Transcending their role as mere infrastructure, bridges have long served as powerful architectural statements. This expressive potential is now being explored with renewed vigor across South-East Asia, where a growing number of architects are re-evaluating traditional materials. By championing wood and bamboo, these designers are creating distinctive structures that integrate local craftsmanship with contemporary needs, resulting in landmarks that are both functional and deeply rooted in their landscape.
In much of China, concrete remains the dominant construction material. Despite growing concerns over its environmental impact, concrete continues to align with the priorities of many developers and clients—it is fast, cost-effective, and highly durable. As a result, most building types in China still rely heavily on concrete. This reliance is further reinforced by China's position as the world's largest producer of Portland cement. A deeply entrenched supply chain, rooted in raw material manufacturing and economic infrastructure, ensures that concrete remains the default choice in the construction industry.
Yet historically, Chinese architecture was built upon a rich tradition of timber construction. The Forbidden City is a prime example: not only is it emblematic of China's architectural heritage, but it also remains one of the largest and best-preserved collections of ancient wooden structures in the world. This legacy prompts an important question: does timber construction have a meaningful future in China's contemporary building industry?
As our world evolves at an unprecedented pace, the challenges that come with it are becoming more and more complex. The questions faced by the cities and networks of our global world, the physical and virtual environments where our evolution takes place, are making architecture more relevant than ever.
The issues of the built environment are no longer exclusive to the incumbents who build and design it and have become transversal questions in our society. From the citizens who question the quality of their public spaces to the self-trained builder erecting a tiny house in the woods, to the homeowners using an app to codesign their interiors during lockdown, we want to have a saying and we want to take action. Why does architecture have to be so uncertain, so distant?
Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum / Studio Zhu-Pei. Image Courtesy of Studio Zhu-Pei
Over the course of the last decade there has been a growing interest in the handcrafted buildings, as well as in the application of local and renewable materials in building construction. Under the concerns about the heavy environmental and economic expenses caused by construction, nowadays urban planners are embracing the concept of sustainability, which refers to “meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
As we successfully launched our 12th Building of the Year Awards earlier this year, we want to thank you for being part of our community for over 10 years. Together we have been growing and contributing to the architectural scene, aiming for a better world.
By nominating and voting, you form part of an interdependent, impartial, distributed network of jurors and peers that has consistently helped us celebrate architecture of every scale, purpose, and condition, and architects of all profiles. Over the coming weeks, your votes will result in 700 Chinese projects filtered down to just 10 best projects in China.
Another year, another successful ArchDaily China Building of the Year Awards! With more than 20,000 votes gathered over the past 20 days, the results of the 2020 edition are in! Once more, the award has proved to be the largest architecture prize centered around people’s opinion. Crowdsourced, the most relevant projects of the year were nominated and selected by our readers.
This year we celebrate three projects -- highlighting a wide range of interventions, typologies, scale, material and locations, the winners are a mere reflection of the vast outreach of the profession. With new names surfacing every year, this edition, as the previous ones did, honors well-established practices and the newcomers. High-profile figures include Atelier FCJZ with its bridge museum in the Chinese countryside, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office and its sculpture art center, and Atelier Lai's Bamboo Bridge.
True to its status, ArchDaily China, the most far-reaching Chinese architectural website, is and will always be a platform for all architecture enthusiasts. Curating the best in the world, thanks to the trust of architectural firms and the devotion of our readers, ArchDaily’s realm keeps expanding exponentially. For that, we are grateful!
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