one for coming I'm glad you're here I
was just taking a pass around the
studios and I got to say I'm glad to see
each of your faces here tonight welcome
back this is the College of Architecture
and Design lecture series tonight's
lecture is supported by the Robert B
Church Memorial Lecture Fund I want to
say thanks to the committee as always to
that's Jennifer Akerman Gale Fulton
and Diane Fox and myself and also to
just the various staff who facilitate
all this stuff so a lot of work goes
into it there's a lot of people who have
responsibilities all over the page
tonight I have the distinct pleasure of
introducing Lyndon Neri the
co-founder with Rossana Hu
who design design and research office an
interdisciplinary architectural design
practice based in Shanghai China
so  Lyndon flew all the way from
Shanghai yesterday it's about 5:00 a.m.
I think for you with they also have an
additional office in London I'll quote
quote them and saying that Neri
and whose location is purposeful
with Shanghai and in my estimation China
at large considered a new global
frontier Marianne who is at the center
of the contemporary chaos I think it's a
true honor to have  Lyndon here this
evening from such an amazing recognized
and awarded design practice they have a
truly international profile with
projects and publications and awards
from around the world a quick glance at
their website the map feature on their
website shows a global reach well while
the list of the wards I'm afraid is too
long to unroll fully here I'll mention a
few and that Neri andd Hu have been named
designers of the Year by wallpaper
magazine in the UK Asia designers of the
Year by Miss honor no J in France in the
US and perhaps my favorite 2018 Lyndon
was named the architect of the Year and
GQ China's Man of the Year
I like that one there international
project is reflected in the composition
of their office and I'll quote again by
saying Neri and who has composed of
multicultural staff who speak over 30
languages the diversity of the team
reinforces a core vision for the
practice to respond to a global
worldview incorporating overlapping
design design disciplines for a new
paradigm in architecture they accomplish
all this through what I think is an
astonishing attention to detail to craft
material and light qualities and
experiences the level of rigor and
articulation of their architecture I
think is difficult to match anywhere and
their care for each project is not
seated in some style or ideology but
rather if I could risk a personal read
the overarching ideological approach for
Neri and Hu at least from my vantage is
a simply a deep commitment to the work
at hand and what richness could be had
in the in the excuse me in the in
habitation of space I feel very
privileged to have such quality in the
building tonight and so without further
ado please join me in welcoming Lyndon Neri
can you hear me I'm supposed to look up
but I can't see him okay I'm gonna do
this alright
good evening everyone thank you Mark for
your very kind introduction I'm
delighted to be here tonight and I want
to thank Dean Poole director Jason Young
who until yesterday I thought was
Chinese I've heard of him from many
friends and for many years and for the
longest time I thought he was Chinese
and that's probably the reason why I
accepted this invitation then when I
realized that perhaps tonight he was not
gonna take me a Chinese restaurant I was
disappointed but I want to thank the
school and everyone for the kind
invitation to give this lecture tonight
I am Lyndon Neri and I apologize that my
partner Rosanna who who is truly the
better half the smarter half and the
taller half the prettier half but you
know I'm the one who came to Tennessee
so you got to give me the credit she
can't come tonight
but we are a firm base in Shanghai this
is our office I always like to show this
office partially because you you see
when you have a group of people in China
that gathers together the cup starts
circling around your office and that's
the truth they just don't like the idea
of people gathering together and talk
about things that they're not supposed
to so I'm just gonna show you a quick
film of our office we no longer
we brought great
fifteen years ago 13 years ago
the following I'm gonna focus on these
examinations we have to deal with urban
issues the rapid development and
demolition of the city that we practice
we have to deal with
and the irritation and last but not
today is inheriting the remnants of
China's an opportunity to reutilize
artifacts of access we're showing you
this office because we thought
because of time and I know you guys
aren't all chat I cannot jet lag but you
guys are I'm jet lag
my English I speak Chinese please
forgive me I'm gonna stop there because
I think we have about seven films so
don't be discouraged that the the first
film was cut short
urban issues rapid development and
demolition so this particular image
between 2000 to 2010 urban land expanded
by 83% urban population grew by 45% this
image of Janka depicts that whole notion
of a new city that rises from the ashes
condemned mother's image of taunting
which is middle of china here it shows
us that with urbanization changing the
landscape of cities and altering the
texture of daily life it gives rise to
new notions of urban leisure so people
on weekends this is in many ways the
Central Park of Tong ting by 2020 60
percent of China's population will be
living in urban areas that's
approximately 800 million people at the
same time rural issues disappearing
village culture and in many ways a part
of our heritage goes with it between
2000 to 2010 the number of villages
dropped from 3.7 million to 2.6 million
an average of 300 villages villages lost
per day that's outstanding that's really
crazy not because the government's
demolishing them but because there's an
influx of people going to the city and
therefore villages are left with the
elderly and the super young so China's
vernacular villages were formed based on
confusion family family ideals Confucian
family ideals were clan based
settlements created clusters of home
giving rise to traditional village
without that traditional family setting
many
of these villages will not only erode
but he will disappear in addition to the
urbanization plan the Ministry of
Housing and Urban rural development had
has made a vital list of historic
villages dependent on the age of the
structure in the intangible cultural
heritage that exists within and in that
list the catalog of 9700 examples of
intangible cultural heritage 80% are in
the rural area not in the city and yet
many people are moving to the city and
leaving
what is named as cultural intangible
cultural heritage to rot by itself this
particular artwork is is quite daunting
only 40 percent of rural migrants are
willing to return to their farms only 3%
among those born after 1990 each empty
chair representing an absent family
member who has left the village to
pursue opportunities in urban centres
the next issue is adaptive reuse dealing
with access many of our projects fall
under the category of adaptive reuse and
deal with local history and culture in
much of our work there is the recurrent
theme of juxtapose posing old and new
reinterpretation of local topologies and
a desire to celebrate and elevate the
mundane in fact we were a victim as I
was telling you of that just a few
months ago when we were evicted from our
office of 10 years
one out of six families in China have
been evicted and relocated since early
1990s this is the context in which near
Ian who intentionally situates itself as
mark had said as a practice we are
constantly trying to insert meaning into
our work by drawing from these contexts
both in geography and history for that
we often find ourselves looking at the
past
in other words working with the notion
of
nostalgia and this is the obsession this
is one obsession I want to talk about
given the time limitation and the
projects I'm gonna show I want to focus
on this particular terminology
reflective nostalgia as early as 14
years ago when we started the firm in
Shanghai we became interested in almost
obsess with a notion of nostalgia we
gain useful insight from a critical
examination of the term and its origins
theories that surrounds it applications
in various forms of disciplines and the
various architectural extensions and
possibilities this reading offers us
nostalgia is a learned formation of a
Greek compound consisting of nostalgia
meaning homecoming a Homeric word and
algis meaning pain or a coin around the
end of 17th century as a medical term
nostalgia was thought to be a disease
commonly afflicting soldiers and sailor
who forced to leave their homelands
began to manifest symptoms such as
fainting high fever and even death
all later attributed to actual physical
illness it was only towards the first
half of the 19th century that nostalgia
began to attain its current modern
meaning both in literary and everyday
usage now commonly understood as a
sentimentality of the past it should be
noted that the object is of longing is
transferred from the concreteness of
place to the invariably abstract notion
of time time being irreversible the past
being forever past nostalgia can only be
defined as the presence of an absence
so if you look at the photograph to the
left by Michael Wolfe
of a cityscape in Hong Kong and yet if
you go to Bangkok or since then or many
of the major metropolis in Shanghai it's
actually very similar it produces
anonymous cities and the destruction of
local culture image on the right is the
lane how the lane in Shanghai that
actually starts to create that vibrancy
and difference when you go to Bangkok
when you go to Shanghai or when you go
to Beijing it is the street life that
starts to differentiate you from the
anonymous building and this is where
we're very interested in all the rosy
had this quote does the union between
the past and the future exists in the
very idea of the city that it flows
through in the same way that memories
flows through the life of a person and
always in order to be realized this idea
must not only shaped but be shaped by
the by reality this shaping is a
permanent aspect of a city's unique
artifacts monuments and the idea we have
of it in the architecture of the city
here Aldo Rossi offers us a hint when he
articulates memory as a flow and the
past and future of the city as a flow
but are we being too naive is this
overly nostalgic longing for something
that must go away holding on to a
romantic notion of the past that may
have never existed yet we're very
comforted and reassured about Lenna poem
which unfortunately she passed away
about four years ago and she talks about
the difference of restricted nostalgia
and reflective nostalgia and in here we
as a practice
absolutely understand not only
understand that resonate restaurateurs
nostalgia resonates well with us is more
literal sorry the reflective nostalgia
resonates with with us as opposed to
restricted nostalgia it thrives under
longing itself and delays the homecoming
wistfully ironically desperately it does
not follow a single plot but explore
ways of inhabiting many place at once in
imagining different time zone it loves
details not symbols so for a lot of us
if you've seen a lot of our interior
work oftentimes people think we
celebrate ruins but ruins makes us think
of the past that could have been in the
future that never took place and that's
about Lana in her book in Rowan as she
coined the word Rina phelia talks about
the tantalizing notion of the utopian
dreams of escaping the irreversibility
of time at the same time she said the
fascination of ruin is not merely
intellectual but also sensual ruins give
us a shock of vanishing materiality in
our projects that deal with historic
sites and existing buildings we have
been known to celebrate a ruin there is
certainly the power of the visceral
experience of a decaying surface whose
history is written into every crack and
crevice but that alone puts it in danger
of mere sentiment Oh manipulation or
even less critically a matter of style
so for us ruin is more than just
sentimentality it's a way of
understanding perhaps a part of history
a sense of reflection that allows us to
understand the future the key for us is
actually in the relationship between old
and new not simply to put relics on a
pedestal for worship when we choose to
keep a section of a crumbling wall like
the previous slide for example we often
frame and encase it behind glass in an
archival fashion or juxtapose it
directly against a section of a smooth
white wall this is a way to distance
oneself from the actual material reality
of the wall instead of focusing on the
thing itself the intention is to
highlight our desire or longing for it
and what it represents many of this
images some of our restaurants some of
our restaurant have that sort of
sensibility sometimes it is simply
inserting new doors windows lighting
fixtures and built-in furniture to bring
about this tension between old and new
we've inherited a lot of historical
buildings that we can't touch so in many
ways it's using doors windows and
lighting fixtures as apparatus to create
this tension this is a restaurant for
John George in Shanghai on a listed
historical building along the Bund and
you can kind of see many of our
insertions in which some of the
buildings as raw as they are can't be
touched I will talk a little bit about
our hotel project later again dealing
with old and new for a museum project in
Kuala Lumpur that we recently won we
were given a shell of an existing
building this building was the former
office of the British planning
department that was in charge of the
master planning of the Malaya railway
network when Singapore and Malaysia was
one and by merely inserting and having
this tension through that circulation we
allow this experience for people to
experience old and new we inserted all
our program into the existing building
the public experience is along the
perimeter which also serves as the main
connector for the museum when you are in
this space you experience both the old
and the new these are some of the images
for a competition we won in London for
the magistrate courthouse in Covent
Garden this was a listed building so we
could not touch the exterior in front so
this was at the back we allowed so we
focus our proposal by adding an
insertion within by creating this
lattice brick word to bring about a new
life in this new hotel conversion some
of our project deals with typology the
lane house typology the courtyard houses
typology or even down south what we
called in fujian too low too low
typology which is the round circular
courthouses that to the left the slide
to the left is an image of our camper
office the Kemper office store in
Shanghai capturing a frame opening into
a double-height atrium where shoes are
hanging and displayed reminiscent of the
glimpses one could get in an old
alleyway house shown in the robert van
der Hulst image on the right and again
that is a sectional quality of that Lane
house interpreted obviously in an
abstract manner sometimes we play with
the notion of Attic that is common in
Shanghai Lane houses in our design for
interior spaces for creative agency and
I will I will talk a little bit more
about this project later but in our
practice we often examine vernacular
topologies such as the lean on that have
persisted for centuries and generations
or the courtyard houses up north our
research and investigation into these
topologies has been a fertile means of
being critically being critical in our
understanding in how to tie our projects
into a broader historical context and
lineage the courtyard houses originating
in the northern regions of China for
example reveals the inseparable
relationship between humans and nature
the integrity integration of public and
private space as well as the family
familial hierarchy which shapes every
aspects of Chinese living
and sometimes we play with the study of
investigation and research not only in
topologies but also vernacular
construction materials and methods
similarly as with the approach to
typology the idea is not to transplant
and out that outdated modality directly
into our projects rather than to
interpret them anew both traditional
architecture as well as modern Breughel
architecture is being constructed with
extremely humble materials break
concrete plaster and the construction is
extremely rough but there's a certain
beauty and simply simplicity within this
roughness that should be embraced rather
than look down upon if you try to do
work in Japan and try to ask them to do
rough things it's almost impossible just
like the Chinese could never do a
perfect simple wall so you have to
celebrate what they're good at so the
first project I want to show you in
light of the obsession I want to talk
about is a house that we were
commissioned about twelve years ago and
you have to remember our practice is
about 14 years old and by then I didn't
really have any architecture work so in
fact this was considered our first
architectural work and when someone came
to me this mint from Hong Kong he had
asked me to do this house and his brief
was very simple I'm gonna come to
Shanghai over the weekend with two of my
friends and we're gonna find ourselves
through this house we're gonna find
ourselves the meaning of life and what
the purpose is when someone gives you a
brief like that you don't ask questions
you just said perfect well do whatever
it takes but you have to remember this
was a lane house so a lot of Lane houses
as I mentioned before they were the
dominant fabric that made urban Shanghai
the intoxicating place that it was in
the 1930s but many of these buildings
were rapidly being demolished
and by now only a third of them are in
place in the center of the city they're
taken over by high-density developments
all over the city and so you kind of see
this condition very interesting dance
city condition this is the site map so
what we did was we went to a section
that is commonly seen in caricatures or
cartoons of lane houses and it's always
lit level so our strategy was to rethink
the typology of the lane house keeping
the split-level formation a typical
trade two-lane houses in the city and
add spatial interests through new
insertion and skylight to highlight the
architectural integrity of such a
typology contemporized it for today's
lifestyle take a look at the floor plan
so when we naturally present this he was
not convinced because he was planning to
stay on the third floor his friend one
of his friend on the second and the
other on the first floor and they would
come once a month so there are two
distinct spaces the served the servants
are usually living behind an up front
would be the main house and so what we
did was we took the most private part of
the house which are the toilet and the
bathroom and put it next to the most
public space which is the stairway and
we argued that this is probably where
his friends or he himself will be
exposed to them while showering and of
course we're not that crazy we have
curtains but he was even crazier than I
was because he decided that curtain was
not needed so to keep the spirit of that
- you'll see in the picture to keep the
spirit of the typology alive a new
continuous metal stair was inserted to
replace the old decaying wooden stair
that was not too cold and you can kind
of see our diagram
and so here this is the picture to keep
these spaces pure and rigorous all
toilets were inserted into the new next
to the stair spaces and you can kind of
see yes you go up and yes trust me there
are art curtain tracks but then he was
really excited when I did this because
obviously he lived on the third floor
you so he has control over his own
bathroom but not his friends and he
figure if it's his house and they're
staying with him that he controls and
with that kind of interplay between
client and architect I don't even there
as his sexuality and that was just not
important to me as long as I get to do
what I wanted to do and so these were
image the bathroom conceivably the most
intimate spaces of each apartment are
inserted next to the most public
stairways separated only with not really
a sandblasted hardly sunglasses glass
divider so and you can kind of see what
we did the layer of this particulars is
a rooftop image architectural II the
decorative elements added over the last
60 years were stripped off and large
openings were created on the frontal
section to improve light qualities to
the public spaces of each apartment it
is as if we have slice of 60 years of
time and now forces the building to
embrace its community without a mass
without a facade literally urbanisticly
it is reshaping the leaning typology
with the transparency and modernity that
fulfills the vitality of contemporary
life at the same time when your
neighbors could gaze into your everyday
life you have the city open to your
private viewing as well the city becomes
your art and in many ways the nose the
notion of nostalgia here in line within
its reflective vein subverts the idea
that nostalgia could only look backwards
towards the past we do believe that too
long for what loss also has the capacity
to create something
new and you can imagine how excited he
was with this particular condition
unfortunately he passed away after after
he moved in a month after he moved in it
was rather sad he wrote me a very nice
letter and of course two months later
his wife came to our office and said
Linda I'd like to know what my husband's
brief was for this house as an architect
you have to know how to tell stories but
you have to know how to do constructive
lies so I said this was supposed to be a
surprise for you a birthday a birthday
gift for you I didn't really know her
birthday but I just pulled a fast one
and she was she was quite touched but
you have to do anything even to save a
marriage that's important the second
project I want to show you is actually
within the vein of total design which we
often use as one of our obsession but
this is a flagship store in Korea in
North Korea when a North Korean company
comes and as a Chinese practice to do
their headquarter you have to really
question their sanity because
historically two countries never really
not as bad as Japan and China but Japan
and Korea is not not the best either so
when they come and approach us we
thought they wanted to do their
headquarter in Shanghai which would
logically make sense but to do it in the
Gangnam area which is basically in New
York it would be the soho equivalent in
new york i was quite surprised and so we
proposed this idea of lanterns and so if
you look at our analogy i think
so you need to Lantern you know as an
identity as a journey and as a memory so
what we did was we said what if we
create the idea of this inserted Lantern
the structure itself becomes the po che
and the po che itself becomes the
structure as well and so when you go up
and down the stairway you don't really
need walls within and we were allowed to
demolish the existing building but he
was a good friend of mine a fairly
famous Korean architect so I thought to
keep that relationship alive it was
important that we just so you can kind
of see how the model work that's the
image we'll be able to tell you and it's
interesting because this flagship I
don't know if you've heard of Soho so
you probably have not because a lot of
New Yorkers have not heard of it so I
don't think down here in the South
people probably have heard or so what so
nothing against the South but uh-huh it
is basically like lemare of Asia it's
very expensive and obviously this group
it's called amore Pacific owns 24 of
these cosmetic brands so when you think
you're buying so what so are you buying
other brands thinking that is their
competitors it's all theirs so their
main headquarter was recently designed
by David Chipperfield and was just
completed so you might have seen this
white box quite beautifully done but he
was quite an enlightened client and
his goal was to make sure that all the
furnitures were designed by us but we
couldn't really do that so we did the
rugs designed by us that chair is
designed by us but obviously that
benches by Arne Jakob Singh
so we start convincing him that he can't
just be on there in hulis as much as my
ego sometimes would entice me to go the
other route and so we did when there's
the core we actually clad it with
stainless high-gloss stainless steel so
you have sort of one project in which
all the lights and these apparatus this
wall supposedly grid the structure that
forms the four grid of the lantern also
serves the apparatus for all the display
and liking
punches
on the ground
I
so the next one it's gonna be a movie as
well I can't guy so there's a movie
night here tonight that way I don't have
to speak as much I noticed my English
already start to slur and start towards
using wrong words but since resent I
can't come and I noticed that there are
product designers that are coming in
here I'm gonna show you a product design
we did about seven years ago and
it's the first time we worked with auto
industry to develop a product and we
wanted to have a product that has the
aspect of you know high-tech and using
carbon fiber and exploring the limits of
that material through the structure
qualities the product is a picnic basket
for someone who might drive a Jaguar on
a weekend when we were as into this
project we had to think of a number of
things one was Jaguar and its relevance
to it make British so naturally the
picnic basket came to mind but big
Chinese designers obviously we had to do
something that somewhat relate to the
context where we practice so we thought
what would be something similar to a
picnic basket you know Chinese contents
so we thought of Vietnam nuages
a lunch box it's interesting because we
were trying to also create an object
that will be incorporated
into Jaguar and since the interior of
Jaguar is already so perfect we thought
a picnic basket would be a great
addition from a tea set to a candle
holder to a necklace to a wooden plate
things that are very well the Chinese
there's a lot of thinking behind you
know how the inside of the box is this
related to the outside there are these
openings of one that allows you to
superior to the interior of the box so
there's there's a lot of architectural
qualities about to to this piece
this is one piece that allowed us
actually as architects to explore the
spatial quality of an object in sort of
its sectional form but at the same time the
blurriness of public and private is also
seen through this means when you're
carrying it outside in many ways people
can see a glimpse of what you're
carrying you know what you're going to
actually eat that day or what that kind
of celebration a chapel in Suzhou Suzhou
is about two hours away from Shanghai
it's west of Shanghai and the client
came sorry that image is rather blurry
the client came to us and had hired and
wanted an American architect by the name
of Cobb
Chou Macau from New York to do a hotel
and that finger that long finger is
they've hired Jung ho Chang to do villas
and we were asked to do the smaller
finger to the right and at the same time
we did that village to the left and they
had an older village and what they
wanted to do was incorporate the old
village with our new bill with a new
village that they've created but in the
middle of it there was this Chapel and
when the client came and said do you
want to do this because they want to
make it a feature building within the
larger village zone obviously it became
quite exciting to us not only occupies a
prime location visible from the main
road it allows us to do a public space
that
would be quite interesting from a
cultural point of view so as I was
telling you a while ago we start
launching into not so recent but maybe
five years ago a research not only on
vernacular typology but also vernacular
construction methods and so we thought
in the jung-soo area what better to
actually in this wet climate of jung-soo
to take on these soft greens and gray
some of you might call it mold but we
call it the brushstroke of a Chinese ink
painting or at least that's what I told
the client and so similarly as with the
approach to topology the idea here is to
take then this recycled brick these old
bricks that were demolished from closeby
villages in fact comprised of three
villages and bring about a new
interpretation of how the brick reading
wood sketches that I actually did
you see there's that different level so
it's architectural language is derived
from similar elements found elsewhere in
the projects such as the undulating
brick walls and floating white volume
that we had done for the villa next door
but they are here taken to another level
of articulation the brick walls begin to
break down to an even more refined scale
where different heights of walls
interweave with each other to create a
cure graph landscape journey leading
into the building itself so the white
volume here receives a special treatment
it is composed of two layers the inner
layer is a simple box punctuated on all
side with scattered windows while the
outer layer is a folded and perforated
metal skin a veil which alternatively
hides and reveals in the daytime the
white box emerges shimmering gently in
the sunlight in a subtle way it exposes
its content at night the white box
becomes a jeweled light beacon in the
projects there its various windows
emitting a soft glow in all direction
you've seen some of these images and
there's this path that leads you down on
a sloping site along the river
but what was interesting was sort of the
side of the chapel which is the grand
stairway that was really the fire escape
at the same time we made it into a
bigger and wider public space and in
China you can when you have a space of
worship you need to give people another
alternative space that's mandatory by
the ministry of religion you can't just
have one place of assembly you need to
give people an outlet just in case they
don't feel comfortable and so this sense
of nostalgia for us that once was very
important in a Chinese community which
is that the notion of assembling is
constantly challenged so you will see
that we spent just equal amount of time
in this particular space as you walk up
and down at actually you can't really
tell it looks like concrete but it's
tear up so all the way to where the
handrail is and the rest is concrete if
there's a bronze detail along the path
so we took just as much care with the
space outside of the main chapel and
create sectional quality to this space
that would be conducive as you go up to
the rooftop garden interior the building
visitor continues on this guided journey
through the pre-function area and then
into this main chapel space which
features a light-filled 12 meter high
space
there's a seamless integration with the
surrounding nature as picture windows
frames various man-made and natural
landscape a mezzanine level hovers
overhead to accommodate extra guests and
includes a catwalk encircling the space
allowing 360 degree of viewing angles
the mezzanine is integrated into a wood
louvered cage element which wraps around
the whole upper part of the room also a
green gridded custom light fixture to
give it that sense of layer and delicate
detail
that much time so I might skip this
project I'm gonna go through it rather
fast this is a garage project
interestingly enough in Beijing a city
of 26 million inhabitants and 7 million
vehicles being trapped in a car in
Beijing notorious traffic is a
compulsory experience in the capital
city if you think LA is bad try paging
this is even worse our project here is
in a former missile Factory right in the
heart of Beijing think about
contradiction and future next to the
temple of Earth thank goodness it's not
being used anymore thank goodness it's
only a trade war and and we don't have
to deal with missiles I'm just joking
but so these were some of the conditions
that we dealt with and so the client
came to us wanting to build a service
center but a very different service
center he decided that it can't just be
an auto mechanic place but a place
wherein you would a car would come in
and be treated like you would go to a
medical clinic so trying to attempt to
recapture the allure and magic that was
once associated with cars so adding
cultural functions such as Design
Gallery with a cafe and offices the
project as a whole is conceived as a
workshop space partly raw and partly
refined it is activated throughout with
the energy and spirit of the model we
built a lot of models in our office this
is rather large model to understand this
is the finished model but there's a lot
of
sort of cardboard model while we're
designing so there's a demonstrating
here a certain tectonic Candida
tripartite of elements existing brick
building steel structural frame an
inserted white volume are visually
distinct and legible on the facade
interesting there's this car elevator
that lifts you up next to the cafe it's
actually right in the middle sandwich
from his office and the cafe and the
Cultural Arts Center that or a gallery
play and so this is a project in which
we were also employed as graphic
designers I know this is also a graphic
design school so forgive us if our
graphic is not as good I thought it was
an architecture lecture that I'm giving
ourselves
please don't judge me on this and I've
also convinced the client that B+ is
just not a good name but it's just as
bad as A- but he just he refused to
listen to me so I'm like you know if I
go lecturing the US this just would not
sound well for your brand and he's like
well my brand is not for the US so it's
okay so you kind of see what we did with
the cafe and the lift gallery many of
these furnitures we've designed for
brands and so our attitude was as we
design many of these furnitures in
conjunction with the architecture in the
interior it is seen as total design that
is seen as a whole so you see from his
office he looks down and can actually
look at all the workers
so custom furniture as I was saying in
lighting pieces adopted efficient
tectonic and wood plank and tubular
steel construction but their material
richness and refined detailing also
harken to the quality of craftsmanship
found in antique cars which he had a lot
of and so here we try to break through
common expectation of one some of what
some might consider a vulgar typology to
inject a sense of warmth into an
industrial
I have a movie here but you know what
I'm gonna do I'm gonna skip this one if
you guys don't mind because I think
we're running out of time and most of
you will be hungry despite the Papa
John's you had the next project is
interesting in Shanghai theater this was
a project from the government and so I
was really excited when we were given
this project and because it was in the
theater district the fee was very low
but being a typical architect anything
with a theater or museum in front of it
he just said yes and when they told me
where the site is I was really excited
and that's the site right there as I was
shown and they said look this is what
happened this was the former theater it
has lost its grandeur and allure and we
want to bring this back and I said is it
still there they said no it's no longer
there but I still want there's still
remnants of it that we want to say you
guys read Chinese here it tells you sort
of the significance of this theater it's
not big even though it says it's a big
theater and so in the 90s that beautiful
theater that you saw became this thank
you and so when I saw this image I'm
like well maybe it's salvageable maybe
it's okay well when I went to the site
it was this weekend
so you can imagine no 3d printing was
gonna help this cost and so I was really
worried and I said it's no longer a
theater they made into a movie theater
and I said look how are we can-can we
stripped it back to its simplicity and
so I started sketching and from the
street the building reads as a heavy
stone I argued and this volume hovering
just above the ground level lodged
firmly between its neighbor it announces
its present in a very hopefully silent
way and drawing inspiration from the
theatrical acts which takes place within
the carved spaces of the interior and
exterior atriums were conceptualized a
series of dramatic scenes now when we
presented to the client
he's always thought that there was a
wall a glass wall in front and in my
drawing I made it really blurry because
I knew I was the knife he wasn't enough
if they were gonna pay me with such a
low fee I'm gonna give a bit of their
building back to the public and so that
was important to me and therefore they
also thought that was a skylight and I
keep saying we'll get there and of
course it's just an opening so these
scenes of varying spatial and lighting
configuration or experience as one moves
throughout the space intensifying us one
explore deeper into the building you'll
see sexually the sad thing was the
theater was a black box so they said
don't touch that you're only touching
that building in between the street and
this block box so we get to only play a
people often ask me where's the theatre
Linden I said well there's really no
theatre because it's a pre theater so we
then played we made the mouse out of
this by creating
images to guide the theater goers into
the building we create this bronze
abstracted notion reading like a curtain
it's fluted bronze walls really
reminiscent of a theatre curtain
cloaking the drama of the main stage
behind it provide a sense of
weightlessness in contrast to the
heaviness of the stone above we open a
light and let it filter in these bronze
curtains leads you into the theater
setting the stage of the pre theater
appears like a foreplay before the wheel
there were about a month
tell me
the next project is what we call the
vertical lane house water house and some
of you might have known us through this
project in fact this was probably our
second first or second architectural
project this was done about nine years
ago a client came to us and said do you
want to do a project on the bun I don't
know how many of you have been to
Shanghai but when you when someone tells
you to design a project on the bun
there's only 33 building 33 historical
buildings so obviously they because
egotistical side of me said I'm gonna be
part of history I'm gonna design one of
these 33 buildings and so I was really
excited without really even researching
I said yes we'll do it well he took me
to the south of Bunn the building he
showed me and I was really shocked
because the glamour of 1930s bun quickly
dissipated in my mind and I had to
salvage those buildings and I said to
myself maybe I should demolish well the
second request from him made me even
more nervous because he said professor
Neri can you do a building that looks
like Mayfair in London I'm like why
would you want to do that so but I out
of respect and you never tell a Chinese
client that he's stupid you never say
that however you can say a number of
things just in case in the future you
have projects in China you can say let
me save you money by saving this
building that is that trick will work
throughout history and it will continue
to work okay
Chinese any time you tell them they'll
save them money and will make them money
they'll say yes so I said if you save
this building and forget the break and
forget Mayfair I'll give you a nice
building you'll save half obviously I
lied and so we start researching since I
opened my mouth
we then by this time we decided that
synthesis are our first few projects
that we want
attempt a different kind of preservation
and so we said to ourselves well as we
were sketching this I said we were
interested in the idea of people coming
to this hotel and understanding what it
is to be a tourist or a traveler as
opposed to a tourist a tourist would
come to a city and they would have their
checklist of things to say and then they
would leave and think that they have
seen the city and understand the city a
traveler would try to understand the
essence of the city so I love this
Covino quote which explains a lot of
what this project is all about and so we
start saying sorry that tiny sticks not
supposed to be there I got mix with my
Chinese lecture notes and English bet so
we start telling the client what if we
start celebrating people washing their
clothes on the street brushing their
teeth you know eating on the sidewalk
and I argued you know it's an
interesting phenomena because when you
go to Paris and you eat on the sidewalk
it's called romantic but in Shanghai
it's called unhygenic so that's kind of
its kind of strange so I said why don't
we do this and of course he thought I
was really crazy he's like you know I
need to make money out of this I said
you will you will because a lot of
people from the West would really eat
this up and so I said start you know
having to have all these clothes and
also another thing was the idea of being
voyeuristic not in a perverted way but
to actually go back to history and that
sense of reflective nostalgia because if
you're in lane houses in China you
absolutely see people cooking you could
see people showering and it's it's
really complex sectional quality but
it's interesting the need long places in
Shanghai it's extremely the the public
and the private are completely blurred
in fact I live in an old Lane house and
my bathroom of course I'm a modernist I
have this big window and looks out about
five feet away is an old lady and her
kitchen so sometimes I forget
to close my curtain and she gets to see
me and I have to pretend that's always
been intentional
and so I I noticed that she's watching
me because when she says things in the
courtyard she would say you know you
really gained a lot of weight just not
but this is the reality we lived in
wherein people actually would throw
garbage into your garden and what you do
is instead of telling them not to do you
take that garbage and throw it back to
their garden and by do by having this
mitigation or negotiation passive
negotiation you actually start to
appreciate each other and so what we did
was we start look the plan the plan
looks why they're simple but I'm gonna
show you something so if you stay in
this hotel be careful because all the
bathroom are actually quite sectional
and and you get to see each other in
Nice
so it's located by the cool docks
development on the south of the bun the
water house is a four-story nineteen
room boutique hotel built into an
existing three-story Japanese army
headquarters building from the 1930s the
boutique hotel fronts the Huangpu River
and looks across sorry looks across
Bhutan which is the major city that you
probably see or the city that you often
see that when people are depicting
Shanghai as this glamorous city so we
deal with all the new public and private
the idea of context here and trying to
preserve it and this is the lobby I'm
gonna tell you a story about this lobby
my mother came after this was done and
he says son is this project done
I said I think so do you have a problem
with it mom
and she said there's two things you're
either a genie
well now the second question was did the
client pay you in full and I said yes he
did
and so she concluded by saying that
you're either a genius or the client is
really stupid
so what the lesson learned from there
even your own parents that pays your
education sometimes do not understand
what you do in architecture school we
were responsible in designing for
everything and it allows us because
there were three buildings here really
so you can see sort of the ramps that
kind of mediate between the different
sectional quality of the building we
left a lot of the old sort of patina
intentionally and the idea of
preservation was done in a different way
we were kind of shocked when after this
was built the mayor came and some of the
government official they were quite
upset and we in fact we lost two major
competition because I'm not competition
commission we already had those projects
but that those two clients came and like
I'm not so sure if you're the right
architect I'm not even sure if you went
to architecture school and so I was
really devastated until Lady gaga on one
of her Shanghai tour booked the whole
hotel all nineteen room and two weeks
later David Beckham the soccer star came
and booked the whole room I booked the
whole hotel and all of a sudden the
cultural minister said hmm maybe this
hotel is more hip than we think and it
became it became part of the front cover
of Shanghai tourism for five years we
knew then that the whole idea of
reflective nostalgia with this
reflective vein in mind actually has
something that resonate well with them
hopefully and not just because they're
superstars that are staying here
but these are issues so you can kind of
see balconies then you will look up and
you can actually see and again these are
different rooms shared terraces like a
lane house typical of a lane house
extremely sectional and you see the
restaurant down below and there's
suction cuts while the section cuts look
up to the bedrooms and so I told the
client you don't need artwork the people
that pay the room becomes your artwork
and they really like that idea and so
you see that luring the restaurant and
this is one of the section that looks up
to the bedroom bedroom to the right and
bedroom to the left from the restaurant
and again we also preserve the existing
stairway it was considered not just a
Japanese headquarter for a company but
it was also an opium den so a lot of
people actually keep drugs here and so
they had they created all these
different stairway that some of them
leads to room and some leads to nowhere
as a way to run away from authorities
and so we actually kept that that's not
a good idea for you guys when you do
architecture of it
did we just preserved it and so you see
sort of the character of this is not a
mirror this is a room next door so
parents if you have kids it's just a
perfect way to control them
and we had we use recycled from the roof
recycled wood so this was when it was
just finished it was
two more projects and we're done I
promised the next project is called the
wall chinku yong-jo resort interestingly
enough this projects about three hours
by train you need to take a train to a
relatively distant space and then drive
an hour and a half so it's about two and
a half hours called Yong and it's
famous for a few things one of them is
called the garden and also the slender
silver slender Lake and this developer
was really quite a visionary he believes
that properties like the Great Wall you
can't just preserve the Great Wall you
can't just preserve the Summer Palace
but you also need to preserve rural
village area and rural sites that are
significant so obviously with that
mantra and he had hired five Chinese
architect and five Japanese architects
and taken ten sites and do different
things so it was rather exciting but
then when I went to the site it was a
garbage literally this slender lake was
not so slender and the beautiful lake
that was conveyed to me in the brief was
really a garbage dump and this was this
condition of the site but what was so
sad about it was the fact that the
footprint was to remain and it was the
government's regulation to keep the
footprint not the building which is a
very strange logic and but you don't
question the government or the planning
Bureau when they say such a thing in
America you might be able to question in
China I just said let me think about it
so the brief called for adaptive reuse
of this several building footprint the
building you can demolish but not the
footprint so what we did was we start
looking at young so and some of the
historical traditional typology that's
in there
and especially this particular house in
the city of young so actually it's by
the girl garden there is this beautiful
house wearing its series of walls and
traditionally in young so there were
many of these so what we did was we
created a diagram by creating the idea
of courtyard houses the wall and how the
alleyway brings this to life and so in
order to hide the whole space together
our strategy was to unify these
scattered elements by overlaying a grid
of walls that you see in the traditional
yong-jo village and paths onto the site
to tie the entire project together
resulting in multiple courtyard
enclosure the inspiration for the design
originates as I said within that old
historical town many of which are no
longer there with the exception of two
comes with it and by creating this grid
it allows us even though the footprints
were different the grid made the spaces
made it a unified state the building we
have new pictures of it now full of
vegetation in fact I was just there with
my students from Harvard and they were
all filled with vegetation now so it's
actually a lot nicer
kind of after construction was done so
it looks like they're in full swing so
in several recent projects we have
employed recycled bricks and in this
particular case we did it again
so we collected from demolition sites
around the region and we assembled in
various bond patterns to brick walls add
a REIT actual reading and over time
their patina continues to build and you
see what you do different images project
like the chapel which I showed you a
while ago begins to emerge as if having
been there for many generations one
could say that the collection and
repositioning of old bricks is not
merely an act of being sustainable it
also carries the idea of conserving time
through curating the marks of history
tectonic leon a building's facade and
you see the layering that unfolds by
having many of these particular spaces
within the walls several of the
courtyards are occupied by guest rooms
and other shared amenities such as the
reception library and restaurant many of
the building roof lines are confined
within the height of the walls
surrounding them so that they are not
visible from afar so this is a public
theater here I was telling you
many of different courtyards journeying
along the walls guests can also ascend
through openings above to gain
privileged vantage point that look out
across the gridded landscape and beyond
to the surrounding Lakes hotel gas
traverse the site using the walled
pathways to discover their room once
within there's a clear separation
between the building and the walls a
layering of privacy and a sliver of
landscape for guests to enjoy other
courtyards are unoccupied pockets of
lush garden to offer relief from the
sense
enclosure constructed entirely from
reclaimed gray bricks the gridded walls
narrow interior passageway forces a long
perspective while light plays off the
various brick patterns
enticing guests to venture ever deeper
into the project you see the contact
this is where you check-in
many of the furnitures were built
locally and so sectionally a lot of them
were a little bit bulkier than our usual
way of designing but by employing
employing local craft weary but
revitalizing the very notion of rural
condition that it was very important for
us were made locally and granting there
were a lot of tensions between
construction workers because a lot of
them don't even read drawings they would
just look at bricks and you have to be
there to tell them how to do it so half
of our detailed drawings were literally
thrown away and they all they want to
see is they want to see perspectives and
it's kind of strange way of doing it but
this is sort of a new paradigm we have
to deal with there's three additional
buildings outside there's the warehouse
and the new building
so our ambitious lies in utilizing a
strong landscape element in this
particular project the wall and the
courtyard to unify as I said a complex
site and program or the rustic
materiality and layered spaces seek to
redefine tradition with a modern
landscape
we made a conscious effort
as many of them don't really understand
Robert
it is a challenge for us
drivers
family
Chinese architects
with depression condition and expansion
stock didn't
a lot of pain
so the last project is a project that we
recently completed and I'm gonna try to
make it as fast as possible when we were
approached by quite an enlightened eye
rania developer and many of you might
have noticed if i if i'm looking at this
map
it's Jing Gong tau G 1 tau it's about an
hour flight from Shanghai and three
hours by train from Beijing and he picks
a lot of these sites and his idea was
the city are really hectic and you need
to go out and buy your second homes and
sort of these are places of reprieved
and it's always interesting if you look
at all these development many of them
have big major housing projects and then
there will be cultural destinations so
some of you might know of vectors
architecture the chapel and the library
and maybe Lee whose UCT a museum which
is located so he's quite clever
he would have cultural projects dotted
beautiful cultural projects and then he
would have major housing next to it at
the back so these are places of
community so people are interested so
they come over the weekend and there
will be a library there would be a
chapel there would be a museum and so
you can if you're outside the city
there's actually a real community so I
was really excited when he contacted us
when he called me he says I have a
project in Iranian for you and I was
like oh I must be in one of these beach
things right because a lot of my friends
and my colleagues from Tumkur to hong
kong and all these guys have buildings
along the beach well i flew there and
he's like well yours is not on the beach
yours is in the center of that red spot
and not only that I'm building a Spanish
Mediterranean project is under
construction and that is your space
sort of the Mediterranean Spanish look
so I'm gonna sell all these as the
Mediterranean dream and you're gonna
create this significant cultural place
for me an Art Center and doesn't need to
be Spanish you do whatever you want to
do and I'm like okay so I don't have the
water I don't have the sky I'm supposed
to be in this leisure development and I
have I don't have both of them so I said
my team I started sketching I said I'm
gonna be greedy I'm gonna take the whole
site
I have this my associate director get is
very sensitive I said no time for
sensitivity here because you're trying
to be sensitive and then there's all
this mediterranean town around you we're
gonna occupy the whole side and we're
gonna create our own sky and we're gonna
create our own water and so I have a big
hole and in this hole you look up and
you look down you look up to the sky and
you look down to the water and so the
Art Center would walk around this some
people call this you know a mini version
of Guggenheim actually I didn't think of
it but now that's complete I realized
that perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright was not
all that bad so here was very simple it
was to create a brief for a fake minute
here in town in you know Qingdao
despite the straightforward brief on an
Art Center Iranian as a community has a
strong emphasis on the spiritual nature
of their lifestyle ideology or oneness
with nature in the environment very
expensive houses so the design scheme is
as much about the internal courtyard the
communal space for the residents as it
is about the exhibition being displayed
in the center so here with aggregate
concrete cast-in-place concrete what we
did was it's all modular some of them
cast down below and modular and we
brought this system and with bronze
framing to highlight the opening
showing you quickly because I have a
long movie I think five minutes so I
think that explains a bit more so you
opened the disguise in here what
happened is very much inspired by
Loretta and his first hotel he did in
1965 before I was born the water this is
filled with water and it's kind of
flowing and so if there's an event the
flood the water would be drained and
becomes I'm a theatre so you see sort of
my desire for the beach I don't have it
so I create my own Beach and the client
after it opened
he said if I know what I know now I
would not allow I would not have allowed
you to do this but now that you did it I
actually sometimes you got to listen to
the architect these are some of the
images see I'm gonna just go straight in
the movie
sorry guys
that's not good
good
give me a second
not so fast okay is there a technical
person here who can help me I am trying
to show this movie directly not from my
presentation
how do I view this how do I view
although I view this movie to the screen
Oh
yeah yeah and how do I
sorry about that town guys
these are real
thank you maybe maybe there's a question
or two if you will does the Chinese
government ever have a direct influence
on your designs like they approve or not
approve something and then change a
building political questions I am so
sorry no I would love to answer that
interesting you should ask that question
because I think shem ping once
said that there needs to be we have to
stop doing ugly buildings and I some
people have said that it was directly
referencing to REM koolhaas a CCTV
building I I don't think it is or I'd
like to think it is not because it's one
of actually I really like that project
we're too small for them to actually
care and our projects are actually too
small so sometimes I wish they do
because if they do that means they're
really paying attention to us our
project is really small if it was larger
and then in a big bigger urban scale
let's say an airport for instance or the
main theater and even that I don't think
they would really be as they would care
and I think they're not as I think
buildings that really does not speak
badly of the government I don't think
it's kind of I think the chapel I think
at one point I was really concerned
because there were churches that
churches are technically not allowed but
the developer he basically applied it as
a place of solitude chapel not so much
as a place of a specific religion but a
place to worship and gather
Abigale I know you're gonna have that
NBA question I just know it I could feel
it yeah I'm curious about that just to
follow up in that regard relative to
this question of if they're too small
for them to care is that intentional or
is that just i think the planning bureau
if you call that a government part of
the government sector they do care for
instance they are really in fact we are
why they are very supportive of what
we're doing in terms of preserving the
older part and giving them a new way of
looking at preservation for instance so
it does look good for the government so
now for instance all the lane houses are
all right there are now plaques so you
can't demolish them that was not the
case 15 years ago when we were there and
both resign and are quite loud in the
media about preservation but obviously
we also are equally loud in not just by
serving for the sake of what's about
Lana born coin has wrist restorative
and that's the last thing we want and so
trying to understand the essence of the
typology that they have that they're
inheriting from courtyard houses
two-lane houses - those ground to low
houses my grandparents are from they are
important and I think they understand
the importance of it so is there a
direct relationship we must be doing
something right for them to actually be
very supportive does that relate to the
commitment I think also the issue on
revitalizing the rural area is also
something that the government is
interested in the present president
right now is interested in the idea of
it can't just be you can't just support
the main cities but you have to go
inward for instance going into
Middle West to do for instance Chongqing
you know all the area I call it C on all
those places are are actually
flourishing right now it's imperative
and revitalize
and in the process is helping I'll give
you the last question thank you so much
that was so wonderful and I was going to
ask you about the NBA but I think we'll
leave it for another day thanks again
