Vector architects   China   In the heart of the city of Jingdezhen, known for its porcelain production, stands this hotel designed with the idea of preserving the constructions of an old industrial complex, including the existing camphor trees. The entire program is organized a

Foster + Partners   China   This recently opened Apple store is in the heart of Shanghai’s Jing’an District. Generating a public space for encounters, a new circular plaza connects different walkways through several curving levels featuring vegetation and tiered seating from wh

Archi-Union Architects Fab-Union   China   The pavilion is planned as a recognizable gate to the park. Its complex geometry is the result of the calculation and adapts to the flow of visitors and activities nearby, while the color palette is a metaphor of the different programs offered by the

MAD Architects   China   Lushui, in the southwest of Zhejiang Province, China, is known for its lush greenery and valleys. Ma Yansong’s firm MAD Architects will be giving it its first airport for a predicted one million passengers a year. Located on hilly ground 15 kilometer

Foster + Partners   China   In the heart of the Yangtze River Delta, integrating existing water streets with new ones, this development mixes offices, dwellings, and retail spaces with a cultural center that provides a theater and exhibition galleries, under a roof that include

Wutopia Lab   China   The Chinese firm Wutopia Lab, founded by Yu Ting, has transformed an industrial yard in Shanghai’s Pudong District into a mixed-use cultural space characterized by wave-shaped roofs of blue aluminum and translucent plastic. Named Klein Blue Hills and

Junya Ishigami + associates   China   This kilometer-long museum in Rizhao, a city in China’s Shandong province, rises on an artificial lake with openings to let water in, flooding the floor. The 20,000-square-meter construction presents a dynamic of varying widths and heights. The obje

MAD Architects   China   Ma Yangsong’s practice, MAD Architects, has completed the reconstruction and expansion of the railway station at the center of the Chinese city of Jiaxing. With a high degree of precision the new station recreates the original, which was built in 190

LUO studio   China   Xiuwu County in Henan province, China, is known for producing medicinal herbs, in particular Rehmannia root. This is the context behind the exhibition hall of Houyanmen Village, in Huanfeng. Through on-site research on the techniques of processing Re

Zaha Hadid Architects   China   This cultural complex emerges like an island on ZhongXin Lake, in the Jinwan district of Zhuhai, China. With a width of 170 meters from east to west and a length of 270 from north to south, it is home to three institutions: a performing arts hub with

Vector architects   China   Located at the plaza known as Youyi Bay, in Beidahe, this building sculpted in concrete was designed from the section. The Meditation Rotunda on the lower level was arranged vertically and rises 9 meters, while the Skylight Music Hall on top of it is

Foster + Partners   China   Foster + Partners has won the competition to design a new center for Hangzhou, the capital of China’s Zhejiang province. At the heart of the Yuhang District the masterplan creates a mixed-use urban quarter that is green and sustainable, establishing

MAD Architects   China   The renovation to be carrried out by the Ma Yansong’s firm focuses on the Wanmicang warehouse on the south side of the Shanghai Zhangjiang Cement Factory, which was built in 1971 and ceased operations in 2013. Through the juxtaposing of old and new s

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos   China   Developed from a afar due to the pandemic, the project reinterprets elements from Chinese tradition, such as the ceramic pieces of the facade which, arranged in the production warehouse, evoke the Terracotta Army of Xian. Located at the foot of Mount

Zaha Hadid Architects   China   A dreamlike construction seeks to pay homage to the popular literary genre that has thrived in a city of millenarian tradition now turned into a dynamic hub of scientific innovation and research.

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   China   This mixed-used skyscraper designed by OMA / David Gianotten contains 60,000 square meters of offices over a 40,000-square-meter podium mall. Built by the real estate developer China Merchants Shekou Holdings in Shenzhen’s Shekou economic zone, the 2

Zaha Hadid Architects   China   Zaha Hadid Architects has won the international competition to build a cultural district by the harbor in Sanya, a city on the southern tip of Hainan Island, in China. A central axis connects the new district to the existing urban fabric, and divides

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   The warehouse of an old cotton textile factory outside the Chinese capital has been refurbished to harbor the main office and the retail concept store of a historical pastry brand. In allusion to their baking-industry uses, the brick buildings were t

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   The transformation of a residential tower into a hotel has been completed with a metal skin wrapping the structure of exposed concrete, thus adding a new layer to the building’s history. While the entrance tries not to stand out amid alleys, the vert

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   In a resort located on the shore of the Yellow Sea, a modest venue for exhibitions is designed to become a place where residents can socialize and interact with one another. With its solid envelope composed of faceted modules of concrete, interrupted

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   In what is an emerging industrial area, a top manufacturer of elevators has provided itself with a headquarters of formidable dimensions, yet is able to integrate the human scale. In what is a campus of workshops, showrooms, and storage interspersed

MAD Architects   China   The firm MAD Architects, headed by Ma Yansong, has unveiled its design for a cultural center in Anji, located in southeast China’s Zhejiang Province and known as the country’s bamboo and white tea city. The 149,000-square-meter complex features a the

Shulin Architectural Design   China   Amid an imposing landscape, these pavilions serve as a gateway to the southern part of the Qinling Mountains in Liuba County, China; a threshold between contemporary architecture and nature. Three large inclined roofs protect the functional zones tha

Jesús Díaz   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

The Guardian   Oliver Wainwright   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

Luis Fernández-Galiano   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

Luis Fernández-Galiano   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

Alberto Ballesteros   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

Luis Fernández-Galiano   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. 

Luis Fernández-Galiano   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

South China Morning Post   Xinlu Liang   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

The Economist   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

The Economist   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

CNN   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

Luis Fernández-Galiano   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

South China Morning Post   Sandy Li   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

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Millenary China celebrates a centenary. Founded in Shanghai on 1 July 1921, the Chinese Communist Party reaches the anniversary after having led a historic transformation that has turned the country into a political, economic, and technological super

The photography series by Manuel Álvarez Diestro is a look at the growth of new Chinese cities from the windows of bullet trains moving 350 km per hour. China’s railway network links up 550 cities. From Beijing to Shanghai, Tianjin, or Xian, later fr

Global Construction Review   A Chinese manufacturer has once again demonstrated the use of its modular construction method by erecting a 10-storey apartment block in a little over a day. Broad Group accomplished the feat in its home town of Changsha using bolt-together modular u

BBC   China's Zhurong rover has sent back a batch of new images from Mars - including a "selfie". The robot, which landed in May, positioned a wireless camera on the ground and then rolled back a short distance to take the snap. To Zhurong's right is the r

Scientific American   Jonathan O'Callaghan   Second only to the U.S. in a fully successful Mars landing, China is now set to explore the Utopia Planitia region of the Red Planet’s surface. And then there were two: today China says it safely landed a spacecraft on Mars—for the first time in its

The Guardian   Oliver Wainwright   After 20 years of frantic city-building, rustic China is in a death spiral. Now architects are helping to reverse the exodus – with inspirational tofu factories, rice wine distilleries and lotus tea plants. In the remote Chinese village of Caizhai, a

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