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Architect focuses on real lives
By Staff reporters |
December 28, 2009, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
LIU Jiakun is a renowned architect and writer who has garnered several international awards. In 2008, he was invited to help build the Chinese Hall at the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. After the Sichuan earthquake that shocked the country last year, he developed "recycled bricks" from the abandoned ruins.
"The organizer invited me to give a speech that combines the Wenchuan Earthquake and the World Expo 2010 Seminar, which adds some difficulty for me. Here is the big international city while there is the poor and remote countryside. The conditions of the two are totally different. But if I don't make a speech on them, it seems that there is no need for my coming here."
Such an opening remark made the audience aware that Liu is not a reserved kind of architect.
"Whether reconstruction is in the countryside or building a new town in Jiading, there is one common situation - building a venue for the gathering of people."
And Liu was inspired by reconstruction in a quake-hit area of Wenchuan.
"I have seen many proposals from the elites of architecture circles in China. All are quite creative, but a 'beautiful' proposal is not practical. An architect could exert his talents in a civilized process. But when it comes to the primitive condition, the idea could only come out by the instinct of nature instead of any professional guidance."
Facing the ruins in the quake-hit area, Liu once said: "The best house is the most solid one." But now, he thought that his words were not fully correct, because the safety of the architecture was not the ultimate requirement but the basic requirement.
He thought that architects must take the needs of people's lives into consideration, and wondered about the future of peasants who were relocated from their farms into an urbanized small community.
"The ideal new town is not the gathering of people and material, but the gathering of the people's spirit and culture," Liu said. "We should first plan the life of the residents here otherwise it will become a city without content."
In Liu's eyes, a new town could not be built in a day. "No matter what a kind of architecture it is, it must take a certain reasonable amount of time to build," he said.
"The organizer invited me to give a speech that combines the Wenchuan Earthquake and the World Expo 2010 Seminar, which adds some difficulty for me. Here is the big international city while there is the poor and remote countryside. The conditions of the two are totally different. But if I don't make a speech on them, it seems that there is no need for my coming here."
Such an opening remark made the audience aware that Liu is not a reserved kind of architect.
"Whether reconstruction is in the countryside or building a new town in Jiading, there is one common situation - building a venue for the gathering of people."
And Liu was inspired by reconstruction in a quake-hit area of Wenchuan.
"I have seen many proposals from the elites of architecture circles in China. All are quite creative, but a 'beautiful' proposal is not practical. An architect could exert his talents in a civilized process. But when it comes to the primitive condition, the idea could only come out by the instinct of nature instead of any professional guidance."
Facing the ruins in the quake-hit area, Liu once said: "The best house is the most solid one." But now, he thought that his words were not fully correct, because the safety of the architecture was not the ultimate requirement but the basic requirement.
He thought that architects must take the needs of people's lives into consideration, and wondered about the future of peasants who were relocated from their farms into an urbanized small community.
"The ideal new town is not the gathering of people and material, but the gathering of the people's spirit and culture," Liu said. "We should first plan the life of the residents here otherwise it will become a city without content."
In Liu's eyes, a new town could not be built in a day. "No matter what a kind of architecture it is, it must take a certain reasonable amount of time to build," he said.
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