Alex Pasternack on Jinhua, the Smallest Big Architecture Project in China

2008.01.07

Reading Space by Herzog & de Meuron. (All photos by Alex Pasternack.)

Long before the scaffolding and construction dust is cleared for the Olympics, Beijing has been cited as a vision of future architecture, a place for landmarks befitting the new century. Its promises are loudly and incoherently enunciated in the hulking steel and glass of a few arresting, almost cartoon-like signature projects: OMA's CCTV headquarters, Herzog & de Meuron's "bird's nest" Olympic Stadium, and Paul Andreu's egg-like National Grand Theater. More plentiful are the capital's corporate and state monstrosities, which, abetted by reckless urban planning, have trounced upon the human bustle of the city's historic building stock in a reprise of the familiar twentieth-century developing-world urge to be "modern." Both of these modalities speak volumes about the power of China in its global moment, but what they have to say about the country's indigenous design, or about its urban future, is less than promising.

Architects gather with city officials and Ai Weiwei at the opening ceremony, in front of a granite stairway designed by Ai.

There are reasons to be optimistic however, and the best right now may be an overnight train away, in Jinhua, a third-tier city in Zhejiang province famous for its ham. With the backing of the local government, Beijing-based artist Ai Weiwei has turned a kilometer-and-a-half stretch of farmland along the Yiwu River into the site of China's smallest big architecture project: a park of seventeen striking pavilions, each designed by a different architect. Like a small city, every building has a role on this patch of green: MIT architecture chair Yung Ho Chang contributed a low-slung " comprehensive space" with a uniquely tiled façade; Herzog & de Meuron have built a cubic, maze-like Reading Space; and Mexico's Fernando Romero designed a stunning, cantilevered Tea House. These big-name commissions are rounded out by original work from younger architects, including a tree-shaped concrete folly by Herzog protégés Christ and Gantenbein and a set of toilets by painter Wang Xingwei and Xu Tiantian.

Bridging Tea House by Fernando Romero.

Between the poles of sculpture and function, exhibition and green space, the park is even more than an impressive gallery of global design: It is a reminder that in urban China—or anywhere for that matter—good, even brand-name architecture needn't be gargantuan or expensive. The final cost was a relatively modest $5.6m. "This is a new way to do a big project," said Basel-based architect Simon Hartmann, who co-designed a play space called Baby Dragon. "Normally people think good architecture represents shiny finishes, luxury materials, and scale," said Wang Shu, designer of the Coffee House. "But this reverses all that, and demonstrates a good example for all of us."

Bookbar by Michael Maltzan.

For the November opening in Jinhua, many of the architects flew in from Europe and across China to join officials in welcoming the park with confetti-laden ceremonies, toast-abundant dinners, and a small conference. In a keynote speech, Toshiko Mori, chair of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and designer of the Newspaper Cafe pavilion, lauded the park for its vision of small-scale urbanism. "This is a more attractive place for kids to play and older people to hang out rather than being secluded in high-rises," she said, referring to the housing complexes proliferating around China's urban fringes. Moreover, she said, it gave foreign architects a chance to work in the wild east of China, on friendlier terms than those that have characterized the fraught client relationships of Beijing's big-ticket projects.

After the architects convened in Jinhua in 2004 to receive building assignments by lottery, budget restrictions turned the project's construction timeframe from a typically Chinese timeline of four months to a languid two years. In the duration, the architects only heard snippets about the park's progress. "We are used to a lively communication between contractors and architects during the construction process, and lack of it was simply strange," said Mori. Like some of the other architects, she kept her design simple in anticipation of local construction and cost limitations, which required that materials be locally sourced. Herzog & de Meuron's pavilion, the park's most geometrically complex with its erratically folded planes, necessitated hundreds of drawings and the work of a retired master craftsman from Jinhua. Mori said she was surprised not to find more construction errors, and even more surprised at how the park held together, despite little coordination on the parts of the architects. It was Ai's granite and grass landscaping that was responsible for "making us relate to one another unconsciously." Ai Weiwei said that he was "not unhappy" with the outcome.

Restaurant by Johan de Wachter.

When he was first asked to landscape design a park for Jinhua in 2002, Ai refused. Though Jinhua is the birthplace of his father, the poet Ai Qing, he says he has no sentimental connection to the city; he grew up in the far western province of Xinjang, where his father was exiled during the Cultural Revolution. After his own exile in New York City, Ai returned to Beijing in 1993, launching into an array of projects that respond with cheek to myth-making, history and the commodification of art. As with the remixed artifacts that are his best-known artworks, the pavilions Ai curated at Jinhua (including his own archaeological archive) excavate and renew a form of architecture first made famous in Song dynasty landscape paintings: the pavilion. Though it lives on through expos, biennials and commissions like those by London's Serpentine Gallery, the Jinhua park is a permanent and freely accessible cluster of pavilions. Its stark experimentation is not only for the pleasure of architects and visitors, but seems to speak fervently against the unhealthy concrete flourishes of China's urban growth, a stale state-sponsored design system, and a powerful regime of real estate development. "Obviously there are so many wrongdoings, so many stupidities in your surroundings," said Ai. "If you put in a little bit of effort, you show people a new possibility."

Archaeological Archive by Ai Weiwei.

Even without being fully functional (the restaurant has yet to serve food and the book bar still contains no books, though the city says it will staff the park appropriately), the park has already begun to serve part of its mission: compelling locals and visitors, architecture students and veterans to contemplate the value of good, functional architecture. For the city, the project speaks of grand aspirations without the need to shout. Yu Qinrong, Jinhua's urban planning director, said at the opening that the park "shows the world we can accept brand new ideas." At a time of frenzied and flawed urban growth, Jinhua's greatest legacy could be stimulating other ambitious third-tier peers to do the same.

— 文/ Alex Pasternack