MAD Invites Young International Architects to Design A City Center in Southwest China

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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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