Huayi Design - (1986-2006)

Author: None
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: "From a historical perspective, architecture has always been defined by practice rather than theory." In the twenty years since the establishment of Wuyi Design, Chinese architecture has been "rapidly catching up with the hundred-year journey of Western modern architecture," having gone through enough skepticism and blind imitation, learning and rejection, creativity and plagiarism, acclaim and criticism, and accumulating enough persistence and abandonment, loss and success." Everything is just as Herman Hertzberger said, "Architecture rarely succeeds in escaping its obvious fate—seeking to conform to one or another trend, rather than discarding superficial fashion and splendor for true reality." However, "who can claim that architecture is not developing well today? It seems that there are no more constraints under the call to break free from strict limitations, and everything appears limitless, existing in a reckless state. Today's architectural world is like a football match, with only a few seemingly all-powerful players but no goalposts, despite the elaborate actions. Yet, the trend of the game and our true expectations remain unclear." Everywhere is filled with "packaged gift" designs that are seemingly plausible. As Cassette said in The Revolt of the Masses, "The world today still lacks roots. It is rootless." But one thing is undeniable: architects design according to human expectations. Of course, further discussion will reveal many details: Is architecture a profession or a discipline? Is it academic or artistic? Is it craftsmanship or science? Is it environmental management or a theoretical field, or perhaps just a corporate culture? To outsiders, it seems that any definition is possible. One thing is clear: the decisions made by an architectural design firm not only determine the works they complete but also their ultimate success. Wuyi Design is committed to achieving a "platform" strategy that balances "craftsmanship and science" and "profession and management." Compared to the current frantic pursuit of public attention and novelty, Wuyi leans toward a clear-headed and publicly responsible design stance. Public responsibility is the solid foundation of Wuyi's corporate culture. At Wuyi, design, strategy, and stance are one and the same. "Design must subordinate itself to the overall strategy of the designer's engagement with reality, and strategy is determined by the designer's stance, which includes political, economic, cultural, and social positions. Design that is detached from stance and strategy is like a tree without roots and a river without a source." The opportunities and conditions brought about by China's rapid urbanization are unprecedented and cannot be transplanted from any existing theoretical framework. This requires architects to take on the responsibility of solving social problems, especially those arising from the flaws of architectural theory and practice. Based on this sense of responsibility, Wuyi Design, as a whole, adheres to three fundamental elements—team spirit, process excellence, and research and discovery—these being one of the solid foundations of Wuyi's corporate culture. Team spirit and teamwork are the hallmarks of Wuyi's work. Architecture is a profession driven by a multidisciplinary system based on a wide range of specialized disciplines, no longer relying solely on a single strong leadership force. The entire team must share and bear the partial responsibility and risks brought by leadership, thereby shedding the "workshop" concept and model. This internal structure allows a collaborative team to undertake truly large-scale projects. "When you have different people working hard, you can only get the best solutions." Based on the philosophy of collective practice, Wuyi's project teams believe in a design process that embraces practice, risk, and intuition, with no single design style or opinion dominating. A highly flat and decentralized system provides greater professional freedom and faster responses to clients. Team spirit also creates an environment for growth, including the concentration of talent, the drive of clients and economic development, and continuous learning. Wuyi has created an ideal place for learning that can last for many years. Young people are amazed by the vast resource pool and the challenging nature of the projects, while seasoned professionals must reinterpret existing industry knowledge to match new project types and scales. Based on platform-based process management, Wuyi ensures efficiency. Despite its size, Wuyi is a business-supported, profession-driven company, not a profession-supported, business-driven one. As a creative-driven company, whether the creativity comes from science, planning, construction, or something else, and whether it comes from any part of the team, these ideas bring excellent service to the public and clients while also posing significant management challenges. There is no shortcut to success in the market. Excellence and refined processes are the key and bond that maintains the entire structure. Wuyi firmly believes that the answer lies in the process. Without process guarantees, the multidisciplinary system not only fails to adjust and align differences to adapt and thrive in the professional environment but also easily leads to conflicts in work. In Wuyi's process, the team spends their days developing abstract concepts into actionable ideas. No one in the team is not a designer, whether specializing in technology, management, on-site work, or contract matters. Everyone thinks from a design perspective, and the project support team considers themselves designers as well—only coincidentally using contracts, phone calls, faxes, and emails to design. Similarly, the design team holds the same view. Here, the process is integrated into every detail of management and design. Design itself as a problem-solving method is still insufficient to meet the needs of many projects today. The demand for professional diversity highlights the importance of the process. Specialized processes mean that young designers can focus their valuable time on professional design, while senior personnel control the main aspects of the project on one hand and disseminate valuable industry knowledge on the other. This not only makes the company highly efficient in terms of professional talent but also strengthens its robust business operations foundation. Creative research and discovery are at the core of Wuyi Design's methodology. Wuyi Design's team firmly believes that "research" is a more advantageous stance than "creation." "Discovery" carries deeper meaning than "expression." Pure architecture has never existed. The built realm, not to mention the interconnected realm, is far deeper and broader than what we typically define and name as architecture using a three-dimensional system. Architecture is alive. Beyond the surface of form and style, it is brought to life by a wealth of diverse, open, and contradictory relationships that give meaning to the here and now. Within this, we delve into "research" and strive to "discover" the most valuable aspects, thereby creating new connections and meanings. At Wuyi, aesthetic optimism lacks broad support. Instead, "the state of space is far more important than its form." Design is more about the ability to depict a vision than shaping forms, and creating is merely a starting point. Only by immersing oneself in the measurable and immeasurable elements of the entire "here and now" can one possibly achieve "discovery" and layer together a high-quality vision, thereby transcending superficial styles and forms. Wuyi's methodology holds that during the process of seeking a design vision, a certain degree of restraint on the designer and the building being designed is necessary. As Buckminster Fuller said, "all that except me," or as it could also be said, "where freedom reigns, there is no decision." Any individual's standpoint is like the planned network system that covers the complex surface of the world, as described by Wittgenstein, an intrinsic and self-evident system. To some extent, it is a tyrannical system toward the external world and others. This is why we emphasize "discovery" and abandon "expression." If one overly reveres one's own inner strength, defects will exist in the overall structure of the design, leading to excessive formal design and a lack of deep technical ability. The former, as Moses Safdie said, is "beautifully ugly," while the latter results from the abuse of technology, causing the design project itself to lose control and leading to an overflow of superficial architectural expression and a "preoccupation with self-expression in trivial details." As a creative-driven company, Wuyi's pursuit of "beauty" is undeniable, but we firmly believe that "beauty arises from attention to other things." If beauty is deliberately pursued, it easily becomes contrived, sentimental, and tasteless. As Russian writer Joseph Brodsky criticized Ezra Pound's overly direct dependence on beauty in Watermarks, "It didn't move me either. The main problem is still the same. Chasing beauty behind beauty cannot be the goal; it is always a byproduct, often a very ordinary one." In this collection of works, it is difficult to label it with a single style or model. Because what we do at Wuyi is precisely "a very ordinary pursuit."