You guys don't need to know Chinese. Just take a look at the perspective, then tell which option is good at satisfy the function, program and the shape Chinese people want. Sometime, I also look for the criticism. These will help to judge what is whole pictures to judge a library facing 21th century.
i am not chinese, so i cannot legitimately determine what the 'chinese people' want. i have executed a project in china, and i will say that ted's observation is dead on the mark. both my experience and these images lead me to conclude that this is primarily about shape and image making, which ultimately produces cartoon buildings. scrolling through these images was similar to looking through a fashion catalog.
Please bring over your DETAILED criticize,in the meatime, think of Chicago public Library competition and the final winner selection process. Compare with them.
Your comments will influence the reality happened in China today, And this will influence back the American's architecture.
This is a real project. There are some facts I dont want to say yet because I don't want to influence your judge. But remeber, nomatter where the library be built, either Europe, America or china, the basic principle will be the same. If it is not work for your American's eyes, then it is definitely a jewelry for Chinese people too.
do you really expect serious comments on the appropriate 'look' of the building?
well i like the one..oh wait there are two that 'look' like the seatle public library and say 'the chinese today deserve this look too'. guess it will come down to rock-paper-scissors for tie breakers....
dont judge a book by its cover. dont the chinese people deserve more?
the chi publ lib comp was flawed and was a design build competition. the selection had much more to do with the $$ the entries proposed and the political connection of the build side of the team v. the design of the building.
we in chicago are very willing to sell you that look for $1 if you come and take it away.
Now there are some more comments here. But none of them is very useful. Ted is telling something serious.
Did I hear someone say Chicao Public Library? That is a shit. That library is one of the worst building in chicago history along with Ricardo Bofill designed two highrise towers in chicago in last twenty years. I thik yesyes is saying the judging process is not just determined by the Architecture itself!
...i think these images are very valuable,
they serve as a lesson to students and professionals in architecture worldwide of exactly what NOT to do.
that said, you asked for thoughts on the designs
>nothing tells me this is a library (performing a public service and acting at a social level) it may just as well be corporate headquarters.
>the site is meaningless: these designs are placed on a flat plane in a vacuum. every site has influences that lend an interaction/relationship to its surroundings, wether immediate or distant. i see none in these.
>as said above, the designs aren't even formally compelling, (although the imaging is well done) ted said 'bad knock off of things done before', yeah, in the 1960's. They are all struggling badly to make themselves unique for its own sake, and they all fail.
i'll venture to pick a winner though:
the most gold and red one. sans a large red star, it looks the most communist/governmental, and the government always gets its way.
sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear, just my opinions, but you asked for them.
The Eisenman/Meier/Holl 9/11 collaborationesque scheme (5th one down) is the most inventive but like the aformetioned architects concept it only works in axonometric view. The rest are as someone else pointed out bad knockoffs of other buildings (I see a couple Coop Himemblau's, a Morphosis, an MVRDV, and even [gasp] a KPF knockoff).
0+: THANKs for the comments. You are getting closer.But...
Our american architects properly will never have chance to design such a large size building. So the experience might be short in judging this Library.
One more hint: the options are designed by americans and others. They are trying reprenting sth like a book or container of book, information hub.
Did anyone know Beijing built a Chinese largest opera theater designed by Paul in Beijing?
I'm confused here, do you want us to guess who's the winner or what's the best project? I guess the Andreu building is probably the most feng shui one since I know the project and it's references a little, the fact that it has rounded shapes (no right or narrow angles) and all these typos that are probably blessing from the spirrits or somthing like that. He is very experienced with the chinese market, so I 'd guess he would have a chance to win this one. Most of them look like crap, but I like the programmatic expression of the Eisenman/holl one. As a side note, have you noticed the tour sans fin from Nouvel in the background of one of the renderings?
In seriousness, perhaps it would be helpful if a small description of the concept for each project is, perhaps it would be more beneficial to put these images in at least a little context than they actually are.
if your rusty on your chineses [and mine has been shit since i got rid of my tv] you might try this. translation
if you dont get the full page go to the 'commentary' and 'return'
"The Guangzhou library new hall design proposal male shows
Guangzhou Daily
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From today to 30th, after continues the Guangzhou opera house, the second children's palace, the museum, south the Pearl River new town axle wire the end fourth culture construction - - Pearl River new town Guangzhou library new hall international invitation architectural design plan male shows to the resident, the resident may go Chinese Export Commodities Fair flows the flowered Õ¹¹à9th hall or in the website http://www.upo.gov.cn/ voting. It is reported, the Guangzhou library new hall project always invests approximately 840000000 Yuan, the book collection quantity approximately 4000000 volume. Equally every day may receive 10000 people of readers, plan this year begins construction, in 2006 completes. In order to raise the architectural design level, constructs has " domestically first-class, international is advanced " the library, Guangzhou develops and the reform committee, the Guangzhou urban planning bureau, the Guangzhou urban planning establishes the research center jointly sets up the competition committee, conducted " the Guangzhou library new hall architectural design plan international invitation competition ", approximately had 90 designing departments or the unified body registrations participation. Starts from today to 30th, flows the flowered Õ¹¹à9th hall in Chinese Export Commodities Fair publicly demonstrates from American, French, German, Canadian, Spanish, Japanese as well as the domestic 13 designing departments' design proposal. Reporter yesterday saw, various plans while processed the good natural lighting, ventilate, function and so on service convenience, all stressed the symbolic concept, made every effort to achieve the commemorative construction the effect. The Guangzhou plan bureau person in charge indicates, in the near future will announce 3 superior plans, the residential opinion will take when the evaluation the reference "
seriously....they're all postcards...this is not a pipe. How can we pick one over another? most are a joke some are serious. The biggest punch line is that the chinesse government will choose one and steal it. Believe me been ther done that. We won the 3 Gorge Dam project in china only to have the government not pay us for our schematic design, to make matters worse they handed our competiton our scheme and awarded them the project! Now this local no talent architect is building our building!
the 4th and 6th one's have potential in my opinion, i'd take the 4th one almost as-is with high-quality detailing and materials.
the 1st is a one-liner, obviously
the 2nd is somewhat intriguing in isolation but at the city-scale is too 'object-like'
the 3rd, like any of them, could be good experientially, but as an architectural creation it is too symmetrical for our age, and its parts are too disparate
the 4th, i think, has a certain timeless brutalism about it, an energetic but minimalist form, machined in the tradition of our age (hopefully)
the 5th is the most unattractive to me, too object-like, too much like 'two adjacent cylinders'
the 6th is okay but there is no hierarchy, what's the dominating element/idea?
the 7th is like a more refined version of the 4th, good stuff, i like the idea of the machine's innards exposed and distressed
the 8th would be good experientially but it's kind of a one-liner as you'd get sick of seeing its particular lean and particular silhouette. the large-scaled texture is nice.
the 9th might be my second-favorite... well-proportioned and well-balanced composition. it could use some more disintegration/smaller-scale carving of its base areas for better pedestrian experience
the 10th is kind of undecided with itself as to what it wants to be, or maybe it's just that a bad view was taken
the 11th looks like it has a lot of potential...probably needs that ground-level perspective shot to sell it-and the elimination of the random glass plane in front
the 12th is interesting, with high-quality construction and materials would be very nice, but it's very cellular and lacks that proportional diversity that some of the others have. maybe some variation in the heights of the various parts would help.
ok....i m an chinese architect and of course i can understand the text...
1. in china people like judge a building only by an photo (or an image if it is under construction). that's why they just show one picture of each proposal to public and ask them to vote for the best one.
2. another tendency in china is all the buildings should have some additional literal/visual meanings. that means, archiecture should be designed like some "object" which has relationship to the function of the building. so the popular metaphor of a library is "bookshelf" or "book container".
3. the decision of "who'll be the winner" would not be made by the jury sometimes but by government officers, the mayor eg, so each competitor has to do their best to make the proposal more "readable" for laical which means it must be easy explained and be connected with something nice literally....
Sorry for my late reply. You guys have my apology.
Back to the topic, I think the way to judge a library is watching the designer how to design the following areas no matter where it is built. These are based on my personal experience and today's newly designed library like Rem's seattle library and Enrique Norten's NY library.
1. bright and welcome function space like public reading room, public entrance hall
2. Building mass
So here are my explanation for each proposals:
1. A book, but too much alike. It lacks of the space inviting people to come in.
2. A book too. But not clear.
3. The layered form try to show the knowledge need people to dig in in order to get. The strategy is too straight, I rather have Rem's SOPHISTICATE.
4. Old temple.
5. an exciting entrance hall and reading rm. Flexible reading rm and storage rm configuration. But a litt too rigid.
6. No idea. I mean the proposal have no idea, not me. Dude!
7. Its exterior solid wall encircle the library space. Does it mean the site will be a loosely occupied area in the future? The mass don't have clear idea either except this solid wall.
8. An interesting entrace hall. It will attract the people to come in and go up.
9. Interesting side elevation and small public space scale. I don't know this proposal. Need to see the plan.
10. Trash.
11. The space scale is too small even it meet the physical program's requirement.
12. Use corner space for entrance. Have potential.
13: identical elevation height? what does it hint the inside space?
So my top three choice:
12, 8, 5 ( have doubt on 9)
My coments for todays' buidling design and other friends' comments: There is nothing wrong to use Building mass to reperent sth. But there is difference between straight, stupid and sophisticated. I believe the above 3 will stand out enentually.
Western architects intend to use more abstract idea than Chinese' to design a building. That's why this forum think the GuZhou library design is more cartoon than the real nice design. Our chinese architects should continue to improve our skill.
is it just me, or do plans 5 and 8 look like they are renderings of the same building at different points in design development? seriously, they are formally identical. i'm surprised nobody's pointed this out yet.
I have same feeling too. It might be a designer borrowed another group's concept when he slept with a lady who was working for another competition entry. It is hard to find out who have idea first, right?
I think 8 have more interesting entrance hall than 4.
LARGE size building design-- a library in china
I will post a series of pictures.
Ok, it is hard to find a page only contains pictures. So I will just give you a link:
link
PLEASE give your thoughts on each of them. The competition winner will be announced soon.
You guys don't need to know Chinese. Just take a look at the perspective, then tell which option is good at satisfy the function, program and the shape Chinese people want. Sometime, I also look for the criticism. These will help to judge what is whole pictures to judge a library facing 21th century.
to be honest, they all look like bad knock offs of things that were done before.
i am not chinese, so i cannot legitimately determine what the 'chinese people' want. i have executed a project in china, and i will say that ted's observation is dead on the mark. both my experience and these images lead me to conclude that this is primarily about shape and image making, which ultimately produces cartoon buildings. scrolling through these images was similar to looking through a fashion catalog.
Please continue...
Please bring over your DETAILED criticize,in the meatime, think of Chicago public Library competition and the final winner selection process. Compare with them.
Your comments will influence the reality happened in China today, And this will influence back the American's architecture.
This is a real project. There are some facts I dont want to say yet because I don't want to influence your judge. But remeber, nomatter where the library be built, either Europe, America or china, the basic principle will be the same. If it is not work for your American's eyes, then it is definitely a jewelry for Chinese people too.
do you really expect serious comments on the appropriate 'look' of the building?
well i like the one..oh wait there are two that 'look' like the seatle public library and say 'the chinese today deserve this look too'. guess it will come down to rock-paper-scissors for tie breakers....
dont judge a book by its cover. dont the chinese people deserve more?
the chi publ lib comp was flawed and was a design build competition. the selection had much more to do with the $$ the entries proposed and the political connection of the build side of the team v. the design of the building.
we in chicago are very willing to sell you that look for $1 if you come and take it away.
chinese fireworks!!
Now there are some more comments here. But none of them is very useful. Ted is telling something serious.
Did I hear someone say Chicao Public Library? That is a shit. That library is one of the worst building in chicago history along with Ricardo Bofill designed two highrise towers in chicago in last twenty years. I thik yesyes is saying the judging process is not just determined by the Architecture itself!
...i think these images are very valuable,
they serve as a lesson to students and professionals in architecture worldwide of exactly what NOT to do.
that said, you asked for thoughts on the designs
>nothing tells me this is a library (performing a public service and acting at a social level) it may just as well be corporate headquarters.
>the site is meaningless: these designs are placed on a flat plane in a vacuum. every site has influences that lend an interaction/relationship to its surroundings, wether immediate or distant. i see none in these.
>as said above, the designs aren't even formally compelling, (although the imaging is well done) ted said 'bad knock off of things done before', yeah, in the 1960's. They are all struggling badly to make themselves unique for its own sake, and they all fail.
i'll venture to pick a winner though:
the most gold and red one. sans a large red star, it looks the most communist/governmental, and the government always gets its way.
sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear, just my opinions, but you asked for them.
The Eisenman/Meier/Holl 9/11 collaborationesque scheme (5th one down) is the most inventive but like the aformetioned architects concept it only works in axonometric view. The rest are as someone else pointed out bad knockoffs of other buildings (I see a couple Coop Himemblau's, a Morphosis, an MVRDV, and even [gasp] a KPF knockoff).
0+: THANKs for the comments. You are getting closer.But...
Our american architects properly will never have chance to design such a large size building. So the experience might be short in judging this Library.
One more hint: the options are designed by americans and others. They are trying reprenting sth like a book or container of book, information hub.
Did anyone know Beijing built a Chinese largest opera theater designed by Paul in Beijing?
http://english.people.com.cn/english/200004/18/eng20000418_39122.html
I will back tonight. Wait for my conclusion...
Just because I said it is designed by Americans, so everyone is silent now?
Come on. Let us brain storm and get something from this process.
I'm confused here, do you want us to guess who's the winner or what's the best project? I guess the Andreu building is probably the most feng shui one since I know the project and it's references a little, the fact that it has rounded shapes (no right or narrow angles) and all these typos that are probably blessing from the spirrits or somthing like that. He is very experienced with the chinese market, so I 'd guess he would have a chance to win this one. Most of them look like crap, but I like the programmatic expression of the Eisenman/holl one. As a side note, have you noticed the tour sans fin from Nouvel in the background of one of the renderings?
ummmm, No. 5, no wait! 4!
In seriousness, perhaps it would be helpful if a small description of the concept for each project is, perhaps it would be more beneficial to put these images in at least a little context than they actually are.
if your rusty on your chineses [and mine has been shit since i got rid of my tv] you might try this. translation
if you dont get the full page go to the 'commentary' and 'return'
"The Guangzhou library new hall design proposal male shows
Guangzhou Daily
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From today to 30th, after continues the Guangzhou opera house, the second children's palace, the museum, south the Pearl River new town axle wire the end fourth culture construction - - Pearl River new town Guangzhou library new hall international invitation architectural design plan male shows to the resident, the resident may go Chinese Export Commodities Fair flows the flowered Õ¹¹à9th hall or in the website http://www.upo.gov.cn/ voting. It is reported, the Guangzhou library new hall project always invests approximately 840000000 Yuan, the book collection quantity approximately 4000000 volume. Equally every day may receive 10000 people of readers, plan this year begins construction, in 2006 completes. In order to raise the architectural design level, constructs has " domestically first-class, international is advanced " the library, Guangzhou develops and the reform committee, the Guangzhou urban planning bureau, the Guangzhou urban planning establishes the research center jointly sets up the competition committee, conducted " the Guangzhou library new hall architectural design plan international invitation competition ", approximately had 90 designing departments or the unified body registrations participation. Starts from today to 30th, flows the flowered Õ¹¹à9th hall in Chinese Export Commodities Fair publicly demonstrates from American, French, German, Canadian, Spanish, Japanese as well as the domestic 13 designing departments' design proposal. Reporter yesterday saw, various plans while processed the good natural lighting, ventilate, function and so on service convenience, all stressed the symbolic concept, made every effort to achieve the commemorative construction the effect. The Guangzhou plan bureau person in charge indicates, in the near future will announce 3 superior plans, the residential opinion will take when the evaluation the reference "
seriously....they're all postcards...this is not a pipe. How can we pick one over another? most are a joke some are serious. The biggest punch line is that the chinesse government will choose one and steal it. Believe me been ther done that. We won the 3 Gorge Dam project in china only to have the government not pay us for our schematic design, to make matters worse they handed our competiton our scheme and awarded them the project! Now this local no talent architect is building our building!
the 4th and 6th one's have potential in my opinion, i'd take the 4th one almost as-is with high-quality detailing and materials.
the 1st is a one-liner, obviously
the 2nd is somewhat intriguing in isolation but at the city-scale is too 'object-like'
the 3rd, like any of them, could be good experientially, but as an architectural creation it is too symmetrical for our age, and its parts are too disparate
the 4th, i think, has a certain timeless brutalism about it, an energetic but minimalist form, machined in the tradition of our age (hopefully)
the 5th is the most unattractive to me, too object-like, too much like 'two adjacent cylinders'
the 6th is okay but there is no hierarchy, what's the dominating element/idea?
the 7th is like a more refined version of the 4th, good stuff, i like the idea of the machine's innards exposed and distressed
the 8th would be good experientially but it's kind of a one-liner as you'd get sick of seeing its particular lean and particular silhouette. the large-scaled texture is nice.
the 9th might be my second-favorite... well-proportioned and well-balanced composition. it could use some more disintegration/smaller-scale carving of its base areas for better pedestrian experience
the 10th is kind of undecided with itself as to what it wants to be, or maybe it's just that a bad view was taken
the 11th looks like it has a lot of potential...probably needs that ground-level perspective shot to sell it-and the elimination of the random glass plane in front
the 12th is interesting, with high-quality construction and materials would be very nice, but it's very cellular and lacks that proportional diversity that some of the others have. maybe some variation in the heights of the various parts would help.
ok....i m an chinese architect and of course i can understand the text...
1. in china people like judge a building only by an photo (or an image if it is under construction). that's why they just show one picture of each proposal to public and ask them to vote for the best one.
2. another tendency in china is all the buildings should have some additional literal/visual meanings. that means, archiecture should be designed like some "object" which has relationship to the function of the building. so the popular metaphor of a library is "bookshelf" or "book container".
3. the decision of "who'll be the winner" would not be made by the jury sometimes but by government officers, the mayor eg, so each competitor has to do their best to make the proposal more "readable" for laical which means it must be easy explained and be connected with something nice literally....
hope my english is understandable...
please refrain from slandering Chicago's Harold Washington Library if you are going to link me to these designs. good luck.
¿¿qué??
[i tried babel fish on your comment but dont know what language your speaking....]
Sorry for my late reply. You guys have my apology.
Back to the topic, I think the way to judge a library is watching the designer how to design the following areas no matter where it is built. These are based on my personal experience and today's newly designed library like Rem's seattle library and Enrique Norten's NY library.
1. bright and welcome function space like public reading room, public entrance hall
2. Building mass
So here are my explanation for each proposals:
1. A book, but too much alike. It lacks of the space inviting people to come in.
2. A book too. But not clear.
3. The layered form try to show the knowledge need people to dig in in order to get. The strategy is too straight, I rather have Rem's SOPHISTICATE.
4. Old temple.
5. an exciting entrance hall and reading rm. Flexible reading rm and storage rm configuration. But a litt too rigid.
6. No idea. I mean the proposal have no idea, not me. Dude!
7. Its exterior solid wall encircle the library space. Does it mean the site will be a loosely occupied area in the future? The mass don't have clear idea either except this solid wall.
8. An interesting entrace hall. It will attract the people to come in and go up.
9. Interesting side elevation and small public space scale. I don't know this proposal. Need to see the plan.
10. Trash.
11. The space scale is too small even it meet the physical program's requirement.
12. Use corner space for entrance. Have potential.
13: identical elevation height? what does it hint the inside space?
So my top three choice:
12, 8, 5 ( have doubt on 9)
My coments for todays' buidling design and other friends' comments: There is nothing wrong to use Building mass to reperent sth. But there is difference between straight, stupid and sophisticated. I believe the above 3 will stand out enentually.
The results: the jury pick 3,5,9
I hope they are right on 9.
My one more thoughts:
Western architects intend to use more abstract idea than Chinese' to design a building. That's why this forum think the GuZhou library design is more cartoon than the real nice design. Our chinese architects should continue to improve our skill.
is it just me, or do plans 5 and 8 look like they are renderings of the same building at different points in design development? seriously, they are formally identical. i'm surprised nobody's pointed this out yet.
I have same feeling too. It might be a designer borrowed another group's concept when he slept with a lady who was working for another competition entry. It is hard to find out who have idea first, right?
I think 8 have more interesting entrance hall than 4.
i hope they can build scheme 9. it will be quite exciting.
again, fxxk context!
My mistake. In my previous comments, I should say "I think 8 have more interesting entrance hall than 5".
Qunqing: why fuxk context! Context could means many things. Are you referring to Rem's new book?
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