2005
Dutch Architects in Booming China
KCAP projects
2005
荷蘭建築師在快速發展的中國
KCAP設計專案
Friday, November 25, 2005
Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Blind Men Touching An Elephant
published in KCAP Situation, 2005
Four blind men are touching an elephant.
The first one touched the elephant’s leg;
he said: it is a tree trunk.
The second one touched the elephant’s nose;
he said: it is a water pipe.
The third one touched the elephant’s tail;
he said: it is a rope.
The fourth one touched the elephant’s ear;
he said: it is a fan.
To a blind man, the elephant is unknown.
A monster.
And the sheer size of the elephant
makes it impossible to be grasped at once.
It is in a ‘blind men touching an elephant’ condition that KCAP practises in China through a series of built and com-petition projects in both urban design and architecture. Many practices might have been put off by this experience, but KCAP’s resilience is obviously great. After losing a few competitions in recent years, the practice has now finally gained a foothold in China. Its first commissions, for facades and a community centre in Beijing, were completed in 2002.Since its first faltering steps, KCAP has now built up a port-folio of projects and has established a strong presence in China.
For us, the first completed projects were like designing an entire town in two weeks and just as exceptional. A private developer wanted a ‘Dutch’ architecture firm to design all the facades in a 21-hectare residential area. The urban layout, landscape design and house plans had already been determined. The facade design concerns a 1.5-metre-deep‘wallpaper zone’ based on that quintessentially Dutch building material: brick. The zone is composed of a primary layer of brickwork in different colours, and an intermediate zone containing – depending on the type of house behind –sun lounges, balconies and terraces. The result is a complex of houses that are similar in outline yet different in their details. You could call it a combination of Chinese-Communist uniformity and Dutch-Western individualism.
In designing master plans for huge suburban housing developments, we are confronted with several specific topics: very simple and strict local planning and building regulations and very specific contextual conditions.
Chinese Rules
Master planning for residential areas in China is constrained by a few, but very strict, rules:
1.Incidence of daylight
This is a noble urban planning measure to guarantee a citizen’s right to natural light. The spacing, the north-south distance between two buildings, is arrived at by multiplying the building height by a given factor. In Shenzhen the multiplying factor is 1; in Beijing it is 1.7.
2.FAR = density
The City Planning Authority fixes density guidelines and the developer tries to extract maximum profit within these guide-lines. The planner has to achieve a balance between density and the overall spatial framework in order to guarantee quality in a living environment.
3.Orientation towards the sun
Preference for orientation is influenced by feng shui and market demand. In northern Chinese cities, east-west orientation is taboo because of the harsh west afternoon light. In Shenzhen an east-west orientation is possible; this allows for experimentation with European perimeter blocks.
4.Ventilation and natural light
Kitchen, bathrooms and toilets all need to have windows on an external wall. This seemingly minor rule actually results in fractal shaped floor plans, as often seen in Chinese apartments.
5.Distribution + separation rule
Housing areas and commercial and cultural functions are strictly separate.
The combination of these simple rules could easily result in typical Chinese housing plans. Dense, fractal haped and anonymous apartments lined up in long rows of 4.5 to 18 storeys high. Each row is at a set distance from the next. All houses loyally facing south. A horrifying prospect.
How to deal with these strict rules especially after the experience of Dutch Vinex developments which show how problematic vast, mono-functional housing development scan be? The precise challenge of master planning is to bring identity, vitality, diversity and differentiation into this other-wise stiff and dominant matrix of buildings. This requires a strong spatial framework which integrates organization, landscape and traffic into one coherent system. The planner is tempted to act like Pope Sixtus. Special high points (for example landscape features, landmarks, principal public spaces) are connected to create points and lines in the spatial framework.
In Beijing Waterland, because of the density and regulations, the built structures follow an extremely rigorous pattern. There fore, landscape framework becomes the most important strategy to puncture and soften the building matrix. The framework connects external landscape features and principal public facilities to neighbourhood interiors. Each neighbour-hood centre has a specific landscape theme.
Chinese Context
1.Erasure
Project sites are mostly in tabula rasa condition. The site is sandy, yellow, dry and flat. Even if there was vegetation or topography before, it is usually bulldozed before we receive the assignment. When the project starts, we must look for contextual clues and seek ways to construct new relations with the larger urban context or external landscape assets.
2.Aspiration
China’s rising middle class aspires to Western values and formal expressions. This is the post-cultural revolution generation growing up through the reform years. In their minds, the contradiction between communism and market economy is resolved; coffee, tennis and pets equal lifestyle. This middle-class generation looks for non-Chinese cultural references. Projects briefs reflect this desire: northern European streets, Mediterranean architecture, modernity, freshness.
3.Enclave
Often in master planning briefs, the same typology is concentrated in one zone. For example, row houses are strictly separated from four storey walk-up apartments. According to developers, this is to ensure that higher-income inhabitants are not bothered by (slightly) lower-income inhabitants; it also makes property management easier. This inevitably results in a degree of class segregation but it is compensated by generous communal and commercial programmes such as parks, squares, sports and shopping centres. Neighbourhood perimeters are usually fenced by walls. However, walls in Chinese culture do not automatically mean solid, high and concrete. The wall is more an indication of territory. In our designs, they take the form of small canals or greenhedges. They demarcate the borders of related territories without visually disconnecting the spaces.
4.Speed
Short design periods and rapid construction make working in China extremely exhilarating and satisfying. The speed is mandated by a combination of factors: national economic growth, market demand, land re-zoning, government encouragement of consumption, etc. Speed is also facilitated by simple client-architect relations – there is no complex negotiation amongst stakeholders. Client gives brief, foreign architect designs and local architect modifies to local regulations and technology. It could not be simpler. The speed has its downside too. In the case of one of our projects, Beijing Waterland, the market is two years ahead of the government planning bureau. Our client (developer) has been busy planning the area since 2003, but planning regulations and guidelines were only announced in 2005.Result:wemust throw already developed designs (masterplan, housing typology, landscape concept, commercial centre) out the window and start again.
Communist relics and market economy reinterpretation The community centre, a socialist relic reinterpreted for the modern Chinese housing market, is a combination of property management office, security office, shops, food outlets and gym. It is a landmark linking a sea of houses to a larger urban context.
Beijing Green Town’s community centre (4500 m2) includes a swimming pool, restaurant and café, Internet cafe, sports hall, crèche, library and roof tennis courts. The form is a‘ weightless floating bunker’. The red concrete facade features a relief of giant Dutch daisies and tulips, 4 and 1.5 metre stall respectively – everyday motifs blown up to the scale of landmarks.
Beijing Riverside Forum (18,000 m2) defines the new generation of community centre. Programmatically it fully exploits and integrates collectivity, community and commerce. It has a sports centre (in- and outdoor), gym, pool, food outlets, commerce (supermarket and shopping arcade), hotel and display centre. Its tectonic expression is sculptural, abstract, 3-D, weightless, fluid and dynamic. The image resonates with a robust urban context. Elegant curving lines and layers of cantilevered eaves are the characteristics of its architecture. Viewed from any angle, Riverside Forum is always the focal point in the landscape.
Challenge
For European architects, China is a huge, unknown monster. High density and high quality living environments have to be designed at high speed. Local regulations mean that master planning can easily result in Plattenbau-like images. Each intervention is multiplied in large quantity; the scale and consequence is huge. Architecture and urbanism bearimmense responsibility.
As architects, we are often surprised by what the Chinese define as quality and beauty. We are forced to re-evaluate what is often taken for granted and come up with a better version. What is related to different political and cultural roots and circumstances? At the same time, we are challenged by their aspiration to emulate us. We are prompted to prove that European architecture is truly worthy of such devoted appreciation.
Four blind men are touching an elephant.
The first one touched the elephant’s leg;
he said: it is a tree trunk.
The second one touched the elephant’s nose;
he said: it is a water pipe.
The third one touched the elephant’s tail;
he said: it is a rope.
The fourth one touched the elephant’s ear;
he said: it is a fan.
To a blind man, the elephant is unknown.
A monster.
And the sheer size of the elephant
makes it impossible to be grasped at once.
It is in a ‘blind men touching an elephant’ condition that KCAP practises in China through a series of built and com-petition projects in both urban design and architecture. Many practices might have been put off by this experience, but KCAP’s resilience is obviously great. After losing a few competitions in recent years, the practice has now finally gained a foothold in China. Its first commissions, for facades and a community centre in Beijing, were completed in 2002.Since its first faltering steps, KCAP has now built up a port-folio of projects and has established a strong presence in China.
For us, the first completed projects were like designing an entire town in two weeks and just as exceptional. A private developer wanted a ‘Dutch’ architecture firm to design all the facades in a 21-hectare residential area. The urban layout, landscape design and house plans had already been determined. The facade design concerns a 1.5-metre-deep‘wallpaper zone’ based on that quintessentially Dutch building material: brick. The zone is composed of a primary layer of brickwork in different colours, and an intermediate zone containing – depending on the type of house behind –sun lounges, balconies and terraces. The result is a complex of houses that are similar in outline yet different in their details. You could call it a combination of Chinese-Communist uniformity and Dutch-Western individualism.
In designing master plans for huge suburban housing developments, we are confronted with several specific topics: very simple and strict local planning and building regulations and very specific contextual conditions.
Chinese Rules
Master planning for residential areas in China is constrained by a few, but very strict, rules:
1.Incidence of daylight
This is a noble urban planning measure to guarantee a citizen’s right to natural light. The spacing, the north-south distance between two buildings, is arrived at by multiplying the building height by a given factor. In Shenzhen the multiplying factor is 1; in Beijing it is 1.7.
2.FAR = density
The City Planning Authority fixes density guidelines and the developer tries to extract maximum profit within these guide-lines. The planner has to achieve a balance between density and the overall spatial framework in order to guarantee quality in a living environment.
3.Orientation towards the sun
Preference for orientation is influenced by feng shui and market demand. In northern Chinese cities, east-west orientation is taboo because of the harsh west afternoon light. In Shenzhen an east-west orientation is possible; this allows for experimentation with European perimeter blocks.
4.Ventilation and natural light
Kitchen, bathrooms and toilets all need to have windows on an external wall. This seemingly minor rule actually results in fractal shaped floor plans, as often seen in Chinese apartments.
5.Distribution + separation rule
Housing areas and commercial and cultural functions are strictly separate.
The combination of these simple rules could easily result in typical Chinese housing plans. Dense, fractal haped and anonymous apartments lined up in long rows of 4.5 to 18 storeys high. Each row is at a set distance from the next. All houses loyally facing south. A horrifying prospect.
How to deal with these strict rules especially after the experience of Dutch Vinex developments which show how problematic vast, mono-functional housing development scan be? The precise challenge of master planning is to bring identity, vitality, diversity and differentiation into this other-wise stiff and dominant matrix of buildings. This requires a strong spatial framework which integrates organization, landscape and traffic into one coherent system. The planner is tempted to act like Pope Sixtus. Special high points (for example landscape features, landmarks, principal public spaces) are connected to create points and lines in the spatial framework.
In Beijing Waterland, because of the density and regulations, the built structures follow an extremely rigorous pattern. There fore, landscape framework becomes the most important strategy to puncture and soften the building matrix. The framework connects external landscape features and principal public facilities to neighbourhood interiors. Each neighbour-hood centre has a specific landscape theme.
Chinese Context
1.Erasure
Project sites are mostly in tabula rasa condition. The site is sandy, yellow, dry and flat. Even if there was vegetation or topography before, it is usually bulldozed before we receive the assignment. When the project starts, we must look for contextual clues and seek ways to construct new relations with the larger urban context or external landscape assets.
2.Aspiration
China’s rising middle class aspires to Western values and formal expressions. This is the post-cultural revolution generation growing up through the reform years. In their minds, the contradiction between communism and market economy is resolved; coffee, tennis and pets equal lifestyle. This middle-class generation looks for non-Chinese cultural references. Projects briefs reflect this desire: northern European streets, Mediterranean architecture, modernity, freshness.
3.Enclave
Often in master planning briefs, the same typology is concentrated in one zone. For example, row houses are strictly separated from four storey walk-up apartments. According to developers, this is to ensure that higher-income inhabitants are not bothered by (slightly) lower-income inhabitants; it also makes property management easier. This inevitably results in a degree of class segregation but it is compensated by generous communal and commercial programmes such as parks, squares, sports and shopping centres. Neighbourhood perimeters are usually fenced by walls. However, walls in Chinese culture do not automatically mean solid, high and concrete. The wall is more an indication of territory. In our designs, they take the form of small canals or greenhedges. They demarcate the borders of related territories without visually disconnecting the spaces.
4.Speed
Short design periods and rapid construction make working in China extremely exhilarating and satisfying. The speed is mandated by a combination of factors: national economic growth, market demand, land re-zoning, government encouragement of consumption, etc. Speed is also facilitated by simple client-architect relations – there is no complex negotiation amongst stakeholders. Client gives brief, foreign architect designs and local architect modifies to local regulations and technology. It could not be simpler. The speed has its downside too. In the case of one of our projects, Beijing Waterland, the market is two years ahead of the government planning bureau. Our client (developer) has been busy planning the area since 2003, but planning regulations and guidelines were only announced in 2005.Result:wemust throw already developed designs (masterplan, housing typology, landscape concept, commercial centre) out the window and start again.
Communist relics and market economy reinterpretation The community centre, a socialist relic reinterpreted for the modern Chinese housing market, is a combination of property management office, security office, shops, food outlets and gym. It is a landmark linking a sea of houses to a larger urban context.
Beijing Green Town’s community centre (4500 m2) includes a swimming pool, restaurant and café, Internet cafe, sports hall, crèche, library and roof tennis courts. The form is a‘ weightless floating bunker’. The red concrete facade features a relief of giant Dutch daisies and tulips, 4 and 1.5 metre stall respectively – everyday motifs blown up to the scale of landmarks.
Beijing Riverside Forum (18,000 m2) defines the new generation of community centre. Programmatically it fully exploits and integrates collectivity, community and commerce. It has a sports centre (in- and outdoor), gym, pool, food outlets, commerce (supermarket and shopping arcade), hotel and display centre. Its tectonic expression is sculptural, abstract, 3-D, weightless, fluid and dynamic. The image resonates with a robust urban context. Elegant curving lines and layers of cantilevered eaves are the characteristics of its architecture. Viewed from any angle, Riverside Forum is always the focal point in the landscape.
Challenge
For European architects, China is a huge, unknown monster. High density and high quality living environments have to be designed at high speed. Local regulations mean that master planning can easily result in Plattenbau-like images. Each intervention is multiplied in large quantity; the scale and consequence is huge. Architecture and urbanism bearimmense responsibility.
As architects, we are often surprised by what the Chinese define as quality and beauty. We are forced to re-evaluate what is often taken for granted and come up with a better version. What is related to different political and cultural roots and circumstances? At the same time, we are challenged by their aspiration to emulate us. We are prompted to prove that European architecture is truly worthy of such devoted appreciation.
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