Lecture & dialogue / 2020
Distinguished Architects Lecture Series — No. 11
Haobo Wei: Community of Regional Ties — Territorial Order and Ritual Mnemonics
English · 英文
Live lecture
Community of Regional Ties
Territorial Order and Ritual Mnemonics
Speaker
Haobo Wei
Principal Architect, West-Line Studio
Design Director, Guiyang Architectural Investigation and Design Co., Ltd.
Recipient of the State Council Special Government Allowance
Moderator
Yue Hu
National Master of Engineering Survey and Design
Chief Architect, Beijing Institute of Architectural Design Co., Ltd.
中文原海报 · Original Chinese poster
Lecture abstract · Community of Regional Ties
Through sustained practice and observation in the vernacular regions of southwest China’s subcultural sphere, West-Line Studio has gradually recognised “place + symbolic structure” as an operational framework through which the social and mythic imagination of vernacular ethnic communities becomes concrete existence. The studio seeks to make explicit the environmental relationships concealed behind “place”—territory, seasonal phenomena, region and settlement, from the macro to the micro scale—and their connections with the human lifeworld. It translates these relationships into “territorial order”, exploring the relationship between the original natural setting and existing settlements as a way of embedding architecture in its environment. This produces a mode of territorial practice combining contextual correspondence with the grouping of units.
The studio then combines the ritual habits of ethnic communities with contemporary modes of knowledge production to form distinctive “ritual mnemonic structures”. Together these establish a “model of community public life”: ethnic ritual mnemonic structures (the transmission of collective ethnic history) + carriers of reactivated memory + generators for the reproduction of contemporary cultural knowledge. It is a particular community model in which the two structures of subcultural spheres and universal society coexist and counterbalance one another.
A further point of departure is the set of tools for social practice behind the structures of universal society and subcultural spheres that shape the present reality of vernacular regions: the “engineer / scientist” system and the “bricoleur” system. Exploring the possibility of a “scientific bricoleur” toolset has gradually produced a concrete working method of “overall framework + atmosphere-making”. The overall framework embodies the systematic perspective of scientific thinking; its purpose is to establish a framework for territorial order and the model of community public life. Atmosphere-making, meanwhile, takes particular sampled sections and basic spatial types as its starting points, combining tectonics, material arrangements, the production of light environments and symbolic objects to create distinctive atmospheric spaces and influence people’s structures of feeling.
In this way, a working method gradually takes shape: “community of regional ties—territorial order + ritual mnemonics + the scientific bricoleur’s tools”. It reflects West-Line Studio’s attempt to address the real difficulties arising from the interweaving of the dual social structures of universal society and subcultural spheres in western China’s vernacular regions. More fundamentally, it is an effort to protect the diverse patterns of human existence within these subcultural spheres and grow together with them. A series of projects expresses this “thinking of being”: the Shui Cultural Center in the ancestral homeland of the Shui people; “Up to the Mountain / Down to the River” amid blue waters and Danxia landscapes; and Cuisuba, conceived as a “suspended ritual”.
01 · Up to the Mountain / Down to the River
Danxia Chishui World Heritage Visitor Center and Exhibition Center.
The complex occupies a gently sloping site in the Danxia region of the Chishui World Natural Heritage area. A continuous, undulating red plinth links the visitor center on the mountain with the exhibition center by the river. The complex extends from the hill’s slope towards the valley and river. The inclined volume on the mountain meets the landscape; the courtyard space by the river appears as a red Danxia scroll. The red, vertebra-like volume draws the eye towards the riverside courtyard, creating a charged dialogue and response.
Up to the Mountain / Visitor Center: its distinctive Danxia-red ridge-like volumes combine as parallel, converging strips that follow the valley. They rise with the slope, as if suspended above the vernacular settlement at the summit. Their bases are inserted into the white plinth in response to the terrain, re-presenting the relationship between the roofs and bases of local vernacular buildings.
Down to the River / Exhibition Center: the building extends towards the banks of the Chishui River. Following the model of courtyard settlements facing water in northern Guizhou, an undulating, branching, tree-like route surrounds a central courtyard; this open central court is in turn enclosed by several exhibition spaces smaller than a village scale.
02 · Red Valley / Wandering Streams
Foguangyan Rest Station, Wuzhufeng Scenic Area.
Foguangyan Rest Station occupies a V-shaped Danxia red-rock valley, only six metres wide at its narrowest point. Here, an undulating folded roof responds to the streams rushing beneath it. Along the sheer southern slope, a series of connected stone-box volumes combines rainwater collection, ritual daylight and the interplay of a water courtyard with light. These boxes accommodate a visitor reception hall, exhibition hall and shops selling local products. This is a striking red cliff, a concrete “place” defined by peaks and wandering water. When an exposed-concrete rest station is fully embedded in the local Danxia red sandstone, the materials come from locally distinctive small red stones.
The building speaks through a massing of stone groves gathered densely like a forest and labels itself with an undulating, platform-like roof. It draws the valley stream into the water courtyard, while the continuous folded roofs collect rainwater. Rippling, water-like coloured light, the courtyard and the crisscrossing collection of water together create a ritual mountain space whose imagined mechanism corresponds structurally to its setting.
03 · Shui / Script
Shui Cultural Center.
The Shui Cultural Center is a gateway to the area settled by the Shui people and a symbol of their community. The Shui retain their own language and a distinctive system of pictographic writing. The project recalls their traditional culture and long history. Its layered roofs, bronze surfaces and ceremonial platform recreate a sacred atmosphere, drawing the ancient rituals of the Shui into the building.
1. Ritual mnemonics. Taking as its reference the ritual structure of “bronze drum + sacrificial place” that symbolises the Shui world, the design samples important moments in the development of Shui ritual and fragments of ceremonial sites encountered through migration, linking them into a mnemonic system arranged as a sequence of paths.
2. A body of knowledge. Shui script, which reflects both a conceptual world and the world of lived existence, is brought together with the clustered-peak landforms of the Shui region. Three parallel functional spaces are composed in layers: a light, perforated copper-sheet skin; a system of coloured glass dotted with Shui pictographs; and an exposed-concrete structural matrix cast against local pine formwork. The grouping of these units corresponds to the Shui character for “mountain”.
3. Functional guidance. The system of “ritual—mnemonics” is then coordinated with specific functions, guiding use while conveying the conceptual meaning of the Shui people’s shared history.
04 · Yi / Ridge
Cuisuba Cultural and Visitor Center.
The project integrates the ritual structure of Yi community society with the “Dom-ino” system. Its Dom-ino framework suspends fragments symbolising Yi ritual systems. The sacredness of ritual is combined with a raw concrete technique cast from the timber construction of old local Yi houses, creating a monumental stele without words for the anonymous people of the plateau and a mnemonic structure of shared history. Fragmentary acts of remembrance anchor and reconstruct the collective memory of the community. This is a ceremonial hall on a highland plateau, evoking profound historical impressions and shared time.
Speaker and moderator
Haobo Wei — Principal Architect, West-Line Studio; Design Director, Guiyang Architectural Investigation and Design Co., Ltd.; recipient of the State Council Special Government Allowance.
Yue Hu — National Master of Engineering Survey and Design; Chief Architect, Beijing Institute of Architectural Design Co., Ltd.
Haobo Wei · biography in the 2020 announcement
Haobo Wei is Principal Architect of West-Line Studio, Design Director of Guiyang Architectural Investigation and Design Co., Ltd., and a recipient of the State Council Special Government Allowance. He is a council member of the Architects Branch of the Architectural Society of China and a recipient of the society’s Young Architect Award. He has served as an international juror for the World Architecture News (WAN) Awards and the UNI Awards, and delivered the inaugural lecture in the Peter Blundell Jones Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Sheffield, UK.
His work has received dozens of awards: Gold in the Architect / Architectural Practice of the Year category of the 2019 World Architecture News Awards; the top Mixed-Use Building award at the 2019 and 2018 LEAF Awards; the top Public Building award at the 2018 LEAF Awards; selection among fifteen outstanding international architects in the 2019 Dezeen Awards; a 2020 German Design Award in the Urban Space and Infrastructure category; Gold for architecture at the 2018 German Design Awards; the top Stone Architecture award at the 2019 and 2018 American A+Awards; the top Concrete Architecture award at the 2018 American A+Awards; the top Restoration and Renovation and Public Landscape awards at the 2019 Architecture MasterPrize; Best School Building at the 2018 World Architecture Festival; winner of the 2017 ArchDaily China Building of the Year Award; Gold for Rural Architecture in the 2013 Architectural Society of China Architectural Design Awards; an Industry Award for Excellence in Engineering Survey and Design from the China Engineering and Consulting Association; and a 2020 International Architecture Award in the Parks and Gardens category.
His work has appeared in international professional books, including the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, for which the source credits Oxford University, Cambridge University and Bloomsbury; Phaidon’s STONE, RED: Architecture in Monochrome, and ARCHITIZER: The World’s Best Architecture; Images Publishing’s Brick Stone Metal Wood; and ORO Editions’ Chinese Brutalism Today.
It has also been published in international professional journals including Casabella and Domus in Italy, Detail in Germany, Arquitectura Viva in Spain, Architectural Research Quarterly in the UK, and Architecture Asia, the magazine of the Architects Regional Council Asia.
He has been invited to participate in The City and the World Exhibition in Athens in 2020; the Asia exhibition at Milan Design Week in 2018; the Third China Design Exhibition and Public Art Thematic Exhibition; the 2013 Shenzhen–Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture; and the “14 Degrees / 15 Degrees” Chinese Young Designers Forum at Beijing International Design Week, among other events.
He has served as a postgraduate supervisor, honorary professor and adjunct professor at institutions including the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Chongqing University. He has published more than seventy papers in Chinese and international professional journals.
Live lecture · 11 September 2020, 19:30–20:30
Distinguished Architects Lecture Series, No. 11. Haobo Wei: Community of Regional Ties — Territorial Order and Ritual Mnemonics. Moderator: Yue Hu.
A series of live academic presentations on architectural design, featuring winning work from the 2019 Industry Awards for Excellence in Engineering Survey and Design. Original announcement: JZSJFH, Architectural Design Branch of the China Engineering and Consulting Association, 11 September 2020.
The sudden COVID-19 pandemic changed the way architectural design firms work, making working from home and online learning and exchange the new normal. To actively and effectively publicise winning projects in the Industry Awards for Excellence in Engineering Survey and Design (Architectural Design), and to promote academic exchange, the China Architectural Design Industry Network—the official website of the association’s Architectural Design Branch—organised the lead architects of winning projects to give a major series of online academic presentations under the title Distinguished Architects Lecture Series. Guided by the Architectural Design Branch of the China Engineering and Consulting Association, the series shares the creative ideas and technical challenges behind the projects.
The online lecture series officially began in May, inviting the lead architects of award-winning projects to deliver live academic presentations. The China Architectural Design Industry Network publicised the series widely through the branch’s website, its official WeChat platform, the Architect WeChat public account and other platforms.
Poster credits: guidance, Architectural Design Branch of the China Engineering and Consulting Association; academic support, its Technical Expert Committee; host, China Architectural Design Industry Network; co-organiser, Northern Design Alliance. The poster invites viewers to scan the QR code to watch the live broadcast.