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Designing Beijing (17)

  • Programs

    Designing Beijing

    … s a good idea to go and take a look for yourself. In this writer’s experience, there is enough going on to make every week in Beijing “design week.” To me, Beijing has always been a little bit like China’s L.A. or Brooklyn. It has that quality of being one of those …

  • Projects

    Forget 40 Winks: 24 Hours of Rem

    … evening the dialogue drifted around themes like the unrealized dreams of the participants and the notions of utopia and dystopia. When artist Jane Wilson asked Koolhaas about designing dystopia with respect to Beijing [OMA’s CCTV tower], the architect responded: “We don’t think of it as dystopia. It is one of the challenges to …

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    Viewpoints

    After 2020, Designing For Indoor Air Quality Will Never Be the Same

    … when the most polluted cities in the world were all in California, as measured by air quality indexes (AQIs). As people in places like Lahore, Delhi, and Beijing know all too well, an AQI over 200 is judged “Very Unhealthy,” even for fit and uncompromised people. As more than 3 million acres of forests went …

  • Programs

    From the Bird's Nest to the Buried Boat: Olympic Design, 2012

    Although the auspicious day of 08.08.08 seems like, well, just last month, in the world of Olympic design, the Beijing games were over before you even knew they'd started. As Beijing packs up its fireworks, its floating sphere and its giant, Fuwa beach toys, we'll fast-forward to London time, where …

  • Viewpoints

    Anti-Ownership, Holography, and Revisiting Hippie Values: The Ideas That Will Be Big in 2016

    … few good examples of social and environmental design while still looking great. The Bi-City Biennale also showcased many examples of sustainable architectural solutions in China, and Beijing Design Week showed how young firms are figuring out real-world solutions to preserving and rethinking housing in the city’s old neighborhoods. All eyes will be …

  • Profiles

    Future100: Flexibility and Choice Define Fangming Cai’s Design

    Explore with Stairs is Fangming Cai’s museum concept in which the act of climbing leads people to experience “levels of discovering.” Bubble Memory is a childcare center imagined for Beijing. Lighting Kids Memory is from a series of artworks included in Green Memory, a children’s library concept. Courtesy Fangming Cai If 40 percent …

  • Programs

    Crowd Control

    … Plaza and bike racks are not being made available on the periphery, which is a lost opportunity in my mind. How can we start to think about designing for the crowd? I recently came across an interesting article from 2007 that addresses modern crowd control. The author opens with a description of the ancient stadium …

  • Projects

    Steven Holl: "If Everybody Else Quits Drawing, It's Fine With Me"

    … to China. I also had a presentation in Korea. The competition was due, right? And I didn’t like our scheme. I woke up one morning, in Beijing, and drew a new one—totally different—on two five by seven watercolor pads. I was on my way to Korea and put the pad on the …

  • Projects

    Four Landscape Projects That Celebrate Their Local Character

    … private realms. And landscape can assist in finding the heart of each and every place, whether cultural or historic or natural. It’s a starting point for designing vibrant places in our cities. René Bihan, architect, is a managing principal with the SWA Group, a design firm in San Francisco with five offices in California …

  • Projects

    Chang Yung Ho’s New Chinese Architecture

    … University, and he and his wife (also an architect) spent time traveling throughout Europe on a fellowship. In the early 1990s, Chang decided to move back to Beijing and begin his own practice. His first notable commission was the Xishu Bookstore in Beijing, which is a small shop tucked inside some bland industrial blocks. Since …