(“Text as submitted by architect”)
Yang Zhao
Yang Zhao was born in Chongqing, China, in 1980. After studying at Tsinghua University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, he established Zhaoyang Architects in Dali, Yunnan Province. The practice tries to explore architectural solutions to the emerging Chinese urban and rural conditions and relate architecture to a tangible social, cultural, and natural background, a tradition that’s long forgotten by the contemporary design and building industry in China.
In 2012, Zhao was selected as the inaugural architectural protégé of the acclaimed Rolex mentor and protégé arts initiative. Under the direction of his mentor, Kazuyo Sejima, Zhao designed a home for all in Kesennuma to help victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Zhao started to teach design studios at Tsinghua University in 2019. In 2015, Zhaoyang Architects participated in the exhibition “From the Asian Everyday” at Toto Gallery Ma in Tokyo. In 2020, Zhao published his first book, ‘To Build a House That Doesn’t Resist Life.’
Practice Ideology
Architecture of circumstances
Originality comes from circumstances, not ideas. Ideas repeat themselves.
Circumstances never recur. They form the river of Heraclitus.
Circumstances follow the law of causation. Therefore, they have their timeliness. It is circumstances that anchor architecture to its time.
Circumstances are informal. Hierarchies are ever forking and improvisational. Spontaneity brings ad-hoc reactions.
Circumstances have their urgency for exactitude. They are the only solution to arbitrariness.
Circumstances have their tolerance for precision, for the world is not such a rigid configuration.
Architecture without ends
The perfection of manhattan ends at the island periphery; the perfection of seagram ends at the marble bench of the podium. Perfection is possible when the rest of the world is excluded.
“architecture without ends” is architecture without essence. It is formed by whatever that is not architecture.
“cities without ends” are the urban merges into the suburban. We don’t differentiate the natural from the artificial. We don’t value the cultivated higher than the wild. The world in which we dwell should never be less than the whole.
When we sculpt the solid, our minds dwell upon the void; when we shape the void, it is the solid that matters.
We arrange things, not phenomena. Phenomena manifest themselves through well-arranged things.
Geometry is one attribute of a material, not vice versa.
There is a figure, as there is a figure in a rock or a tree, but it’s not figurative. Every living creature has its figure. Buildings and towns are living creatures, simple or complex. They need to be figured out.
