Articles by Collin Chen

Located in a resort on the outskirts of Guangzhou, the Levitated Curtain is an iconic building for wedding ceremonies and public events. In Guangzhou, weddings usually start at 7 am, but the ceremony only begins around 6 pm, then Xi Hall will serve as a multifunctional space for dining, photo shooting, reception, and several other purposes during the day, and becomes a sacred place for the wedding ceremony at nightfall. When there are no weddings, Xi Hall which sits in the center of the resort will be a perfect location for sightseeing and allow public events for different occasions.

Housed in a New York-style brick building, Contempo is the design office of via. The studio has transformed a former industrial space into a hybrid work and creative environment spanning nearly 10,000 sq. ft. over two floors. Designed to promote a sense of community and to inspire ingenuity, the office merges versatile and fluid work zones with myriad social spaces, drawing on an inventive palette and understated colors to impart a relaxed, cohesive ambiance.

The INNOVATIVE LAB of ARCHITECTURE & ART is CLAB’s new studio in Qionglai, Chengdu City, and it is a space built and operated by architects, artists, scientific research institute, and rural craftsmen. Its name reveals three, at least, experimental “spirits”: the experiment of construction, the experiment of rural reform movement, and the innovation experiment of social relations.

In Linpan of western Sichuan province, the relationship between architecture and site is never created by an architect. This special village form in western Sichuan is a state of intelligent construction, humble and positive response to the site by the people who have lived on this land for thousands of years. Although We & Arch has been dived in construction in Chengdu for more than 10 years, we have never built a bond with the Chengdu Plain. In this project, the architect tries to clarify the architecture of farmhouse forests and attempts to construct the hotel to be a small village with modern architectural features on Chengdu Plain.

Fang House is located in Zhangshuxia Village, Qiandao Lake, Hangzhou city. The homestead of Fang House is a rectangular plot of 8mX12m, which is also the largest area that the village grants uncle Fang to build. The house site is located in the inner part of the village. The house is surrounded by three-story residential houses, and there is hardly any view of the lake from the inside of the house. Blocked by the surrounding volume of the building, the architects decided to design the site as an “inner space construction”, with two vertical atriums in this small box. When viewed from the outside, it is a very simple square box, all openings are inward.

“The center afforded us the opportunity of designing an enlightened space for learning and research, one where interactive exchange, and a strong connection to nature could foster the next generations of medical leaders.”
– Moshe Safdie

This building is a 4-story residential building of 35 years in a townhouse community. The idea of “flow” enables human use and natural feeling, as the diversified and flowing space improves communication and information exchange, facilitating mood switches for work or use scenarios. The large open windows bring in the light, while trees reduce heat. The skylight enables a vertical and free flow of light for different settings and views. Changes in nature can be felt even indoors.