Don't embarrass Beijing with frenetic design
- Source: Global Times
- [21:34 March 22 2010]
- Comments
By Barry Ball
We pass by buildings everyday, but how many of us take the time to look at them?
The built environment around us influences us in ways we're not even aware of, yet we rarely consider the power they have over our lives.
Just recently I have been interviewing architects, all from recognized universities, for positions within my company. Trying to find that little piece of passion that I think all designers should have, I asked each candidate to tell me which is their favorite building in Beijing.
I waited in anticipation as each one of the interviewees stared at the ceiling or through the window for almost a minute, before declaring that they did not really have an opinion on the subject.
These young designers are qualified architects, and yet they had no opinion on their own city's buildings – or at least not one they felt confident in sharing at interview.
So I wonder if the Beijing public is any more sensitive to some of the architectural statements that have sprung up over the city in the last decade.
Beijing's building boom has been enormous, yet many of the results have been crafted without any sense of aesthetics or long-term sustainability.
Buildings of all shapes and sizes have been thrown up, many ignoring the human scale and all of them the result of designers trying to outdo each other in their quest to bring something unique to the market.
Their aspirations may be noble, but the process will produce a disappointing legacy, as it lacks a long-term, unified vision of function, quality, harmony, and durability.
Take the Soho buildings, with their empty columns and bright colors. Even a regular passerby can feel how loud and impersonal they are, and in 10 years' time they'll seem even worse.
Our built environment is produced through social, market and political needs. Ideally, architects have to meet those demands in a functional and cost-efficient manner, but also ensure that they create an urban landscape that will endure and mature as the city grows.
For instance, 10 years ago, it was trendy in Beijing to paint buildings in bright colors. But the developers that did so didn't appreciate that in Beijing's polluted environment they had committed themselves to long-term maintenance of the buildings to keep them looking fresh.
Bright colors work in small houses in sunlit environments like Mexico or California, but in North China they quickly look tired and dirty.
Before that trend green-tinted mirror glass was the state of the art, which now looks fatally dated. The developers should have looked at Beijing's hutong, where the gray brick facades have worn well over the centuries.
Trends in design are inevitable. They often reference car or fashion trends, but these are objects with a very short life cycle.
In contrast, buildings are the fabric of a city, and should respect their surroundings and define their environment.
In most foreign countries, new buildings have to meet strict standards of visual impact and functional sustainability, but these barely exist in China.
There are some beautiful, and even radical, buildings in Beijing, such as the National Centre for the Performing Arts, the new CCTV tower, the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube.
However, these benefit from being government projects with high budgets and constructed for the long-term. They are therefore built with more care and attention to the environment around them than the regular buildings here.
The same standards should be applied to private developments so that Beijing, despite the frantic building boom, ages gracefully. She should not be embarrassed by faded facades, dated design trends, and flashing lights covering up design errors. Architecture needs to represent its age, but also grow old in style.
The author is chief architect with HKI China Land Ltd. forum@ globaltimes.com.cn
