very beautiful painting also about a thousand years ago. It's a dener inside the emperor gardens. You will find it's in the night and the building, all the facade gates open then become something open to the nature as it become a huge pavilion. Now we have a beautiful dener in this city. Yeah, it's our pavilion. When all the doors open, you will find it's something like this. From one building, one pavilion to see another one pavilion. From the down pavilion to see up pavilion. They have this way like this. You will find this also we have this relation in the paintings a thousand years ago. I think this painting also collected some of them in US, this one. You will find the building with the nature very near. Yeah, you will find. They have a very near relation. In fact, it's not easy. When a huge modern construction happened when you build a building near the nature, so near each other, it means you have a, you should have a very good control about site, about the maintenance of the construction process. It's a loose job. They do the wonderful job. They become very angry people on the site. Every day. Yeah, it's beautiful relation from one layer to another one. So when you really go into this building, you'll find so many tabs, something repeat, but every time it's different, a little bit different. So what's not meaning about beauty? How do people think about something as beauty? I prefer the discussion from one French. They talk about Louis Strauss, yes. He's a philosopher, he said. They talk about the beauty means you know the difference between something very similar to each other. You very kind of know what's the difference. It's the basic, it's the base about you know something is beautiful. So finally, the building be composed together. It's about the distance and the near, up and down. The feeling like this. They finish. Now, it's a loose part for your style. Our system of a natural construction and control of a construction process. You can start. I think Lou needs a translator. Who can do the translator for Lou? Yeah, we need a volunteer. Jialuo. Yeah, yeah, Jialuo is there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How can I do it? Hi. I don't think this works. Can you hear me? I'm completely caught up on outside, so I have no idea if I'm gonna be able to do the job, but bear with me. Okay, do continue. I'm gonna speak Chinese. I'm very nervous because she says she's a little bit nervous. I can't speak English, so I don't have to practice today because everyone needs me to speak. She was saying she's a little bit nervous because she rarely do any English lectures, but today people demand that she talks about something, so. So today she's gonna talk about some of the special materials and system of this project. So today she's gonna talk about some of the special materials and system of this project. So today she's gonna talk about some special construction processes and materials in this project. First she's gonna talk about the ceramic. The two quite ceramic that you can see here, it's a very special material. It exists 1,000 years ago in Song dynasty. But it's usually used in, for example, bowls and tea cups, things like that. And you can see lots of such kind of ceramic tea wares and things in museums. But it has never been adopted in architecture. All of this material is purely made by hand. They use like somewhat 80,000 tiles in this project. And they were purely developed for this project. Because they are all purely handmade, so all the 80,000 tiles, they're all different from each other. So the material looks really beautiful on site because it's living. Not everyone can really produce such tiles, and they search everywhere in Longquan, the town, and they found three artisans who can produce the color that they want. Because the production processes is a family secret for the artisans, so they don't tell others. So if the artisan passes and this technique has not been passed along, then it's got lost. Our project is very special. There are three masters, master. One of them was completed a month before this project. So it has become a real... It has actually become a cultural relic. So a peculiarity about this project is one of the three master artisans actually passed away one month before they finished this. So this is really a last piece that's very unique. And that artisan produces the most beautiful ceramic as they sink in here. So she wants to say that traditional techniques, if we don't continue to use them, they might not continue to exist. Actually they cannot directly use the traditional techniques, so in each project they create some way to really melange it with some kinds of modern techniques. So in the process of using this technique, our master artisans, including the craftsmen, it's hard to accept such a new thing. They, including the design team, they all tell us that this is impossible to achieve. This... Sorry. Sorry. So their clients, their contractors, and also their collaborating firms, they actually resist using this because it's so hard. So they actually experimented on this technique in their own office, their own studios, and do mock-up one-to-one scale, as you can see here, models to demonstrate to their partners that this is actually feasible. So what you can see here in this photo is the first time that they realize this in the studio, and it's actually very different from what eventually you see here outside for the project. This is they use the real materials on site and did the mock-up experiments on site, and it was successful. This is the second special material that they use in this project. In fact, in the past ten years, we have actually used this material in different projects, or at least used it. They actually have used this material around Earth in past projects, in the past 20 years. The first one was actually 20 years. But it's still very special here because it's a national project, and it's very difficult and very rare for them to accept the use of a complete natural material. And their contractors, they have already tried on ... Yeah. I guess most of you have already understand. So just for those who don't speak Mandarin, they were saying that after the contractor, they were hired by the clients, and now who are going to be your contractors, so it's very special for them. So for each contractor who do the rem-Earth technique, they actually teach them the technique first. This is people from their studio and teaching the contractors outside how to construct a rem-Earth wall. This is on the construction site, as you can see. It's also very special because the construction time was actually the worst time for rem-Earth wall because it was winter, usually they do rem-Earth wall in summer. So people from their studio were creative that they made them wear the coats here so they create a small climate for the temperature. And this is after construction. The quality of this construction was actually really good. It's the top quality compared to their past project and this thing maybe because it's a national project so they were particularly serious about this. She wants to specially mention that in the rem-Earth wall they didn't put any additional materials. It's all natural. So when someday we don't want this architecture it can completely return to earth. Outside because many people don't know that this is rem-Earth and they thought this is just yellow concrete. This is at the public entrance, they also used the natural runners. As Professor Wang has addressed, actually this is the veneer that resulted from their architectural project. There's no like extra interior decoration. They're all according to a real architectural logic represented that way. There's concrete and round earth and then the tiles and they are co-presented here in a very precise way. Because the boundaries between different materials if you cannot control precisely it's actually very difficult. So she spends lots of effort and time on site to coordinate with the workers and contractors about the details and drawings about how the different materials contact each other. There's also wooden construction in this project. And this is also pure structural because many people thought this might be ornamental but actually they bear real force. This is the first experiment that they did here at the southern gate. This is the photo you have already seen. This is after they have completed it. This is the largest volume in this complex and it's 100 meter by certain meter with no columns as you can see. And it's all pure wood mixed with steel. It's the first experiment that they have done with this. This is the experiment of the pavilions. There's all wooden. So the structure is new but it was adopted from southern to province. This is the largest pavilions on site and it's a mixed structure with wood and steel because according to current Chinese regulation it's not possible to do pure wood. This is the third mixed wooden steel structure in this project. This is roughly translated as stacking wood structure. This is photo of the on-site construction. Even though this is a very small pavilion it's actually the most difficult part in this whole complex. Because wood has temperature and humidity it will change. We can see it in the wood because it's made of stainless steel. Once it changes it will break down. Because wood has distortions because of temperature and humidity and they have as you can see here the glass structure without frame. So it's very difficult to do pure wood here the glass structure without frame so if there's distortion from the wood then the glass would explode and break. So this pavilion was not finished especially the glass part until one month before the whole complex over. Because they have to test the wooden distortion and then put that into consideration of the construction of the glass part. This is another special material that I have used in this project and this bronze. This is the used this very large bronze tile on roof. This is the first experiment on site for the construction. Because many people who have been to site were very curious about how to deal with water and you can see that here the water channel. You can see the site of the installation. This is after the bronze tile is finished because this bronze is also a living material. So in the process of nature the wind blows and the sun shines and it changes every day. The biggest benefit is One of the good benefit is because it's metal so actually the maintenance is very low so the cost is very low also after when it's being used. Now we'll see some photos of the project through time and now this is 2020 in June. After half a year when they have finished with the basement construction these photos can take a look at the construction speed of China. This is March 2021. This is May 2021. Basically the main building is already on the ground. This is October. This is January 2022. Basically the foundation. This is April 2022. It's almost finished. You should also pay attention to all the implementation process during the pandemic. After completion we can what is this called? Bird view. Bird view. We can look at the relationship between the entire building and nature after the two crates have been fixed. We hope that our architecture co-exist with nature. Final conclusion. I can't just read this part. So they want to restore nature and naturally build way requires a special kinds of vision. Thank you. Thank you. Well amazing. Fantastic lecture. I'm sure there's going to be many questions so start preparing your questions. But before we open it to the audience I want to I mean I was fascinated by the lecture especially also the way you perform it. It was kind of a performance in a way. I love the way that the first part of the lecture actually was more about the restoration of the relationship between I would say human culture, life making and more than human forms of life and existence. These coexistence work through the boundaries. One was explained. The second part was the same at a very different scale. At the scale of the material and even the construction processes were addressed in the case of Luz part of the presentation. I want to go back to these two scales in which you operate. It seems that each of them has a very particular let's say strategy. At the level of the materiality I love this idea that construction needs to retake the terrain of the in-between and claim its capacity to go beyond this idea of the interiorism and exteriorism to see how it operates through construction, through structures to labour to the cultures of that. It seems to be a reflection at the scale of the building in its encounter with its surroundings. I want to articulate a little bit more how you work bringing coexistence to these two very different scales in which you put the same project, this reparation of the human and the modern human. I think that basically our way is more influenced by the, for example, Chinese garden. What's meaning about the garden? The garden is meaning not just means a beautiful landscape. For the Chinese tradition when the people want to live in a garden it means they don't like reality. It has an attitude about this world. The second, the garden means you should let the people go around in the garden every corner the people can go, kind of red. This means when you design an architecture it's an every corner you should think about the people can go. They know somewhere the people can go somewhere it's everywhere the people can go. The third thing I think is best attitude architecture is not something more similar to some monumentals. Monumentals is a very strong tradition in Europe even in China. We also have this strong tradition about the monumentals but garden is something opposite to the monumentals. After our building it's not a monumental thing it's an opposite totally different way and the first thing is very sensitive when the building will touch the nature you have this very sensitive feeling. Sometimes I even want our building finally will become some system we don't need a base we collect the building just to put on the ground not to destroy the ground. We want looking for something like this but now we still have to relate on this modern system but gradually we want like a more natural system mixed with this modern construction system. It's our dream it's still on the way. Do you want me to fix it? Then please translate. I think during the construction we used a lot of natural materials so in the construction process they have used lots of natural materials actually human body it would have this inclination towards some kind of intimacy with such kind of materials. Because your body feels very direct it affects it has no way to deceive people. It likes and dislikes because your body sensations very direct they cannot lie. If you like you like if you don't like you don't like. For example once when we went to our school to see his own project because he slept in his house he said that time he slept very well he said I've never slept so comfortably in that room because it's soiled for nature. One example our Lucisa has visited the campus to see his own building that was realized on campus and he just lived in the Waxiang Gas House that they show that was on the campus and he says that he sleep very well on the earth. So the natural materials have this warmth it's alive. So natural materials have a temperature and it's living. I believe people like it and it's alive. And she believes that people human like living things more. Why not the urban in a way your architecture references that you're using I mean you started your lecture with narration of what the urban has experienced in the last 30 years in China the exponential growth of cities and but in a way your architecture it's somehow distancing from those processes and finding I mean it was very beautiful the way that you were using images coming from from traditional the history of Chinese painting and the way architecture was reflected as part of larger landscape systems but I wonder why it's those systems are somehow making a distinction between systems that operate as more than human life or landscape and systems that we would consider infrastructural or societal or related to the making of the city In fact I'll just talk about the boundary. Boundary not just means the boundary with the nature boundary also means with the infrastructure with the city it's real surroundings so usually we want to in fact rebuild the city system in fact I don't think in China now the urban planning system it means they really make the city they make the city it's a very funny story you often use the very wide road for the cars and the high-rise buildings every housing project around means every project to be finished the developer project means that one part of the city disappeared it's not the city so you will see every our buildings, our project they build the system is one part of the city system it's a big building you can go around inside to the small street square even to some Houtong system something like this it's a very complex inside the city it means the city another side we want to combine the nature together it's a Chinese way the landscape part it's not just means a vision in fact in Chinese the garden also needs people to go in it's different from the Japanese way usually Japanese garden is just more similar to a painting you sit here, see the garden you can't go in, it's the Japanese way the Chinese way is the people go in, go up, go down something like this it's totally similar to the city structure it's a different way about something between city and nature it's something like this so that's why we talk about we can combine the two parts together it means we repair the city when the people use the large construction infrastructure destroy one part of the city we think about maybe we can use some special architecture way it's a lot about our effort you want to add something? maybe we can open to the audience there's many questions one here one there, one there many many questions let's start here but honestly our culture also has some downsides like sometimes can be kind of conservative how do you choose to interrogate or omit traditional culture in your works in order to avoid just mere replication of traditional buildings just let me transfer yeah our government has also announced increasing cultural confidence strength and cultural confidence but in our culture we have some downsides sometimes it's kind of conservative I want to ask how do you build traditional culture in your works in order to avoid just mere replication of traditional buildings in order to avoid I'll say first because I can speak Chinese so when we do every project we need to follow our master's orders first, we definitely don't do retro if we do this I will reject this project second so every time when they build a project they would tell their clients that we will use the traditional culture or the past we just use the cultural nutrition or the traditional but definitely use the innovative way to show it nutrition on the traditional materials but they approach it in a creative way in fact it's very simple you will say oh our project it's a more large scale than the traditional so it means you can't directly copy traditional buildings you have to do some transformation and re-creation but on another side we continue to think about what's the real meaning of a Chinese traditional system for example you will see even in the village you can see the building they use the natural materials they use some a pre-fabricated system it's very similar to the modern and they use the building it's a very light structure system even no base all the Chinese traditional building in fact no base they just put down the ground so it means they don't destroy the base destroy the ground destroy the earth and they they build a system they can control the climate and the temperature by the architecture way walls and doors something like this they open and closed they also can use the small pieces of material it means even the very poor people they also can build some beautiful small buildings that means what that means sustainable that means something we want to we want to build in the future sometimes when they talk about Chinese traditional things we use the words for example modern and traditional it's not right because it's China it's not the western world all this concept come from the western world in China it just means totally different way so when they talk about in that fashion something changed there's another one there let's take two questions because we were kind of late so your question and then there was one here right there and then we'll go back to the other three okay hi professor Wayne and Lu do you prefer me to speak in Chinese or English what oh both okay okay so I would like to ask like when you are dealing with the fusion of horizons how did you reconsider the western the corbusier like concepts about form, function or etc in the traditional Chinese context that means when you deal with the concept of how in the traditional Chinese context to re-explain the western the corbusier in the traditional form or function or some of its concepts let's take the other question if you don't mind thank you for your amazing lecture I'm just wondering how do you analyze a more traditional material but you need to use more complicated building system such as the ram earth as well as the ceramics I'm just wondering how do you balance the beauty or looking back at the tradition of the buildings as well as building efficiency and simplicity I can say I can say how do you balance the complexity of the process and the beauty of the buildings and the efficiency of the building and simplicity if you use you answer this in fact in the past 20 years more than 20 years for example we start to use the rampers in the 2000s it's the first piece and gradually we find it's important when they talk about how you can like the tradition for example the natural material system can live this means you can like the craftsmanship system live when they talk about design new architectural design you should give enough opportunity for the craftsmanship so you should design some double system how you can like this system with the molding system combined together this is our basic approach to design this means experience when you just start from design you should think about material construction way not just means start from the form or concept form concept is important but very important thing when they first state you should think about materials how you are thinking about the material this is the basic in fact for the traditional system also like this for example all the Chinese building is a wood structure is a majority structure so the carpenter is similar to the architect for the carpenter the first state is material he should know what kind of material he can use this is the basic feeling about this kind of architecture you want to talk? I will answer his question because the technology today we can't follow the traditional way she was saying she is going to respond to this question she was saying like technology has developed to nowadays we actually cannot use the ways in the past and many techniques are influenced by the west and many techniques they were very influenced by the west so in each project they actively try to create a dialogue it cannot be completely according to tradition but it's also not abundant tradition very interesting in the very beginning of a modern architecture when a new architecture language emerges you are fine he is very similar to a Chinese architecture oh he is building similar to a garden they have winding system you can walk in but the basic idea because he has experience in the Mediterranean area some old Middle East city something similar similar system about the high density about the surprise so many surprises one after another one it's the left here another one I think for example Miss Wendell I can think he is more similar to a Chinese because I read a book maybe it's true Barcelona at some time he read the book about Chinese garden in Suzhou so he used the very same column that comes from Suzhou the Chinese garden a very typical element the second thing is about the vision Chinese garden usually the facade is not important the majority you are in some building and to see the landscape of the building so you will find Miss Wendell's building is a very simple form it means no form when the people go in and you see the glass to see the landscape around the building this is the basic vision in Chinese garden I think he learned something maybe that's very funny it's a modern architecture some special way let's take the last questions in a row one here one here and one there hi thank you for the so amazing and exciting lecture since I did my undergrad degree in China so I'm lucky I have the opportunity to visit the Xiangshan campus in person and it was really impressive in terms of the space and the way how the light comes in the interior space and how you use the salvage material to build the facade but as far as I know in another way it's also a controversial project like most of the most of other great architectural works in the work so some students there they said sometimes they would get lost when they go into the cast because maybe the space arrange is more complicated so I think I think in my opinion it's important to like balance achieve the balance between the form and the narrative space and the practical function of the architecture so my question is when the final work, the construction coming out do you think is something out of your expectation your initial expectation or is just something you want thank you here we can have yours and then yours how can I repeat that no one I I personally went to the project of the Shanshan school I think it's also a because it's a wonderful project but at the same time it's also a controversial project like many other great architecture and then for example sometimes some students would say maybe it's too late because maybe too complicated and then I think it's important to reach an interesting space or interesting form and some more practical functions balance I want to ask you did you get this balance or when this project was built you think you think you think it's users' feedback will make you think whether it's expected or is this something you expected you want to try to be faster my question is super simple when I come to Colombia I ask every student who is not from China the same question do you know any architecture from China they have no idea or maybe they have only one person they know it's you so the question I want to ask today is as you said before there is only one and a half architecture in China are you holding the same idea today ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?