Goldchild is an international, personal brand owned by young Chinese architectural designer Jian XU. Goldchild is a design brand that specializes in interior, architecture and set design adventures. While some architects have a signature style, Jian Xu seeks to apply coherent ideas to extraordinarily different projects. His projects impress as much for their individual impact as for their diversity of architecture, art and set design.
Jian XU rose to international prominence with his first book GOLDCHILD in New York 2019, since then, Jian has continued to craft many set design projects, including Magnificent second series New York, Nocturnal Light, and Urban Landscape project. Inspired by, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said that "I call architecture frozen music". From my perspective, if architectural design is the sculpting of frozen music, then set design is the creation of flowing music. Frozen music inhabits the world with a certained morphology and functionality coined to it, whereas the flowing music is a flash in the pan, astounding the audiences with a dynamic form before it vanishes and . It can only stay in people’s minds, experiences, and photographs.
Therefore, from Jian’s view, set design is a branch of architectural design. If architectural design is a tree, set design is a floral and fruitful branch thereof; the flowers might come and go, and the tree will support it and nurture it with endless nutrition. Set designs are like short fairy tales or films, bringing the audience into an alternative world in as short as an hour; behind this hour, is months of hard-work and design, planning and producing, architects, structural engineers, lighting designers, and fashion designers all work together, making each shows into fantasies and dreams rising from the ordinary life.
