East meets West on drafting table

CCTV building by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is a landmark project in Beijing. Wu Changqin / for China Daily Wen Bao / for China Daily

Designing in China

Designing for the Chinese market can feel liberating because in contrast to US conditions, the Chinese government seems determined to push construction growth, says Clark Manus, CEO of Heller Manus Architects in San Francisco and president of the American Institute of Architects.

"It has been extremely refreshing for us to explore new ideas in China that we would not have been able to do in San Francisco due to planning and zoning restrictions," he says. "They're able to be more forward thinking in some ways; simply put, the government is making things happen."

Line and Space, a small Tucson, Arizona-based firm that has done 79 projects in China, and is now working on two more with Legend, a Chinese development company.

"They give us an exceptional amount of time to develop our design ideas, have provided strong critiques and supported our investigations and studies of site situations and program considerations," says firm founder Les Wallach.

In 2006, ZK Real Estate Development Co hired 10 Western architectural firms to design 78 unique residences for a 19-hectare luxury villa development outside Shanghai called the Zhongkai Sheshan Villa project. Stuart Silk, head of a 17-person firm based in Seattle, was commissioned to create nine residences. The Chinese developer hired a Harvard University-educated architecture consultant, Wang Qian, who encouraged the Western firms to run free with their ideas. The project was an opportunity to go big, Silk says.

"They really encouraged us to use our best judgment," he says. "They felt they had hired talented architects, and they made it clear that they didn't want us to feel hindered aesthetically."

But as the process continued, the developer and the consultant Wang began to clash, Silk says. Wang and other local architects who had helped in the early days of the project seemed to lose control of the project, which became "driven by people who didn't know what they were doing", he says.

"In the end, I was disappointed. It took a few years more than we thought it would for them to complete the buildings, and they only kind of look like what we designed."

Wang Qian and ZK Real Estate Development didn't respond to requests for comment.