Last year, we profiled MAD, the pioneering architecture agency out of Beijing. This year, we are happy to report that MAD is not only continuing to be a leader in China’s creative industry, but also internationally.
In the summer of 2008, MAD hosted ten young international architects for a 3-day workshop just outside of Guiyang, a scenic city in Southwestern China. Each architect was tasked with designing a single part of the masterplan for a new city center, including buildings for cultural activities, finance and tourism. In such a culturally diverse and naturally beautiful environment, one of the goals of the project was to reconnect the natural and man-made world in a urban setting.
MAD explains the collaborative masterplan experiment:
China has become the global laboratory for urbanization, where the logical endpoint of current architectural trends can be seen, and the effects of leaving private developers to create cities can most keenly be felt. This experiment is not intended to create an idealized urban reality: rather, it is an attempt to push these trends to their purest form.
The participating architects were: Atelier Manferdini (USA), BIG (DENMARK), Dieguez Fridman (ARGENTINA), EMERGENT/Tom Wiscombe (USA), HouLiang Architecture (CHINA), JDS (DENMARK/BELGIUM), MAD (CHINA), Mass Studies (KOREA), Rojkind Arquitectos (MEXICO), Serie (UK/INDIA), Sou Fujimoto Architects (JAPAN).
Below are a few of the final designs. Visit MAD for more information.
[via DesignBoom]
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I love seeing the engagement with young architects…
February 17th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Personally, I see some big problems with this project. First, there is no cohesiveness to the plan. It literally looks like these ten architects each found a corner of the room to sit in and went about creating their design. Each building is screaming attention at the same volume, creating so much visual noise that there is no focus. A collage of software architecture copy and pasted together. What’s missing here are all the things that create a great city…scale, texture, light and dark, old and new.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Dave- I agree with your overall criticism. This is an “experiment” so maybe they are not going for the cohesiveness that a masterplan should have. At least they are upfront about it: “MAD is aware of, and actively encouraging, the failings and successes of this project.”
February 17th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Sometimes out of really off-the-planet ideas absolute genius arises, this seems like a space for people to get right out of the box and explore possible extraordinary solutions.
February 21st, 2009 at 7:39 pm