By Daniel Elsea
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of its founding, Tongji University in Shanghai will establish the Shanghai Design Center. The facility, which will be the first of its kind in China, will serve as both a research center and exhibition venue for architecture and design. It is being designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
Scheduled to open in late 2007, the Shanghai Design Center represents a departure from Ando's trademark Zen-like minimalism and his sensuous use of concrete.
The project consists of two major buildings: a 25-story tower containing exhibition rooms, offices, and studio space for design companies and local design professionals, and a four-story structure to the south, which will help frame a courtyard surrounded by galleries, show rooms and restaurants. The courtyard will act as a central public space for the center, serving as a venue for public events. Ando designed the tower as a "powerful symbolic shape" and conceived of the project as a whole "as a building [that] captures the city of Shanghai as it is, powerful and dynamic, without yielding to the enormous energy that the city radiates." His design shows a group of striking, angular blocks clad in glass curtain wall.
Designing a tall building is a relatively new challenge for Ando, who is best known for his spiritual buildings, museums, and cultural facilities that are usually low-to-the-ground and often placed in picturesque natural settings.
"In every project, I seek to stimulate the place through its connection to diverse things such as the city, history, society, and nature," notes Ando. "At times, the aim is to uncover the memory of place retained by the site and make it manifest through architecture," adds the architect.
Ando’s commission in Shanghai points to his increasingly international stature. Before winning the Pritzker Prize in 1995, he worked mostly in his native Japan. But today, he is not only realizing work elsewhere in Asia, but also in Europe and the Americas. His Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, opened to much acclaim at the end of 2002 and he is currently designing a new wing to the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts, and the conversion of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice into a contemporary art museum for the Fondation François Pinault.
|
