Wiki World Advanced Architecture Lab [AaL]   China   The result of a collaboration between United Investment Merryda Hotel Management Group and Wiki World, Merryda Wiki World – Secret Camp brings together more than a dozen houses designed as experimental shelters in direct dialogue with nature. The com

Snøhetta BIAD   China   Snøhetta, in collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD), has won the international competition for the new Beijing Art Museu in Tongzhou District, in the southeast part of the Chinese capital. It will be the Norwegian fir

MVRDV   China   Tiffany & Co. has opened a new flagship store in Taikoo Li Sanlitun, one of the main commercial districts in the Chinese capital, known for its concentration of luxury brands. The building immediately stands out for its undulating facade, compose

Atelier Deshaus    China   Located in the Laoyu River Wetland Park at Dianchi Lake, this pavilion initially served as the entrance to the 2024 Dianchi Art Festival. When the event ended, the structure was preserved as a marker for entering the park, a key area within the urban

MVRDV   China   MVRDV has completed the Pujang Platform, a 414 m² timber pavilion that serves as a viewpoint and an event space, sensitively blending with the hills south of Chengdu, China. The location is the new city of Pujiang, currently under development, and t

ZAO / Zhang Ke Architecture Office   China   A sculptural pavilion that continues the rugged terrain of the surrounding area endeavors to become part of the network of public facilities that enlivens a coastal resort. Open on all sides, the undulating ground floor is sheltered by a framework su

ZAO / Zhang Ke Architecture Office   China   A bookstore has opened amid the remains of a short-lived university founded during World War II by academics who had fled Beijing and Tianjin during the Japanese occupation. In a loop that encloses a courtyard with straight lines, a volume extends al

ZAO / Zhang Ke Architecture Office   China   In one of the traditional neighborhoods that surround the Forbidden City, a residential complex has undergone renovation in accordance with a cautious strategy to curb gentrification. As in another siheyuan in the same alley, only about two-thirds of

ZAO / Zhang Ke Architecture Office   China   Nestled in a rugged landscape, this museum dedicated to the painters Xiao Feng and Song Ren is located at the foot of the Daci Mountain, in the Xihu district of Hangzhou. Built with concrete colored with black ink and processed on site, the building

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   China   On the shores of Jinji Lake, the Museum of Contemporary Art is a new architectural and cultural landmark in Suzhou. Covering an area of 60,000 square meters, the complex consists of intertwined pavilions and courtyards, in a reinterpretation of the l

Zaha Hadid Architects   China   The construction of the Yidan Center in Shenzhen has reached its maximum height. This new home of the Chen Yidan Foundation, encompassing 166,815 square meters, combines spaces for academic research, cultural activities, and exhibitions. It stands ou

Selgascano   China   Between the dense pine forest and beach of Rizhao stands Chiringuito Café, also known as Coffee and Sea. The project arose from a commission to reclaim an area which for years had accumulated scattered buildings, all disorderly and at odds with the n

Snøhetta   China   Snøhetta's proposal has won the competition to build an art museum on the banks of the Qiantang River in the Xiaoshan district of Hangzhou. Covering 18,000 m², this building is the centrepiece of an ambitious urban development project. The design is

Inner Mongolian Grand Architecture Design   China   The Hui Muslim community lacked a gathering space at a reasonable distance by foot until this multifunctional cultural center, organized around a large circular courtyard, was completed. The courtyard collects rainwater in a central pool to cool the

Heimat Architects   China   In the context of a theater festival, a space intended for tasting liqueur is distributed in four lightweight modular structures around a courtyard where visitors can stop and take a break. As much in the three corridors as in the bar area, thin trus

IARA   China   The Rural Memory Museum in Fengwu has become a symbol of the revitalization of culture and community in an area marked by population exodus, demographic aging, and lack of public facilities. It is part of the Fengwu JI rural-revitalization initiative

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture Chris van Duijn   China   The new 105-meter-tall tower designed by OMA-Chris van Duijn addresses its immediate urban surroundings with a sculptural facade of white ceramic stripes. It is the firm Jomoo’s headquarters, standing at the intersection of two contrasting contexts:

Wutopia Lab   China   In Shanghai’s Daning Park, Wutopia Lab raised in record time this lakeside pavilion for the construction firm CSCEC Jiuhe East China Region. The project took off from the clear but difficult idea of keeping two existing buildings intact and without a

Team BLDG   China   Located in a mountain landscape accessible through winding roads, the remote town of Songzhuang in the Chinese province of Zhejiang is home to the Z Museum of textile art. Devoted to the theme of weaving, it was built from a brick-and-concrete house

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   The Shanghai firm of Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu has turned an old chemical-research facility in the Chinese city of Dalian into a cultural and commercial complex named The Yard, using six buildings that used to house offices, warehouses, and workers’

Ábalos + Sentkiewicz   China   (Text by Abalos+Sentkiewicz) The scheme drawn up by AS+ for Dongguan Binhai Cultural District is an innovative technical, cultural, and environmental composite that orchestrates and combines natural and industrial resources to come up with forms, m

GN Architects   China   The elderly of Chaishan Island still fondly remember that its rugged coast – now only visited by the occasional ferry – was up to not long ago a thriving port, where arriving sailors were welcomed under the trees that stood at the entrance into the v

Heatherwick Studio   China   A new district, designed by Heatherwick Studio, has opened in Xi’an, honoring the Chinese city’s legacy of craftsmanship and ceramics. The Xi’an Centre Culture Business District (CCBD) is south of the historic core, between the ruins of the Temple of

The installation Divided is part of SpY's research into the relationship between body, space, and perception. Through large-scale interventions in the urban fabric, the Spanish artist explores how monumentality and light can transform the viewer's ex

To Western eyes, the three long decades that stretched from the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 to the ‘reform and opening up’ of the 1980s were rather flat in architectural terms: with all the focus on heavy industry and collectiv

Like other architects of his generation, Zhang Ke found the key to channeling China’s contemporary aspirations in the mission of protecting ancestral heritage: a balance which – as the four works featured in Arquitectura Viva show – he has managed to

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The two superpowers are already digital autocracies. The Chinese authoritarian model, which avoids the electoral cycles of liberal democracies, and which builds safe cities by multiplying facial recognition cameras, offers the countries of the Global

Nature   Teresa Guerrero   The stark contrast between the Moon’s nearside and farside in topography, volcanic activity and crustal structure provides critical insights into lunar formation and evolution. However, the absence of farside samples has long limited the investigatio

Incapaz de competir en tamaño o peso político con Taipéi, la ciudad de Taichung se ha afanado durante varias décadas por convertirse en la capital cultural de Taiwán, y hoy puede presumir de varios museos nacionales y de un teatro de la ópera diseñad

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Summer has not been a sleepy pause, but an accelerated time in the transformation of the world. After the United States’ attack on Iran in the last week of June, July saw Ursula von der Leyen at a Scottish golf course meekly accepting the tariffs imp

Luis Fernández-Galiano   I first visited the country in 1978, invited by the Chinese Communist Party. It was a moment of transition, Mao having died two years before and with Deng Xiaoping in the process of consolidating his power. In a snowy Beijing we walked through the Fo

Luis Fernández-Galiano   China’s transformation in the 21st century can be felt on a visit there, as chronicled in ‘Six Watercolors’ (AV Proyectos 130), but is also documented through its cinema, which since the dazzling appearance of Zhang Yimou with Red Sorghum (1987) has

Luis Fernández-Galiano   If the launch of the artificial satellite Sputnik on 4 October 1957 set off the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, that of the generative artificial intelligence DeepSeek’s R1 model on 27 January 2025 sparked the cyberspace ra

In the arena between traditionalism and the imported architecture spreading all over China, Gong Dong (Beijing, 1972) had the wisdom to find virtue in the middle way, balancing his local training with a fruitful sojourn in America. The ideas and form

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Marco Bellocchio released China Is Near in 1967, a satire of bourgeois decadence which mixed Catholic morals, electoral opportunism, and Maoist revolutionary dreams. The ironic proximity of China referred to its ideological influence on the young rad

The Guardian   Nicola Davis   Uncrewed Chang’e-6 lander is carrying rock and soil samples in ‘very important achievement’ after lunar liftoff China’s uncrewed Chang’e-6 probe is on its way back to Earth carrying the first samples from the far side of the moon, in a major achievem

The Guardian   Oliver Wainwright   Welcome to Aranya, in Beidaihe Qinhuangdao, a surreal gated community that has turned this remote stretch of coastline into an unlikely mecca for China’s fashionable gen Z. The area was once home to a failed property development but, over the last fe

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. 

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