We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer about their original and creative design work. is an award-winning creative designer, that makes our world a better place with their original works.
("") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work . Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
: The main principle is to re-connect people with environment which accommodates the production of food. The masterplan concept is to maximize the use of the existing landscape and minimize impact to the environment. The site gives us the biggest hint as to what to do, how to define different zoning and where to locate building footprint.
: The main focus is to create a place where new generations of urban family in China can re-connect with their natural and rural environment. The rapid urbanization in China has destroyed many existing natural environment and farmlands. The chinese people needs to understand the value of the environment to all livings things and their own lives.
: I am hoping this award can help promote the concept of agriturismo (agritourism) in China and promote China rural tourism to the world. I am also hoping this award can help the client push forward the project with the local government.
: The concept of the masterplan took just few days to come up with. However, we spend more than a week to understanding the projects and understand the site.
: The concept brings emphasis on the actual worth of the existing aquaculture farm and how it brings highest value to to the project.
: The construction stage for this project is yet to begins, however if it proceeds in construction, it will most likely be completed by a local contractor company.
: I really enjoy working on projects which deals the existing landscape and existing vegetation. I love thinking how people may interact with nature and the landscape.
: The concept of 'touch the earth lightly' came from Pritzker Prize-winning architect Glenn Murcutt. I feel like I am trying export the values and mentality towards the natural environment from Australia into China.
: Glen Murcutt spend his life time working on smaller projects with a strong focus on creating economical and energy-conserving architecture.
: The design is a fusion of oriental and environmentalist ideas. The Chinese ideas of borrowing picturesque via framing a part of landscape outside of the house in the background and using an artificially created garden in the background. The western culture refers to this type of garden as "Japanese Garden", however the idea originates from the chinese people. Only this time for this particular project, we retain the existing landscape to create a natural picturesque.
: Aquaculture is the cultivation of fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic plants, algae, and other organisms. Agritourismo or agritourism is about bringing visitors and tourists into any agricultural operations. The concept of rural tourism has first originated from Italy in the 1960s.
: We started off sketching out ideas on tracing paper and studied the existing site off google earth aerial photos. Then we tested out ideas on plan in AutoCAD and Sketchup. We used the Adobe Suite such as Photoshop, Illustrator and indesign for the presentation work.
: The most unique aspect of the project is that both our design team and the client shared the same vision of retaining most of the existing landscape. This is mostly a rare case, because most clients from China wanted something extraordinary and very bold.
: I collaborated with Bao Yupeng, he is an urban designer with very strong rationality and deep understanding of the chinese culture.
: In terms of the masterplan concept design, technology only played a role for us as a design tool. We were discussing about prefabricated houses for the implementation of project, however the project has not progress to that particular stage yet. We even thought about placing an EV charging station for visitors planning to visit driving on a Tesla.
: We did an analysis of the surrounding context at a regional planning level to understand the project position in a macro scale. Then we did a micro analysis of the site to get a stronger feeling in regards to its immediate surrounding environment.
: One of the main challenges we faced was we couldn't decide on the degree of alteration to the existing aquaculture farm without damaging the existing habitat and the ongoing operations of the farm. Our main concern was the impact of private vehicles have on the site.
: We were always looking for opportunities to ourselves as designers in the industry, submitting to an international design competition is one of the ideas we had in mind. The other reason is we hope this design award could help the client promote the project smoothly with the local government, since I heard they were experience hiccups in the negotiation process.
