The group meets at least once a month with event talks. The talks focus on an aspect of design and contemporary China, be it commercial, economic, political or cultural. A question and answer session follows. Event talks will be wide-ranging and speakers are selected from the group members and external experts in their field. The event is open for architects, designers, artist and curators but reservation is essential. If you would like to attend the event, please email contact@wedesigngroup.com
In WE Design event 07 July Jim Yang gave an introduction of the recent projects by Terry Farrell Partnership. His presentation then focused on project Regents Place. The project forms part of an ongoing program of investment and improvement at the Regent’s Place estate and have been formulated as part of a wider masterplan framework also developed by Terry Farrell and Partners.
“The objectives, including improving pedestrian links, optimising the existing cross roads through the site and creating new public spaces, have been achieved within the current scheme with 70,000 m2 offices, 145 residential units. The project has been on site for more than 12 months. With satisfaction of construction progress so far we are expecting the completion within the next 12 months. ”
Jim Yang works with Terry Farrell Partnership and is now running construction stage of Regent Place project.
Sophie presented a series of projects which she has involved, both in China and in the UK, from building design to master planning. Different design approaches were compared between projects in China and in the UK, in terms of designers’ intention, procedure and strategy. Moreover, she described different design philosophies between building design and master planning based on her personal experience. Her comparison brought interest and inspire further debate among the audience.
Sophie Lian works with Allies and Morrison Architects, and is currently working on Doha Diwan - a government office building project in Qatar.
In the WE Design event on 06 June, Yan Guo presented her conceptual project a 5.3 km2 Expo 2010 site in Shanghai. Based on the mathematics of circle and sphere packing, the resulting urban and architectural spaces are organised recursively in highly ordered hierarchies.
This process creates multiple scales of urban interiors, producing multiple effects within one continuous nested formation. Opposed to a figure-ground drawing, the nested and reversible solid/void strategy creates a porous mass in which inside/outside relationships become highly intricate. The recursive boolean substractions and additions accumulate chains of spheres used to organize connectivity at different scales, the distribution and mixing of program. This method also regulates a new kind of nested modularity of innovative building typologies to optimize connectivity and spatial experience in a three dimensional city.
Yan Guo works with John McAslan + Partners, is now working on the King’s Cross Station Regeneration project.
Manfred presented four projects on the event and expressed his interest in project scales and working with different cities. He emphasis on integration and collaboration which foster innovation into a wide range of scales: from macro urban climate down to micro interior spaces. The ever blurrier boundaries between professional disciplines become the vehicle of our design philosophy.
“We wish to design experiences, whether they are snap shots of rooms and corridors, or elaborate symphonies of cityscapes, we focus on every possible episode that makes up the full story. We no longer define our architecture, landscape or urbanism in a rigid manner; they are merely memorable places and collective incidents. “
Manfred Yuen is the founder of Manfred Yuen + Stephen Suen Architects.
In the WE Design event on 05 May, Hansong Li presented the winning entry of a competition with the aim to renovate the town house design. He said “We stretched the plan, creating larger ground floor living space and a light court as “wow” fact, providing the flowing space and dialog between bedrooms and living space. A “Living Wall” zone containing stair, cupboard, bathrooms, utility and other eco-kits works as buffer separating bedrooms from neighbour to increase privacy. There are flexible configuration and façade treatment to suit for deferent urban/suburban context.”
He then presented the practice’s successful research in Prefabrication Housing. This is a research programme to develop a volumetric system of modern method construction in collaboration with Polish manufactory. Three projects in south London were erected within a week each. The strength of this system comparing the rest of similar buildings around is that it provides the finished façade and roof as well as interior to minimize the work on site. “We designed various set of additional skins as ‘accessories’ to animate and differentiate the buildings features.”
Hansong Li has worked for PCKO Architects since 1999, and now an associate and main designer of the practice.
Yuan-Chun Lan presented his previous projects in Artech Architects in Taiwan. The projects include Shuang-Lian Presbyterian Church and CKS International Airport Terminal 1 Redevelopment. These projects indicate the reason for choosing sustainable environmental design as his main research area in the AA school of architecture.
Yuan-Chun Lan also presented his dissertation project in the AA. The objective of this project is to explore a low energy façade design for multi-storey apartment building in Taiwan. He hypothesizes that the best answer is a dynamic façade system that responds to environmental changes. The concept of dynamic design stems from the results of analytic work which indicates the importance of solar control and shows that different aperture sizes have different performance at different times. Moreover, the challenge of this investigation is to propose a simple, feasible and contextualized design that is based on the exiting context. As his conclusion to the study, Lan developed a simple ultimate design proposal, which involves a dynamic design that provides optimum shading, and can adapt to provide different solutions in accordance with the changing environmental condition.
At the end of this presentation, Yuan-Chun Lan also shared his current experience in environmental design in Foster + Partners.
Feng Xu presented his design & research on Vector Fields and Fluid dynamics as the conceptual and technical basis in the choreography of complex dynamic urban interactions. The exploration of Vector fields as an urban tool allowed an alternative mode of addressing masterplanning strategies, not as one that is fixed but as one that is relational to possible futures.
Developing different parametric systems (landscape/multiple ground condition, circulation, massing, program distribution and navigation) as a series of urban fields that correlate with one another to organize and integrate differentiated urban space. The resolution of the vector as a design tool explores different scales and levels of spatial, structural, material and programmatic differentiation by developing vector to vector properties from a local to a global field space.
Feng Xu studied in AADRRL and Tsinghua Univ.. He has worked for ZAHA Architects in many skyscrapers projects, including Nile Tower, Melbourne Towers, Brisbane Tower, etc. He also worked with Jesse Reiser in Foshan Competition. He’s set up his own practice and is the partner of PFFX Architects.
Speakers on the events include Hansong Li, Associate of PCKO Architects; Yen Yap, architect from HKR Architects; Feng Xu, architect from Zaha Hadid Architects; Yuan Chun Lan, SMG specialist from Foster + Partners and Song Yue, an independent film director based in London.
All rights reserved. We Design Group 2008. contact@wedesigngroup.com
