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Photographer Benny Lam has documented the suffocating living conditions in Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, recording the lives of these hidden communities. — The Guardian
From a stove-adjacent toilet to walls crammed with knives, scissors, and precariously stacked storage cases, Benny Lam's photographs of illegally subdivided apartments in Hong Kong are like a gorgeously illustrated case study in how major disease epidemics get started. This Guardian article is a... View full entry
Organized into the three “zones” of Field, Sequence, and Rooms, the exhibition will bring together the minds of artists and designers like Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Yoko Ono, and Olafur Eliasson and researchers such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who will propose solutions and approaches to the ever-pressing issues of environmental and social sustainability. — Bustler
As Chapter 2 of the Shanghai Project, the “Seeds of Time” is a cross-disciplinary exhibition designed by Hong Kong- and Madrid-based COLLECTIVE studio and curated by Dr. Yongwoo Lee and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The exhibition is at the Shanghai Himalayas Museum until July 30.Photo: Katja Lam... View full entry
Galleries often act as stagnant interior display spaces: their primary function is to host works in a relatively unobtrusive way that is artful without being ostentatious. But what about galleries that are designed to serve another purpose, as the freshly completed Roca’s Beijing Gallery in... View full entry
How will China's $36.1 billion dollar investment shape the future of Africa? While China only has 66 projects over the continent compared to the United States' 91 projects, it has pledged about ten times the total amount of money, and the lion's share of that cash is earmarked for Egypt. As Global... View full entry
Symbolizing mountain ranges in architecture has the potential for a dramatic, iconic payoff, especially when the materials used to do so play an integral role in the interior experience of the building (think: the fabric peaks of the Denver International Airport, which allude to the Rocky... View full entry
The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Foundation recently awarded the 2017 China Prize to three graduate students, who each received a $5,000 fellowship for travel and research outside of China. The recipients are (click their names to see their portfolio submissions):Yue Wu - Tongji... View full entry
Designing a structure to protect a historic artifact or monument from the elements can often be a dry affair. At their most basic, such structures are often simple tent canopies, or more permanent, but still bare-bone, envelopes. Not the Qianfoya Cliff Inscriptions in Guangyuan, Sichuan Province... View full entry
Back in 2009, Ma Yansong of MAD started a fellowship for young architects. Dubbed the MAD Architecture Travel Fellowship, it sends five international students to China, and five Chinese students out of the country. It's an incredibly simple application process: just submit a letter explaining your... View full entry
Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably read some think piece about how millenials aren’t buying homes. Sometimes this is construed as a cultural thing, but it probably has more to due with coming of age during and after the Great Recession.In any case, according to a BBC article... View full entry
Have you ever realized that Hong Kong skyscrapers have holes in them? They're called dragon gates, and according to the Chinese principle feng shui these holes allow dragons to fly from the mountains to the water each day. It's believed that blocking the dragon's path could bring misfortune. Buildings with bad feng shui, such as the Bank of China Tower, have been blamed for surrounding companies going out of business. — Business Insider
Double-paned, waterproofed windows for insulation? Check. Reinforced steel beams for stability during an earthquake? Check. Hole in the center of the building so dragons can fly through? View full entry
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat officially declared the Ping An Finance Center in Shenzhen as the world's fourth tallest building — knocking One World Trade Center down to Number 5 in the CTBUH's ten tallest buildings in the world. Rising above Futian District at 599 meters, the... View full entry
From egg-shaped concert halls to skyscrapers reminiscent of big pairs of pants, China’s top cities are famously full of curious monuments to architectural ambition. But as land prices in the main metropolises have shot into the stratosphere, developers have been scrambling to buy up plots in the country’s second and third-tier cities, spawning a new generation of delirious plans in the provinces. — The Guardian
"From Harbin “City of Music” to Dezhou “Solar Valley”, provincial capitals are branding themselves as themed enclaves of culture and industry to attract inward investment, and commissioning scores of bold buildings to match." View full entry
Birds fly in and out of the eight-storey "Green Office Building" in Shenzhen, China, because a third of its walls are completely open to the air. It's a clever natural design that enables the building to stay cool without air conditioners.
Across town, in a vast campus known as the "Low Carbon Park", mist is sprayed into the air to cool the streets down and remove dust.
— The BBC
Experiments like these are appearing across China's cities, as part of a devolution of power designed to clean up smoggy air and meet energy targets to tackle climate change. View full entry
Australian practice McGregor Coxall had the winning scheme to transform a degenerate landfill site into a new migratory-bird wetland sanctuary park in Tianjin, China. The Asian Development Bank and the Port of Tianjin co-launched the park design competition in response to the increasing loss of... View full entry
As brand-new collaborations go, the Shenzhen Design Society's choice to feature London's V&A gallery as part of its cultural hub opening this October isn't too shocking, unless you consider that galleries of Chinese art and photography aren't necessarily a common feature of the global art... View full entry