

The Rural Memory Museum in Fengwu has become a symbol of the revitalization of culture and community in an area marked by population exodus, demographic aging, and lack of public facilities. It is part of the Fengwu JI rural-revitalization initiative
The new 105-meter-tall tower designed by OMA-Chris van Duijn addresses its immediate urban surroundings with a sculptural facade of white ceramic stripes. It is the firm Jomoo’s headquarters, standing at the intersection of two contrasting contexts:
In Shanghai’s Daning Park, Wutopia Lab raised in record time this lakeside pavilion for the construction firm CSCEC Jiuhe East China Region. The project took off from the clear but difficult idea of keeping two existing buildings intact and without a
Located in a mountain landscape accessible through winding roads, the remote town of Songzhuang in the Chinese province of Zhejiang is home to the Z Museum of textile art. Devoted to the theme of weaving, it was built from a brick-and-concrete house
The Shanghai firm of Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu has turned an old chemical-research facility in the Chinese city of Dalian into a cultural and commercial complex named The Yard, using six buildings that used to house offices, warehouses, and workers’
(Text by Abalos+Sentkiewicz) The scheme drawn up by AS+ for Dongguan Binhai Cultural District is an innovative technical, cultural, and environmental composite that orchestrates and combines natural and industrial resources to come up with forms, m
The elderly of Chaishan Island still fondly remember that its rugged coast – now only visited by the occasional ferry – was up to not long ago a thriving port, where arriving sailors were welcomed under the trees that stood at the entrance into the v
A new district, designed by Heatherwick Studio, has opened in Xi’an, honoring the Chinese city’s legacy of craftsmanship and ceramics. The Xi’an Centre Culture Business District (CCBD) is south of the historic core, between the ruins of the Temple of
Erected after the devastating earthquake that struck Wenchuan – a county in China’s Sichuan province – in 2008, this memorial honors Hu Huishan, a 15-year-old high-schooler who perished in the cataclysm. The pavilion’s shape recalls the emergency ten
Located at the foot of some old caverns used for the storage of liquors, a new facility makes it possible to immerse oneself in the mountainous site and get close to them. Thought out to establish a connection with both the slope and the views of the
The declining environs of two temples have been revitalized through the insertion of new community programs, which punctuate a picturesque succession of courtyards and covered galleries. A museum, a hotel, a café, and a bookstore fit themselves into
The paving stones that were used in the Forbidden City in Beijing came from a manufacturing plant whose centenary history is presented by premises that explore the poetics of baked brick. The museum features a marshy park, fenced in like traditional
The facilities of the oldest Chinese distillery still in operation are surrounded by new production buildings with pitched roofs, where traditional fermenting and liquor-making practices are perpetuated. A courtyard connects the various volumes, whos
New additions to the Jianchuan museums, which house the country’s largest private collection, are three interconnected pavilions harboring the memory of the Cultural Revolution. Like temples in bustling areas, the galleries showing historical items a
The Jinji Lake Pavilion designed by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group – has opened. This is one of the eleven permanent pavilions forming a 13-kilometer promenade around Suzhou’s waterfront. The 1,200-square-meter building presents four interconnected parts
The Austrian firm Delugan Meissl has transformed an old industrial facility in disuse, located in Shanghai’s Pudong district, into a greenhouse with curving glass pavilions reaching a height of 35 meters. This unique space, the Expo Cultural Park Gre
If in the impressive Bibliotheca Alexandrina Snøhetta proved that roofs can become facades, in the symbolic Norwegian National Opera and Ballet they demonstrated that roofs can also be plazas, and almost twenty-five years later the echoes of both des
The Lujiatan Wetland Park Commercial Service Center, designed by MUDA-Architects under the direction of Lu Yun, is situated in Wenjiang District, Chendu City. The environs of the Jinma and Minjiang inspired the fluid and rhythmic forms of the complex
Just as Chillida paid tribute to the sea with geometrical shapes carved in alabaster, a moviehouse in Haikou alludes to the island’s coastal nature with similar abstraction and a heavy material presence: ceramic waves that form floors and ceiling vau
In a limited span of time, during summer vacation, the Nanhai Primary School in Shenzhen, China, was renovated. A series of operations were carried out to make the most of all useful floor area, activate residual spaces, and install solar protection.
In the eastern part of the city of Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province, a recently completed station becomes part of the country’s high-speed rail network. With a gross floor area of approximately 100,000 square meters, it provides eight platfo
On an underused plot on one side of the Lu Xun Memorial Museum stands this pavilion that hosts a variety of cultural activities. The local firm SHISUO Design office – established by Sanif and Shangshan in 2023 – had to work on a limited budget and a
The design for this 50-meter-tall cultural hub with a cone shape took into account how the sun changes course during the year. Located in China’s northeastern city of Yantai, the Sun Tower was conceived as a giant sundial composed of two connected la
China’s transformation in the 21st century can be felt on a visit there, as chronicled in ‘Six Watercolors’ (AV Proyectos 130), but is also documented through its cinema, which since the dazzling appearance of Zhang Yimou with Red Sorghum (1987) has
If the launch of the artificial satellite Sputnik on 4 October 1957 set off the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, that of the generative artificial intelligence DeepSeek’s R1 model on 27 January 2025 sparked the cyberspace ra
In the arena between traditionalism and the imported architecture spreading all over China, Gong Dong (Beijing, 1972) had the wisdom to find virtue in the middle way, balancing his local training with a fruitful sojourn in America. The ideas and form
Marco Bellocchio released China Is Near in 1967, a satire of bourgeois decadence which mixed Catholic morals, electoral opportunism, and Maoist revolutionary dreams. The ironic proximity of China referred to its ideological influence on the young rad
Uncrewed Chang’e-6 lander is carrying rock and soil samples in ‘very important achievement’ after lunar liftoff China’s uncrewed Chang’e-6 probe is on its way back to Earth carrying the first samples from the far side of the moon, in a major achievem
Welcome to Aranya, in Beidaihe Qinhuangdao, a surreal gated community that has turned this remote stretch of coastline into an unlikely mecca for China’s fashionable gen Z. The area was once home to a failed property development but, over the last fe
AutoFlight’s five-seater Prosperity eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft completed a significant milestone by autonomously flying the 50km (31 miles) route from Shenzhen to Zhuhai. The flight from Shenzhen to Zhuhai across the Pear
His stunning $1bn restoration project in Shanghai is a hit with the city’s influencers. But not everyone is impressed. The revered architect talks about the highs, lows and many risks of building for China... The Guardian. ‘I didn’t feel like I
The dystopias that J.G. Ballard imagined could well have been set in the Shanghai where he was born. With its babelic chaos, vertiginous pace, and constant mutation, the economic capital of the Asian giant is one of the world’s new frontiers, a metro
After the worst part of the pandemic, the Ukraine war shook the world tracing an ominous geopolitical scenario, which only science advances seem to alleviate.
In 1949, years after he was given his first camera, Fan Ho (Shanghai, 1931) emigrated to Hong Kong with this family, like so many others escaping the consequences of the Chinese War. This demographic shift worsened living standards dramatically and p
The China of Xi Jinping, reelected for a new mandate in time with the centenary of the Communist Party, challenges the West with its own set of values.
Few architects can claim to have materialized their most ambitious ideas at a young age, but Ma Yansong (Beijing, 1975), by the time he had passed his 40s, was already at the helm of a practice based in three countries and boasting a long list of com
Ancient Mandarin had no word for ‘architect.’ Builders were craftsmen, skilled but unschooled folk who did not mix with erudites and elites. So in China it took time for Western-style architectural practice to take root, through the decaffeinated mod
Lack of global governance is blocking the adoption of measures that would curb the effects of the planet’s already advanced process of climate change.
The Ukrainian crisis has to be tackled with perspective. This is precisely what Daniel Yergin does in The New Map, subtitled ‘Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations’ because the confrontation between nations is explained from the angle of its ener
China Evergrande Group, the world’s most indebted developer, was ordered to demolish 39 buildings on Ocean Flower Island, a project comprising three man-made islands developed by the company in China’s southern Hainan province, within 10 days. The or
The Chinese architect Zhu Pei, born in 1962 and trained at Tsinghua University and UC Berkeley, set up his practice in Beijing in 2005, and from there he has produced an extraordinary corpus of cultural works that have made him one of the leading fig
From the outside, it resembles an army base, an expanse the size of 45 football pitches filled with rows of austere, grey, three-storey buildings. The facility (pictured) on the outskirts of the southern city of Guangzhou is China’s first purpose-bui
Can it be done without harming the wider economy? October 6th 1979 was a beautiful Saturday in Washington. It was not the kind of day that augured wrenching change in economic policy. But on that date Paul Volcker, then chairman of America’s central
A maglev bullet train that can reach speeds of 600 kilometers per hour (373 miles per hour) has made its debut in Qingdao, China. Developed by the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation, it's considered the world's fastest train. "Maglev
The contest between the United States and China traces the outlines of the second Cold War. Both Xi Jinping’s assertive expansionism and Joe Biden’s determined policy of containment paint an oft-repeated historical fresco, that of a power on the rise
Buildings taller than 500 metres (1,640 feet) will no longer be approved, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Towers over 250 metres must be limited, while buildings taller than 100 metres must match the scale and fire
Li Xiangning
Zúrich 2023
Park Books - 280 Pages
Catherine Shaw (ed.) Reinventing cultural architecture
Vladimir Belogolovsky
San Francisco 2021
ORO Editions Publishers - 250 Pages
Daniel Yergin Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
Fu Xinian Twelve essays