China's 'weird' wonders draw criticism

Three gods. A booze bottle. And a massive mobile clasped by a huge hand.

Sounds like the start of a divine drunk-dial joke.

But, no, the punch line is these are buildings specimens of China’s unusual architecture.

Beijing’s Tianzi hotel, Wuliangye’s liquor factory in Sichuan province’s Yibin and Xingyao Cellphone City in Yunnan’s provincial capital Kunming were designed to look like the said objects. (Tianzi won a Guinness World Record award for biggest image building, Xinhua news agency reports.)

Also purposefully wrought were the gargantuan ping-pong paddles in Anhui province’s Huainan, the colossal ancient Chinese coin that’s the Fangyuan Mansion in Liaoning province’s capital Shenyang, and the violin-and-piano structure that’s a music centre in Huainan.

The same goes for both of China’s teapot-shaped buildings. While not at all short yet very stout, the 10-story tourist information centre in Jiangsu's Wuxi rotates. Really.

Whereas these structures were shaped as such on purpose, Chongqing’s “flying saucer”, the “long johns” in Jiangsu province’s Suzhou and the “sails” in Hainan province’s Sanya weren’t designed for the monikers they’ve produced.

Rather, their appellations are anthropomorphic designations netizens contrived as they looked at China’s unorthodox buildings like Rorschach tests.

And their facades provide for plenty of jests.

President Xi Jinping called for a halt to the contruction of “weird” buildings at a recent meeting of creative types.

 

“Judgment imbalance”

When it comes to “weird” buildings, Hong Kong- and New York City-based Chang Bene Design’s principal Christopher Bene says: “China is the winner. Of course, everyone has a different definition of weird.”

Chinese Academy of Engineering academian Cheng Taining explains the reason China generates so many offbeat edifices has been a “judgment imbalance”.

“These weird buildings are too alienated from basic architectural norms and ... have become super-sized art installations that jump on the desire and vanity bandwagon,” Cheng says.

Qingdao Yangtze Architecture architect Sun Cheng says the proliferation of bizarre buildings arises from real estate developers’ desire to create something that “stands out”.

“But their designs often fall prey to cheesy looks ridiculed by the public,” Sun says. “Even with so many critics, the fact that they’ve become the talk of the day is a big win for those real estate companies.”

Brisk development and “huge” investments are the reasons Studio Twist’s founder and director Lip Chiong believes “weird” buildings have multiplied.

“There’s a constant pressure for each city to build new and striking iconic buildings to stand out and compete for a unique identity, tourism, economy and other aspects that contribute to being a successful city,” Lip says.

“‘Weird’ buildings typically cost more to build than ‘normal’ buildings, hence, most countries or cities see an increase in ‘weird’ buildings built during boom times when there’s a lot of investment sloshing around. China is unique in terms of its construction’s speed and scale during its boom, which I think has a negative consequence of producing more weird buildings that are less thoughtful.”

UK-based Sure Architecture’s global director Kam Fai Tai believes China’s construction stands at a crossroads of technology, design software and new materials.

“China is the construction site of the world,” he says.

“Many projects in China need to be approved by governors but aren’t directly decided by markets and users. New and weird become a shortcut for designers to get the approval or win competitions.”

That’s among other reasons, Tai believes.

“Chinese people are becoming more open-minded [and] many international companies take China’s market as a site of experimentation for architectural design.”

Chinese-architects.com curator Eduard Koegel points out: “Every country produces its own weirdness. Architects are around to solve problems. But sometimes the problems become buildings. And this can result in a problematic building. Especially in fast-growing economies with under-regulated markets, the weirdness of buildings expresses the aspirations of the nouveau riche. Hopefully this will be a problem of a transition period.”

But he believes “a real problem” endures behind the phenomenon.

“This relates to the question of identity and how people relate to the buildings’ environments,” he says.

Lip believes it’s about whether these buildings serve residents or developers.

“I wish I could name some ‘weird’ buildings whose uniqueness strikes a resonance with local people or expresses the sentiments of our times, rather than just expressing the interests and egos of owners or corporations or mayors,” he says.

“I find attempts by certain architects whose buildings in China try to express an updated idea of Chineseness to be more interesting than ‘weird’ buildings that look just like it can be in another city in another country.”

Japan-based Taisei Corp’s Beijing office architect Jiang Yuan says China’s architecture struggles from “distorted aesthetics and values”.

“The conversation with Western architecture is abrupt and blunt,” Jiang says.

“They want to give architecture some Chinese elements but don’t realise traditional cultural heritage isn’t simply crude grafting or patchwork. The entire Chinese construction industry loves the unconventional and grand. But they’re copycats without soul.”

Yip says technology is also redrawing the blueprint.

“The other big reason is the prevalence of the Internet, social media and other digital platforms to disseminate architecture for mass consumption. [This has] overtaken what used to be a real and evolving understanding of our built environment and living in buildings. This has led to more of today’s architecture being produced increasingly for visual impact rather than actual experience.”

Miao Design Studio principal architect and University of Hawaii professor Pu Miao points out China’s “weird” construction is unique.

“In Western countries, you find these oddballs mostly at the vernacular level, such as a small hotel or a fast-food store,” Pu says.

“In contrast, vulgar buildings in China include many landmark projects, such as headquarters of large banks or major governmental buildings.”

The government headquarters of Yuhua district in Jiangsu’s capital Nanjing is a replica of the US' Capitol Building, and neighbouring Zhejiang province’s Wenling’s People’s Courthouse is a facsimile of the US’s White House.

“China’s economy... has been distorted by rapid growth, which also distorts the design of buildings,” Bene says.

“But sometimes this is good because these buildings become a symbol of a particular time and place in history.”

Lip believes it’s important to define “weird”.

“‘Weird’ doesn’t always have negative connotations,” he says.

“Almost all great artworks signal a departure from the norm and are seen as weird or unusual when created.”

He points to unconventional structures in boomtowns like Erdos – a megacity on China’s border with Mongolia with everything a megalopolis could want, minus the population.

“[They] are designed to be visually striking and isolated objects but serve very little purpose or meaning to the people of Erdos for whom they’re supposed to be built.”

Lip points to Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum and Paris’s Eiffel Tower as cases of unorthodox architecture that work.

“‘Weird’ can start to be inspiring when people can understand and appreciate its uniqueness-when a certain beauty or purpose is fulfilled,” he says.

China hosts at least three Eiffel Tower copies, as well as duplicates of Thames Town and other Western cities.

“It’s equally disastrous from a cultural point of view that so many Chinese cities are built in short spans of time, resulting in so many mundane and normal buildings within generic cities that all look the same,” Lip says.

“How can the next generation of Chinese people find their own identity or be inspired to do wonderful things with their lives if they all live in cities that are soulless and look more or less the same?”