Far from the madding crowd

Back in 2008, the duo worked on their first project for children, the Beijing branch of Family Box, a facility they described as being something between an indoor playground and a kindergarten. Here they applied some of the concepts they still adhere to today-from the importance of a neutral environment to the equal value of studies and extracurricular activities.

They enjoyed the fact that children disappeared once they entered the space, in some cases by climbing upward or squeezing downward, where parents didn't have to worry about their safety. The architect couple's son, 12, is a constant source of inspiration and an active tester for user satisfaction in their projects aimed at children.

Additionally, for the second year running, the studio has been holding architectural workshops in the high schools of Beijing, lecturing students on the basics of the discipline and encouraging them to work in groups to try and design or optimize a certain space.

In the latest workshop held during the summer, a group of students were invited to the studio to discuss a public bathhouse project for a small village in a rural area of Shaanxi province. The city-dwelling teens were guided to recognize the problems in rural China and encouraged to try and propose solutions to some of the problems.

Dong explains his expectations for their son: "I hope he will recognize, accept and, most importantly, build a connection with himself, with the others and the surroundings that he feels comfortable and harmonious with."

And this philosophy has also cast an influence on the couple's educational architecture programs that account for two-thirds of the workload of their studio, Crossboundaries, which is jointly based in Beijing and Frankfurt, Germany.