Huayi Design: 1986-2006

Author: Huayi Design Consulting Co., Ltd.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: "From a historical perspective, architecture has always been defined by practice rather than theory." In the 20 years since its establishment, Chinese architecture has been "rapidly catching up with the century-long journey of Western modern architecture, after going through enough skepticism and blind imitation, learning and rejection, leaving behind enough creativity and plagiarism, cheers 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 restrictions under the call to break free from strict constraints, and everything appears limitless and in a reckless state. Today's architectural world is like a football match, with some seemingly all-powerful players but no goalposts, despite the glamorous performances. However, 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 Rebel, "The world today still lacks roots. It is rootless." But there is one undeniable point: architects design according to human expectations. Of course, further discussion will produce 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 is it simply a corporate culture? For outsiders, it seems possible to define it in any way. There is one thing that is clear: the decisions made by an architectural design institution not only determine the works they complete but also determine the possibility of their ultimate success. Huayi 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, Huayi tends to adopt a more rational and publicly responsible design stance. Public responsibility is the solid foundation of Huayi's corporate culture. At Huayi, 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 the 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 responsibility for solving social problems, especially those arising from the flaws of architectural theory and practice. Based on this sense of responsibility, Huayi Design, as a whole, adheres to three fundamental elements—team spirit, process excellence, and research and discovery—these are also one of the solid foundations of Huayi's corporate culture. Team spirit and teamwork are the hallmarks of Huayi'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 responsibilities and risks brought by leadership, thereby shedding the "workshop" concept and model. This internal structure enables a collaborative team to undertake truly large-scale projects. "You can only get the best solutions when different people are working hard." Based on the philosophy of collective practice, Huayi's project teams believe in a design process that embraces practice, risk-taking, 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 promotion of clients and economic development, and continuous learning. Huayi 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. Relying on platform-based process management ensures Huayi's efficiency. Despite its size, Huayi is a business-supported professional-driven company, not a professional-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. An excellent and refined process is the key and bond that maintains the entire structure. Huayi 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 Huayi's process, the team spends their days developing abstract concepts into actionable ideas. No one in the team is not a designer, whether they specialize 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. They just happen to use contracts, phone calls, faxes, and emails to design, while 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 not sufficient to meet the needs of many projects today. The demand for professional diversity highlights the importance of the process. A specialized process means that young designers can focus their valuable time on professional design, while senior professionals 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 the core of Huayi's design methodology. Huayi's design team firmly believes that "research" is a more superior stance than "creation." "Discovery" has a 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 usually define and name as architecture using a three-dimensional system. Architecture is alive. Beyond the surface of form and style, it is brought by various pluralistic, open, and contradictory relationships to the meaning of this time and place. Within this, we delve into "research" and strive to "discover" the most valuable aspects, thereby creating new connections and meanings. At Huayi, aesthetic optimism lacks broad support. Instead, "the state of space is more important than its form." Design is more about the ability to depict a vision than shaping, 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. Huayi's methodology believes 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 can also be said, "where freedom prevails, there is no decision." Any individual's standpoint is like the planned network system that covers the complex manifestations of the world, as described by Wittgenstein, an intrinsic and self-evident system. In a sense, 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, there will be defects in the overall structure of the design, leading to excessive formal design and a lack of deep technical capabilities. 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 a flood of superficial architectural expressions and a "preoccupation with self-expression in trivial details." As a creative-driven company, Huayi's pursuit of "beauty" is undeniable, but we firmly believe that "beauty arises from attention to other things." If beauty is deliberately pursued, it is easily reduced to artificiality, sentimentality, and poor taste. As Russian writer Joseph Brodsky criticized Ezra Pound's overly direct dependence on beauty in Watermark, "It didn’t move me. The main problem is still the same. Chasing beauty behind beauty cannot be the goal. It is always a byproduct of something else, often something very ordinary." In this collection of works, it is difficult to label it with a single style or model. Because what we do at Huayi is precisely "a very ordinary exploration."