Monogatari:
His architectural works, able to transcend controversy, are rooted in their historical context, never out of date and are cosmopolitan.
In 2012, Wang Shu won the Pritzker Prize.
An architect who had not published a collection of works before winning the award, an architect who only worked in China, and an architect who called himself an amateur.
As well as one of the highest awards in the field of architecture, it has been awarded to Chinese architects for the first time in the 33 years since its establishment.
As soon as the award came out, it caused a sensation in the Chinese architectural community.
Some people say that the aesthetics of foreigners are strange. Some people say that the house he built is extremely comfortable to live in. Some people say that this is a strange person. Wang Shu himself said, "There are some unexpected feelings. ”
The Pritzker Prize jury put it this way: "China's urbanization process today is sparking a debate about whether architecture should be based on tradition or should only be future-oriented." Like all great architecture, Wang Shu's work transcends controversy and evolves into a building rooted in its historical context, never outdated and cosmopolitan. ”
There are many controversial voices in Wang Shu, but his works have a strong cultural symbol that can transcend controversy and transcend time, showing inheritance and continuity.
Wang Shu said that before I became an architect, I was first and foremost a literati.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" > rebellion</h1>
Wang Shu's literary popularity was cultivated in his early years.
He grew up in Xinjiang, where his father was an actor in the troupe and talked about art and literature with his friends every day. Wang Shu had heard about it since he was a child, and he knew what was called literary flair and what was literary style.
He read books early, his mother worked as a librarian, and basically in those days he read every book he could touch.
Childhood life gave Wang Shu a lot of intellectual nourishment and inspiration, and also gave Wang Shu the confidence to be lonely and arrogant. Coupled with the fact that the college entrance examination had just been resumed in the 1980s and the new classes on campus had just begun, he thought that the things that teachers could teach were very limited.
So in his sophomore year, he publicly announced to his teacher, "No one can teach me." ”
Rebellion and arrogance have run through Wang Shu's entire student career.
When he was a graduate student, he used an article "The Crisis of Contemporary Chinese Architecture" to criticize the state of the entire modern Chinese architectural community, from the masters to his mentors.
When he graduated with his master's degree, he wrote a "Handbook of the Dead House", which alluded to the current situation of the school's architecture department and the entire Chinese architectural community. The degree committee did not agree to give him a master's degree, saying "This student is crazy!" ”
Later, a teacher recalled to him, "Every time you come from the corridor, we feel that it is not a person who comes over, but a knife that comes with a cold wind, and everyone will unconsciously avoid it." ”
The madman Wang Shu, the literati Wang Shu, he used this background to start his architectural road.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="148" > forget</h1>
Since the 1990s, high-rise buildings have been built everywhere in China, which is a golden age for the construction industry to make money. At this time, Wang Shu chose to retire, he was not accustomed to these phenomena, "they directly copied foreign buildings, and those experts did these things without blushing." ”
Wang Shu wanted to seek a balance between Chinese culture and modern architecture, and wanted to seek a clear expression of modern Chinese architecture.
He couldn't think straight, so he decided to stop. This stop is 7 years.
Wang Shu said that this is a time of forgetting. He put aside the things in the architecture books and got close to life itself. Put aside all the temptations of the outside world and think clearly about the answer to a question.
He arranged his life very simply, like a farmer in the city. Bask in the sun, see the distant mountains, hang out by the West Lake, and watch the rain for a long time. He placed himself in the details of life and spent a lot of time immersing himself in and experiencing. Wang Shu said that the vision of people and nature has undergone very delicate changes, and the mentality has also become natural.
In order to subsidize the family, Wang Shu took over some small decoration projects. He would be present at every construction site and learn from the craftsmen. "I'm going to figure out the whole process of this thing thoroughly. See how every nail is knocked in, how every piece of wood is made and formed. Wang Shu began to become very familiar with materials, construction, and practices, which provided him with sufficient confidence in the matter of building houses later.
These 7 years are the time of forgetting, the time of stopping and thinking, and the time of preparation. Wang Shu did not abandon Chinese architecture, he wanted to take a path closer to nature. He believes that building a house should be to create a world, just like Chinese landscape painting, architecture and nature are inseparable.
▲ The 'growth' of the Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art, 2007 compared with 2021
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="149" > comeback</h1>
When Wang Shu vaguely found the answer to modern Chinese architecture, he began to receive some projects one after another, asking for: We want this modern building to have a Chinese feel, and you are the only choice.
In 2001, Wang Shu received a project at the Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art. Principal Xu Jiang admired Wang Shu, and despite the opposition of others, insisted on handing over the project to Wang Shu, but put forward the condition: the cost was only half of the market price, and it should be completed within 3 years.
Wang Shu agreed, and he made only one request: Don't interfere with my design. He had been silent for so many years and wanted to use the Xiangshan campus to express his views on Chinese architecture.
Wang Shu loves Chinese landscape painting and the artistic conception of Chinese gardens. He believes that in architecture, the landscape is more important than the house, and he tries to dialogue with nature and reshape the building that coexists with the landscape.
The building site of the Xiangshan campus has a hill called "Elephant". How a large campus can coexist with a small mountain is the first problem that Wang Shu faces.
Wang Shu abandoned the traditional campus pattern and designed the campus as a city and a village. He adopted the traditional Chinese courtyard layout, and at the same time, between the building and the landscape, he left a large open space, preserving streams, fish ponds, and agricultural land. He called this the construction of a world, in which there are houses, there are all things, people live, everything grows, and together, it is architecture.
Each building on the Xiangshan campus is like Chinese calligraphy, and the trail corridor surrounds the building, with high and low undulating, continuous and natural swinging. Wang Shu built a new roof form, with waves like mountains cascading.
Roaming in the Xiangshan campus, just like roaming in a long scroll of landscape paintings, often lost, unable to find the exact direction, will see the mountains and water, will perceive nature, in a sense, when the Xiangshan campus is completed, it is better to see the mountain of Xiangshan.
The Xiangshan campus not only contains Wang Shu's understanding of Chinese landscape painting, but also advocates a simple return.
Throughout Zhejiang, he recovered more than seven million pieces of bricks and tiles from demolished traditional villages and towns, some of which are more than 1,000 years old. Wang Shu used these discarded materials in a new expression to let history be continued again.
Some people say that the Xiangshan campus is the ugliest building in Hangzhou. Wang Shu said that the Xiangshan campus was his proud work. It was one of his "gardening activities", where he had a dialogue with the mountain and returned to nature. The direction of modern Chinese architecture will also be clearer and more certain.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="150" > to the countryside</h1>
Later, the Xiangshan campus allowed Wang Shu to win the Pritzker Prize. After winning the Pritzker Prize, he chose to transform a small village in Hangzhou's Fuyang District, Wencun.
The village is not a historic town, the traffic is also very inconvenient, less than half of the old houses in the village are left, and the whole village is dilapidated and crumbling.
In 2016, he said that China's rural areas now need to be rescued more, and if this culture is not rescued, it will all disappear within 10 years. So in those years, Wang Shu has been doing one thing: rescuing rural architectural culture.
Wang Shu used three shades of gray, white and yellow, with local hang limestone, plastered walls and rammed earth craftsmanship, to build a number of new houses for Wencun that were "more like the old village than the old village", each farmhouse designed a kitchen that could be built with an earth stove, a space for storing agricultural tools, and a space for drying grain on the second floor.
At first, the villagers disagreed, and they imagined living in small western-style buildings and having a larger residential base.
"In the traditional life of Chinese, the hall house and the courtyard are related to the birth, old age, illness and death of a family, and various traditional ceremonies such as ancestor worship, deity worship, and funeral ceremony are held here. In just twenty or thirty years of hard work, Chinese didn't even need a yard. Wang Shu did not want to watch this traditional culture and way of life slowly pass away.
So he went to the provincial government to fight. Later, the yard within 10 square meters was not counted in the homestead area, and the villagers accepted the design of the yard.
The new village was built, and the yard was put in. Wang Shu said that this tattered village is a painting for me. The grandmothers at the mouth of the village are still there chatting and basking in the sun. Villagers dry clothes, eat and plant flowers in their yards. "I don't want the realism to disappear and my life to be changed." This was the most gratifying thing for Wang Shu.
Wang Shu always has a natural liking for old houses. In the 1980s, Wang Shu carried a bag alone and spent 3 months walking through one village after another according to the route of Shen Congwen's "Xiangxing Scattered Records".
He was often moved by the old buildings, and he felt that he could see a calm and real state of life, and now he was retaining this beauty in his own way.
Over the years, Wang Shu has used Chinese landscape painting, garden art and traditional craftsmanship to slowly form his own architectural language, and to express the direction of modern Chinese architecture to people.
Today, China's cities are developing at full speed in a similar way. And these high-rise buildings and reinforced concrete, after 50 or 70 years, will all become urban construction waste. Mr. Wang has confessed that he has no hope for the future of Chinese cities.
Looking back at history, those traditional buildings in China, whether it is the gardens of Suzhou or the compacted tulou in the southeast mountain pass... They all fit the unique way of life of that place, with a true expression. The main thing is that they overcome time and get a long solidification.
Wang Shu has always insisted on building cultural symbols in Chinese architecture, and he hopes that architecture can better integrate with nature and let people find a more poetic way of life. He hopes that China's architecture will stand the test of time and remain in history for a long time.
China's modern architecture, which may not change much in the future, is still lined with high-rise buildings, reinforced concrete, and competing to build the tallest buildings. But we can still see some architects, such as Wang Shu, always doing their best to make some changes in the city. Wang Shu said he is willing to be The last literati in China and let everyone see the direction in which Chinese cities may develop.
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