Xiaohang Hou

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Circular Economy: Design Strategies in a Larger Time Dimension

These days, the architecture industry cannot disregard how significant the challenge of sustainability has become. One strategy for achieving sustainable development is a circular economy, based on a sustainable life cycle. This strategy minimizes resource usage and extends the useful life of buildings from a design perspective. Moreover, another challenge is how to increase the usability of the building itself, in addition to how we've incorporated building disassembly into the cycle. This requires that designers take the future into account when making design decisions, integrating the requirements of the present with the potential outcomes of what has not yet happened.

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MAD Architects: Building Connection To The Landscape

When the Quzhou Sports Park project was completed in China, it became the largest earth-sheltered complex ever built. In his conversation with ArchDaily, Ma Yansong explained that MAD Architects was not only focused on completing the stadium proposal, but also on creating an architecture that disappears. Unique fields become architectural spaces where anyone can do anything at any moment.

"We need a space for people to relax, to have a moment to dive into another dimension of space and time. They can have their spiritual world. I want this space to be engaging and inviting, encouraging interaction with the public, not just for races or sports," said Ma Yansong.

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Twin Gardens / YES.ARCH

Twin Gardens / YES.ARCH - Exterior Photography, RenovationTwin Gardens / YES.ARCH - Exterior Photography, RenovationTwin Gardens / YES.ARCH - Exterior Photography, RenovationTwin Gardens / YES.ARCH - Exterior Photography, RenovationTwin Gardens / YES.ARCH - More Images+ 27

Beijing, China
  • Architects: YES.ARCH
  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  825
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2021

The Voice of Women in Chinese Architecture

Women's studies officially began in China in the early 1980s. Women awoke and started to take bigger roles in society as it grew. Women had been working as architects for a century, but Lin Huiyin was not recognized as the country's first female architect until the 1920s due to the profession's tardy development in China. But nowadays, more and more female architects are filling crucial positions.

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17 Architectural Installations at the 2022 SZ-HK Urbanism\ Architecture Bi-City Biennale

The 9th edition of the Urbanism\Architecture Bi-City Biennale (UABB) of Shenzhen and Hong Kong opened on December 10, 2022. Curated by Lu Andong, Prince Gong, and Aric Chen, the exhibition features hundreds of artists, designers, and architects from fifteen countries. The exhibition will last for three months.

The Biennale's theme, "Urban Cosmologies," encompasses both spatial symbiosis and the temporal rhythms of life. It is a source of ancient Chinese wisdom as well as a cosmology that looks to the future. The "Cosmology of the City" is a field of symbiosis, a part of the "community of life between man and nature".

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What Kind of City is a People-Oriented City? Ranking Chinese Cities

What kind of city is a people-oriented city? This is a difficult question to answer because humanistic cities evaluate the city by "people”, and people are extremely diverse, producing individual different evaluation standards. For example, a city that is friendly to car drivers, may not be so friendly to pedestrians.

Nonetheless, there is a general perception that some cities seem to be more friendly to people than others. Why is this the situation?

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Atesimo / TEMP

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  • Architects: TEMP
  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  100
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2021

Zolaism Café / B.L.U.E. Architecture Studio

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The Manifestation of Traditional Chinese Architectural Language in Modern Architecture

We have never stopped exploring the manifestation of traditional Chinese architectural language in modern architecture, starting with the effort of a modern volume with a traditional paradigm roof. This inheritance and expression are based on the context, which is divided into two categories: "Adoption" and "Ablation". The reinterpretation of traditions from "Form," "Sense," and "Model" is "Adoption." Ablation is a constructive compromise with the environment that respects the original rural or urban texture and appearance. It is based on old forms and building techniques, enhanced with modern design approaches and techniques. It improves conditions either by erasing them in some situations or by disappearing and integrating into them. Contemporary architecture is both the tradition of the future and the tradition of the past. The "classics" are continuously being extended by architects using new techniques

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Reading Architecture as a Book

The standards for classifying good or terrible architecture are usefulness and beauty, or what we commonly refer to as practicality and aesthetics. However, practicality might quickly direct us toward functionalism, which is the only viable option, or toward the design of sculptural structures. The architect Le Corbusier once stated, "If you create a house with stone, wood, and concrete, that's just a building; if you touch my heart, that's architecture." However, perhaps the readability of architecture might serve as a criterion for good architecture: Reading architecture as a book with complete words and sentences that stand up to careful consideration.

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Environmentally Friendly Materials: 8 New Products To Reduce Carbon Emission

The construction industry's future will undoubtedly include "carbon reduction" as a mandatory task. Aside from locally sourced, virgin materials, an increasing number of new materials are becoming available. New materials can be developed in several ways, including low-carbon substitution, recycling, performance enhancement, and 3D printing. New materials will not only be more environmentally friendly and enable new construction methods, but they will also influence the starting point and direction of design concepts, resulting in new buildings with new perceptions and spaces.

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Where is the City Heading For? From Urban Design to Urban Life

In the 1960s, Jane Jacobs criticized modernist urban planning from the perspective of the integrated city. She believes that the purpose of urban renovation is to establish a better-integrated relationship between urban space and urban function by repairing the gap between them. Rather than "beautify" the urban environment.

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How Can Architectural Spaces Be for Everyone?

Democracy’s essence is the people's self-government and autonomy based on their own rights, and its characteristics are demonstrated through equality and participation. If democracy means a more equitable way of public life in architecture, then, this way of life is dependent on the homogenization of the building's spatial structure, with open, transparent, and functionally diverse public spaces. It is also possible to argue that the birth, maintenance, and demise of democracy all occurred in public space.

The democratic regime of Athens began in the sixth century B.C. The square became a meeting place, a symbol of architecture's democratic politics. Although people's access to assembly has become more widespread and convenient as technology has advanced, the existence of public space in the city remains critical, representing the spatial demands of citizens' public rights beyond the basic conditions of survival and serving an important spiritual function of expressing democracy. So, how architecture be democratic? How can we realize the public nature of architecture?

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The Concept of Architecture in the Chinese Aesthetic Context

Western aesthetics is based on the mathematical analysis of an object's formal structure, using classical beauty laws such as balance, symmetry, and the golden mean. Eastern aesthetics differ in that, as it emphasizes intuitive experience, such as "white space" in traditional Chinese painting, through emotional communication with the "imagery" to produce a certain "Conception." The contrast between reality and emptiness allows the viewer's imagination and feelings to flourish, allowing them to realize "showing the breadth of heaven and earth even in a square inch place." 

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Transformation Generated by the Intersection of Virtual and Reality

As Antoine Picon describes in Architecture and the Virtual Towards a new Materiality? : "An architectural project is indeed a virtual object. It is all the more virtual that it anticipates not a single built realization but an entire range of them. …Whereas the architect used to manipulate static forms, he can now play with geometric flows. Surface and volumes topological deformations acquire a kind of evidence that traditional means of representation did not allow.”

FEI X MIE Collaboration Store / NEME Studio Architects

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  • Interior Designers: NEME Studio Architects
  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  100
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2021

Exploring Chinese Rural Construction Strategies Based On Diébédo Francis Kéré’s Philosophy

The immensity of China leads to the diversity of customs and climatic conditions. Each area has its own unique materials, construction methods, and climate adaptation measures. The regional characteristics of Chinese architecture are generally preserved in rural buildings. But we cannot overlook how contemporary technology may considerably improve the living and use conditions of rural buildings. What is the best way to create a balance between classic or inherent technology and new ones? How would the construction of rural architecture provide inspiration for the development of Chinese architectural cultural symbols?

2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Diébédo Francis Kéré reported the great solutions of Burkina Faso. Kéré insists to build comfortable buildings at a reasonable price; to make users happy and inspire them to dream of a better life. The pride of the local culture is reinforced by the use of local materials and traditional techniques. And then Kéré‘s works in other countries show cultural emblems of Burkina Faso, which are the consequence of his own cultural accumulation.

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Explore the Road to Chinese Net Zero Architecture from Life Carbon Assessment (LCA)

Climate change mitigation has become a priority issue, with the architectural industry accounting for 38% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. In December 2015, the Paris Agreement proposed to limit global warming to less than 2 ℃ above pre-industrial levels and strive for no more than 1.5 ℃. The architectural industry must achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in order to meet the Paris Agreement's goal.

China proposed at the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2020, that "China will work to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060." It has defined its carbon neutrality goal and execution approach in order to solve global climate and environmental concerns effectively.