I've worked over there for Tom Pen Architect in Shanghai, pretty nice firm and they paid me enough to live over there. I know they take a few foreign interns each year. You may want to email them. If i were you though, I'd try to look through friends/profs/school for work and see if they know anybody over there. I never heard from MADA SPAM while I was over there and I never even tried Arup.

BTW, if you have a athsma do not consider Beijing. Its a great town, but real tough on the old lungs especially during summer and winter.

Wood + Zapata [Shanghai]
Architecture Studio [Shanghai]

And The Firm I Worked For [Shanghai]

I'd rather not name it for it's not a firm I would recommend. To. Anyone.

RTKL (shanghai)

You're forgetting the socialist state owned design firms that work on government stuff and factories, beginning with China Architectural Design & Research Group (CAG) on through the lovely regional design bureaux, which carry lovable names like the First...Eleventh Design & Research Institutes :)

try this link for more offices. good luck!
http://www.chinese-architects.com/

The great thing about those institutes though is they'll do all the dirty work for you which means you don't have to deal with bullshit all day like I have to in teh USA!

Beyer Blinder Belle out of NYC has an office in Beijing

1-803 Bright China Chang An Bldg
No. 7 Jianguomen Nei Street
Beijing 100005, China
011 86 10 6510 2800
011 86 10 6518 6508 fax

Do you have a blog? I would love to hear about your adventures

These firms have offices, I don't know how big.
HOK http://www.hok
AEDAS http://www.aedas.com


Keep us all posted! And have the time of your life!!

...wonder what the bill rates of the numbered socialist state design institutes are... under a dollar an hour?

Hi Im now living and working in Beijing. i worked at Studio Pei Zhu for a while. Ok experience but very low pay,very late hours (excessive) and almost no weekends off (i know it sounds like any arch.studio but trust me this was not worth it).. I have friends that have worked in most of the offices you named and Atelier FCJZ and MADA Spam i believe are the best overall in your list.. Also look for the Approach Architecture Studio in Beijing. If u want to know more you can send me your email address and i will gladly give you more info.. Good luck

If atlier FCJZ is Young Ho Chen's office (which i think it is) it is by far and away the most laid back office I have ever seen.

hey FinB did you work on the digital building for the olympics when you were at Pei Zhu? with all of the coverage the Beijing complex gets, that's like the forgotten building that never gets any press. i found it really intriguing but there's really no information available about it.

a lot of design institutes do very nice projects. u can learn a lot if u are in one of them.

baumschlager eberle

Floor 4, Jia No.1 Dong Bin He Road
He Ping Li East Street
Dong Cheng District
Beijing 100013, China

Yung Ho's pretty laid back, Apurimac

Forget MADA... their staff renews every 3 months or so...
Forget LDI's - Local Design Institute as the are Chinese...

http://www.houliang.com/english.htm in Shanghai
http://www.aarchstudio.com/ in Beijing

bump.

it's 2k10 and I'm thinking of going to China. who are the hot firms these days?

He has not updated us... probably ended up in Qingdao drinking beer and sunbathing :)

I recently dropped by the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt and there was a great collection of young contemporary Chinese architecture firms:

http://www.dam-online.de/portal/de/Ausstellungen/M8INCHINAe28094ZeitgenoessischechinesischeArchitekten/1773/0/53339/mod1120-details1/1594.aspx

In German, but you can scroll down to the list of names.

I have worked for BIAD in Beijing (gov studio) have liked it a lot. However, I understand that it depends entirely on your studio.  The pay is not good for non-Chinese nationals. You will have enough to live on but not well for sure. However, their projects are outstanding though workload is super heavy with an arbitrary overtime pay. 

I have also interned for AECOM D+P in Shanghai.  Way better in terms of work environment and reasonability of workload.  Lots of expats there, you do not need to speak Chinese all that well. However, the projects are lacking in depth.  Pay is alright, you can live pretty comfortably. 

SH environment and scale is like Chicago or NY to me.  In my opinion, most of better firms this thread mentioned would somehow work some projects in SH area.  If you guys more inclined to work for large scale complex in TIGHT site, SH is suitable. Otherwise, other tier city like Shenzhen or tier II cities are looking for US architects as well.

I listed a ton a while back in this thread:

http://archinect.com/forum/thread/12191943/young-us-architects-working-in-china