Bridging Tea House

 

An ambitious master plan was designed for the construction of a multipurpose modern city in Jinhua. In the spirit of this plan, the local government commissioned a teahouse to be built beside a pond in a park next to the river that runs through the city. The concept was reworked formally to create a structure that also serves as a mirror—the lower part reflects the upper part, thus producing an effect of continuous space. Our first concept was totally open and functioned as a mask in relation to the neighboring pavilions. Working in collaboration with local engineers, a structure was suggested in which different platforms would be constructed for diverse uses. The translation of this suggestion gave birth to a building that contains a series of spaces on diverse levels that create privacy and intimacy, micro-atmospheres that generate distinct visual experiences for the teahouse’s visitors. The final sculptural object resulted from the unification, within a single contemporary form, of two traditional typologies derived from the gardens of ancient China: the bridge and the teahouse.

Fernando Romero

A striking Red color and a deconstruction of planes and spaces bridge two lands together in  Jinhau, China. The bridge, designed by Fernando Romero, explores the relation between the traditional chinese tea house and the concept of the bridge. The design looks like a sculpture standing tall in front of the landscape. The architecture of the space allows for different private/public platforms. It is a bridge but at the same time it is a space where you can sip a cup of tea with a friend privately while enjoying the view. Everything is red, the color unifies all the spaces introducing them to the eye as one large object.

 

 

Ai Weiwei: Can Art Alter Society ?

“If you don’t Speak your mind, then who are you”    Ai weiwei

Ai Weiwei is a chinese artist known for his continuous criticism and provocation of the chinese government. He was detained yesterday and most of his work was confiscated. He had several clashes with the government if not personally at least on the world-wide web. His blog was always under watch and continually firewalled. You might remember his Tate Modern’s Sun flower installation where he covered the whole ground with hand crafted porcelain sun flower seeds. Each Seed was individually painted  by the town that once made porcelain for the imperial court. Whats absurd about the story is that the town was saved  from bankruptcy by making those seeds. The purpose of the installation was to explore the “made in china” phenomenon and the mass production exports coming out from china. Each seed represents a work of art, represents a person’s source of living and yet the whole picture blurs this fact as it does in the real life exports from china. We fail to see the hands behind all those mass productions. The work also questions the place of art in the chinese society; how a town that was once famous for its porcelain works ended up  making thousands of seeds if not millions to save itself from poverty. The effects of the world trade on the chinese culture.

Photo Courtesy of the Tate Modern Museum

Also another interesting project was the “Study in Perspective” series from 1995 to 2003 where he captured his middle finger in front of political buildings in Beijing, Berlin, Paris, Washington DC and Hong Kong.

Photo Courtesy of Ai Weiwei

“Map of China” 2003 is another controversial work where he assembled a 50 cm tall extrusion of the map of china from the salvaged wood of the demolished Qing dynasty temples. The “map” was assembled without one single nail through a traditional method of jointing.

An interseting Documentray made by Alison Klayman: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ai-wei-wei/ai-weiwei-story/