Articles by Collin Chen

Lifting the Four Corners of the Rooftop. Imagine a two-story house, with its four rooftop corners lifted up. More light is let in; the height of interior space becomes indefinite – some rooms are two stories high, some one and a half, and some close to the top ceiling are only half story high, and these spaces naturally transform into a living room, an art studio, a loggia, or an attic… The roof, defined by four curves, transforms into a patio featuring a double-curved structure, just like a courtyard opening up towards the sky. People can get together here on a clear summer night to enjoy the bright moon and the cool; on a wet day, this is also where rain gathers and gets drained out of the house from four waterspouts.

Environment. Located in Quzika, Markam County, Tibet, the mission of the project is to generate income for local Tibetans by establishing a winery that can provide cultural tourism experience to alleviate poverty through the development of local industries. The winery is located at the foot of the Dameiyong Snow Mountain, close to the Lancang River, the thousand-year-old salt fields, and the only Catholic church in Tibet. The natural environment of the site is perfect: the mountain terraces extending into the Lancang River are dotted with century-old walnut trees and century-old grape vines. In the site, the mountain streams flow by the remains of an ancient water mill.

Song County’s three-in-one construction project is located in the new city across the Yi River. On a site of less than 9,000㎡, it contains the main functions of a museum, an archive, and an urban planning museum, with an above-ground construction area of 10,000㎡ and a floor area ratio of 1.14 which make the site extremely constrained. However, it is the first comprehensive cultural facility in Song County that preserves and exhibits historical memory and future vision.

At nearly 300 meters tall, Shimao Qianhai Center in Shenzhen stands as one of Qianhai’s landmark towers and one of the world’s tallest structurally twisting buildings. The building tapers and simultaneously rotates, creating striking imagery with twisting curtain walls and structural columns. The tower sits as the tallest building within a high-density urban block surrounded by six towers. It is designed to both harmonize the cluster of buildings into a wholistic composition and stand out as an iconic structure.

This project retrofits an old warehouse on the riverbank into a new function of exhibition, cultural, and sales center. It is located on the north bank of the Yong River, not far from the city center of Ningbo, as part of the first phase of the Creative Ports. The area, formerly an intermodal area that presents the old north railway station, the 3rd industrial port, and the associated warehouses, is now being redeveloped to accommodate mixed uses in the vision of a new urban creative industry incubator.