rizzoli book examines six radical projects by OPEN that reinvent china's cultural landscape

Reinventing Cultural Architecture: A Radical Vision By Open

A new Rizzoli book examines how Beijing-based architecture studio OPEN is reinventing China’s complex and fast-changing cultural landscape. ‘Reinventing Cultural Architecture: A Radical Vision By OPEN’ explores six recent groundbreaking projects that mark a new era for contemporary Chinese cultural architecture. Written by Catherine Shaw with a foreword by Aric Chen, the book gathers a series of conversations and site visits to the projects to highlighting the architects’ sources of inspiration, their challenges, and their construction methods.

In the past few years, OPEN has developed pioneering concepts for a varying conditions, including Chapel of Sound, a sculptural open-air theater in a remote mountain valley near the Great Wall, and TANK shanghai, a cultural complex set inside a former airport’s fuel tanks. The studio’s co-founders, Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, re-evaluate conventional Western assumptions about culture and design as they base each project on people’s needs and desires within the context of diverse terrains and climates.

header image: Chapel of Sound at dusk © Jonathan Leijonhufvud

RIZZOLI BOOK GATHERS SIX KEY CULTURAL PROJECTS

‘What we strive to do is create closer connections between ourselves and the natural world through architecture, exploring how the work of man and nature can intermingle. We believe in innovation only if it can improve people’s lives and the environment and even then, we look for the simplest solutions,’ say OPEN co-founders Li Hu and Huang Wenjing. The book, which is released by Rizzoli this month (April 2022), presents six key cultural projects with commentary and contextual information as well as new analyses and archival material, including color photography, plans and drawings, and exploratory sketches. Providing a fresh perspective on contemporary cultural architecture and place making, the volume showcases how each ambitious and innovative project responds to China’s distinctive context.

Chapel of Sound outdoor stage, image © Jonathan Leijonhufvud | more about the project on designboom here

‘OPEN is one of the leading protagonists in this shift towards an architecture that responds more profoundly to China’s needs, circumstances, and possibilities,’ writes Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director of Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, Netherlands, in the foreword. ‘Their work, like the museums and hybrid theatre-library profiled in this book, exemplifies the notion that, at its most consequential, built form is the reification of context in all senses: social, cultural, and systemic, as well as physical, urban, and formal’.The book also includes a conversation between Martino Stierli, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and Huang Wenjing and Li Hu, moderated by Catherine Shaw.

Chapel of Sound’s double-shell structure © Jonathan Leijonhufvud

Chapel of Sound, valley covered in snow, image by Ni Nan

book spread © Reinventing Cultural Architecture: A Radical Vision by OPEN, Rizzoli New York, 2022

aerial view of the dune at UCCA Dune Art Museum, image © Zaiye Studio

the interconnected gallery spaces of UCCA Dune Art Museum, image © Wu Qingshan

Tank Shanghai, image © Wu Qingshan | more about the project on designboom here +here

Sun Tower rendering of a view of the sunrise from the outdoor theater at summer solstice, image © OPEN | more about the project on designboom here