Wang Shu: An outlier in the Chinese architectural community (photo)

Wang Shu: An outlier in the Chinese architectural community (photo) Wang Shu and his wife Lu Wenyu at the China Academy of Art. The latter is also an architect. …

Wang Shu and his wife Lu Wenyu at the China Academy of Art. The latter is also an architect.

Wang Shu is the first Chinese architect to win the Pritzker Prize. Almost every morning, he comes to his studio and sits at his desk. On the table are several sheets of soft light brown rice paper, a cup for mixing ink and a writing brush. He first read Tang poetry for a while, and then began to practice calligraphy. He could see that his writing was leisurely and flourishing. Doing so, he says, brings peace to the day ahead.

Ancient art is not the only thing that distinguishes Wang Shu's work from the dazzling marble-and-glass commercial buildings that populate Chinese cities. His bold and exquisite architecture follows nature and combines ancient and modern styles; he uses cheap building materials, such as recycled bricks and tiles. His studio is called "Amateur Architecture Studio". There are no Macs in the studio, just a few terminals from the 1990s on the desk, surrounded by a pile of old newspapers and gathering dust. The China Academy of Art is located in the quiet and beautiful lakeside city of Hangzhou. Wang Shu's studio is near the Academy of Fine Arts. His six assistants are his students at the Academy of Fine Arts. They only come to the studio when needed. This afternoon, Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu (Wang Shu’s wife and colleague) opened the front door of the studio (a large thick wooden board), and there was no one around.

In February this year, the jury awarded the Pritzker Prize to 48-year-old Wang Shu, pushing the architect to the center of the stage. Wang Shu strongly disagreed with China's rapid urbanization process and used his unique architectural style to express his opposition. Wang Shu grew up in Xinjiang, China's western border. In China's architectural circles, he is an anomaly. He has only designed one apartment building project, located in Hangzhou, which consists of several 14-story buildings with deep balconies. The museums, universities, homes and old-fashioned brick parks he designed were all deeply influenced by ancient Chinese architecture. In May, at a Pritzker Prize ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, Vice Premier Li Keqiang embraced Wang Shu, despite the latter’s disgust at the cities the former’s economy had created. China's major media are full of photos of the two of them - one is the prime minister who is likely to be elected this fall, and the other is an architect dressed in black.

>He was eager to imitate the West, but abandoned Chinese characteristics. This was what annoyed Wang Shu the most. Why should China be turned into a copy of other countries, he asked. "We wanted to emulate Manhattan," he said over lunch near his studio. "I like Manhattan very much. It is a very interesting place. But it was formed over 200 years, and it is too difficult to replicate it. New York was not designed by designers, it was precipitated by time."

One of the reasons why he criticized excessive urbanization is that he realized that government officials and investors colluded to demolish old houses and dilapidated roads to make room for the construction of highways, airports, train stations, and residences, making huge profits from it. "Sixty percent of government revenue does not come from normal taxes, but from land sales," he said. Some reports say the ratio is even higher. Phoenix New Media, a Hong Kong media outlet sympathetic to the Chinese government, recently cited a report from the Ministry of Land and Resources that said 74.1% of government revenue in 2010 came from land sales, compared with zero in 1989.

Wang Shu sympathized with the poor farmers, who longed to live in big cities because they had air conditioning and supermarkets. But he believes that if given the opportunity to transform the countryside using sustainable methods, farmers will become richer. One of his most recent projects involved persuading the party secretary of a village near Hangzhou not to knock down the house but to renovate it with the original bricks and tiles. "People think it's either/or," he said, "but in fact we have a lot of room for choice. With some simple methods, we can live a modern and comfortable life."

Two architects familiar with Wang Shu's works emphasized that Wang Shu is particularly good at combining ancient and modern, as well as Chinese and foreign. "Wang Shu's work can be seen as a new kind of localization," said Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. "He is actually deeply rooted in modernism. His works are neither simple copies of Chinese architecture nor Western architecture, but a fusion of the two styles."

Zhang Yonghe, dean of the Institute of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an outstanding Chinese architect, said that Wang Shuneng "allowed us to see the vitality of traditional elements in contemporary culture and let us know that modernization is not the same as Westernization." He praised Wang Shu for his unusual integrity: "In today's China, it is not easy to resist the pressure of the market and adhere to independent values ​​​​like Wang Shu."

Wang Shu's works are very diverse, including museums, universities and residences. In the certificate of honor, the Pritzker Prize jury singled out the Ningbo History Museum, praising the building for its "power, practicality and emotion." From a distance, the museum looks heavy; from up close, the gray, orange and blue recycled porcelain tiles and old-fashioned bricks give it a rustic feel. The most striking feature of the six buildings of the China Academy of Art in Xiangshan District, Hangzhou is the white walls, which are reminiscent of traditional Chinese courtyards in classical Chinese ink paintings. The Library of Wenzheng College of Suzhou University is his work in 2000. It features a white cube house extending into the lake, with the front wall made entirely of glass.

Despite the prestige that the Pritzker Prize brought to Wang Shu, he still has not sought development abroad. One of his projects after winning the award was a hotel for visiting professors from the Academy of Fine Arts. It was a rammed earth building.

He always uses recyclable building materials whenever possible. In the 1990s, he matured in this area: he put aside formal architectural design and worked with craftsmen and builders to transform old houses into galleries, concert halls or hairdressers. In 2000, he was appointed professor of the Department of Architecture at the China Academy of Art, and returned to the ranks of first-class architects, participating in competitions and accepting commissions.

In recent years, when the provincial government and universities were excited about the new infusion of funds and commissioned the design of museums and new buildings (such as libraries), Wang Shu's ideas matured, and these also aroused his interest. He emphasizes the value of Chinese characteristics, but he is not a new nationalist. He and his wife enjoy traveling abroad with their 11-year-old son. In the past few years, they have taught together at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, with the theme of building "rustic" new suburbs based on traditional Chinese villages.

They are an inseparable couple and work partners. Their collaboration seems easy, sometimes fun, and they work well together. The Pritzker Prize jury considered awarding the award to both of them. They met in the architecture class of Nanjing Institute of Technology. He noticed the "girl in the green sweater," he said, and it turned out she was also from Xinjiang. "At work, I am more responsible for the design and she is more responsible for the construction," he said. Wang Shu had a serious personality and the demeanor of a scholar. Lu Wenyu is more outgoing. After they met, she said she made a condition: She could be his girlfriend, but she would not attend the after-school seminars he held in his dormitory for interested students.

When the judges of the Pritzker Prize visited China last fall, one of the most impressive works was the new Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art. Wang Shu often drives his wife to school. To be more precise, the wife was driving. Wang Shu did not have a driver's license and was sitting in the passenger seat. Their car was a regular station wagon. Some Chinese architects prefer Porsche, but Wang Shu is not convinced.

When the jury visited the campus, Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the Pritzker Prize, asked Wang Shu about the cost of building the campus, Wang Shu recalled. "I said the first phase is 1,500 yuan per square meter, and the second phase is 2,500 yuan," Wang Shu said he responded. Pritzker knew intuitively that it was a bargain before hearing the translations to $235 and $392. "It basically cost nothing," he told his colleagues. According to statistics from Langdon & Seah, a Hong Kong-based engineering consulting company, Beijing's famous office buildings cost US$952 per square meter.

That project on the university campus was my dream, Wang Shu said. The request for the tender was to build a campus of international standards that could accommodate 5,000 students on an abandoned rice field with a low budget. Xu Jiang, the dean of the Academy of Fine Arts, is an artist and Wang Shu's friend, and this time he is his client. The first decision is: try not to damage the natural environment. Build the school on the edge of the rice fields so there is open space all around. The second decision was: not to cover the concrete pillars with marble like the Academy of Fine Arts campus in downtown Hangzhou. That would be too wasteful. The campus is different, Mostafavi said, in that it is not bound by a master plan. "Each building here is unique, and together they have a sense of unity," he said.

When showing the campus, Wang Shu admitted that the final product was not perfect. Many holes are punched into the exterior walls of the school corridors to allow for views of the outside world. The walls and doors are made from local yew trees and are reddish in color. "These trees are cheap and grow quickly," he said. After 20 years, the wood will need to be replaced. The renewal time for fences made of bamboo is 5 to 7 years. "These are all sustainable," he said: "They are all easy to replace."

China has always welcomed foreign architects to design buildings in big cities, including previous Pritzker Prize winners Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid, so the fact that such a non-mainstream designer won the Pritzker Prize shocked the Chinese architectural community. Wang Shu called them a "normal group" and this group was silent on Wang Shu's award.

When delivering his acceptance speech at the award ceremony, Wang Shu questioned the system. Few people make such a bold move. Is it possible, he asks, that in addition to protecting "the modern professional construction system from above, we can also protect the rights of ordinary people to carry out their own architectural activities"? Does China really need "huge, symbolic and iconic buildings"? Are there “smarter ways to solve environmental and ecological problems”? It was surprising to express such dissent in front of senior government officials. Hong Huang, a columnist for the liberal news magazine Nandu Weekly, said, "It is voices like this that are changing China."

Young Chinese architects were inspired by Wang Shu's works and began to pursue different architectural styles. In private with these young architects, he was very talkative. "The young architects are happy," he said: "They see hope."

Thanks to Bree Feng for her help with this interview.

>Translation: Wang Yan