Metaamo receives Gold Prize in Guangzhou

Matt and Xiaonuan were recently in Guangzhou for the Liang Sicheng Cup awards ceremony, where we were presented with the Gold Prize, the highest honor in the international competition, for our proposal for a Cultural Center at a UNESCO Heritage Site in Kaiping, China.

The Prize was presented by Ms. Tang Wensheng, who was born in New York, and was once aide to Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai (When US President Richard Nixon first came to China in 1972, Tang Wensheng served as translator in that historic meeting).

Following the ceremony, we were honored to have met with Liang Sicheng's grandson, in a wonderful conversation, also translated by Ms. Tang Wensheng. Among the topics, we discussed the foundational role that his grandfather's scholarship played in bringing knowledge of East Asian architecture to the US and the West, and in how his formal recommendations to Allied leaders helped to save the cities of Kyoto and Nara from bombing in World War 2. Coincidentally, Liang Sicheng's first books in China were published by Tsinghua University (where Xiaonuan is an Alum and Matt was a Visiting Scholar), while in the US, his famous first English language work about Chinese Architecture was published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MIT Press (where Matt is an alum and former faculty member).

Metaamo wins Gold Prize in Liang Sicheng Cup for UNESCO site

We're happy to announce that our project, "Dialogue Between Wind and Earth," has won the sole Gold Prize in the Liang Sicheng Cup, the highest honor in a global architectural ideas competition for a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kaiping, China, for the preservation and celebration of Diaolou, a unique tower structure created by local Chinese who had travelled abroad and returned home to build with a mix of Western and Eastern influences. 

http://www.lscbadc.com/goods/?atd=show_0_18_1_0

Remarks from the judges:   "At the graphic level, this design proposal utilizes a vertical tower unit (Diaolou) and a horizontal, courtyard housing group. Woven together to generate the spatial framework of a rural cultural center, the library and museum’s two rectangular massing blocks superimpose, while cleverly resulting in an interstitial path linking the adjacent villages. Through a simple floor plan, the modulation and combination of spatial cells results in spatial variation, a rational distinction between main and service space, and rainwater collection tanks that are neatly organized into the plan grid. A continuous, pitched roof is constantly cut by courtyards and light wells, creating an interior space rich with light and shadow, while simultaneously reproducing the form and scale of the traditional courtyard houses. The programmatic form of the towers (Diaolou) not only reproduces their historical memory and becomes a sign of the cultural center, but also reflects the flow of energy by using the towers for wind capture. Across historical and present time dimensions – as well as between the cultural and natural character of architecture – the authors have created an organic joint, and an interesting translation. An excellent design should not only have an interesting concept, but the key lies in the usage of rational logic derivation, poetic spatial imagination, as well as the ability to efficiently convert those ideas and actually construct them.  There is no doubt that this team conducted a successful attempt."

The competition was sponsored by the Guangdong Housing and Urban-Rural Department, and supported by Tsinghua University, Tongji University, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, among others.  According to the competition website, after the announcement in November 2015, they "received a total of individuals, teams and organizations from more than 10 countries and regions, [including] nearly 400 group registrations, and a final harvest of nearly 200 entries."