Browsing by Author "Zhao, Yizhou"

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Anonymous monument, a concert hall design in China
(2017) Zhao, Yizhou
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Aldo Rossi once classified the architectures in a city as residential buildings and monumental artifacts. The iconic public building naturally has a monumental identity. Therefore, the thesis mainly discusses the approaches to create a monumental meaning for an architecture with perspectives of urban typology and architectural archetype. In a way, the monumental meanings can be conveyed by time, analogy, or a utopian image. The study also includes the critical thinking and evaluation about the aesthetic motif and strategic methods in practical design. The diploma project is a concert hall design in Nanjing, China. According to this particular case, the arguments are developed around the feasibility and sustainability of the concert hall with the background of a contemporary China major city.
Finnish Architects in China : Discourses and Practices
(2023) Zhao, Yizhou
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)
The expansion of globalization in the architecture industry has primarily changed the methods architects use and the organizational structures of architectural firms. Nowadays, international architectural offices that have advanced design capabilities are working globally. Finnish contemporary architecture has constructed its own identity while engaging extensively in international architectural designs. This doctoral dissertation focuses on the practices and discourses of Finnish architects in China and how Finnish architects have participated in the rapid wave of urbanization since China’s economic reform. Sino-Finnish projects bridge Finnish architectural designs, which is a paradigm of the Scandinavian design tradition. China, with a culture significantly different from Finland, is a fast-developing economy where numerous transnational architectures have occurred and more are expected to take place in the future. The primary research question is: How may Finnish architecture—an architectural tradition often associated with Finland’s identity and imagination—reconcile with the Chinese context at the level of practice and discourse? This research consists of several parts. First, the study investigates the backgrounds China brings to international architects and what China expects from them. Given the geopolitical, social development, and cultural differences between China and the West, Finnish architects in China are often situated in a context where discourses oppose and compete, which inevitably influences architects’ practices and discourses. Meanwhile, China continues to have close exchanges with the outside world in cultural and economic fields. Finnish architects have developed new works based on their design philosophies and methods, considering the Chinese urban scale and demands. Also, the study seeks to understand how Finnish architects construct interpretive discourses in a differentiated cultural background and critically analyze the strengths and limitations of these discourses. By analyzing the networks that conduct transnational architectural designs, this study seeks to understand how Finnish architects realize their buildings through collaborative partnerships involving multiple parties, including Finnish architects and local Chinese design institutes. Finally, this research uses a comprehensive case study to illustrate Finnish architects’ ways of reconciling their ideas based on a specific context and how differentiated circumstances have influenced their designs. This dissertation employs a combined approach of discourse analysis and case studies, drawing from diverse sources including interviews, literature surveys, and original documents. It encompasses interviews with architects from Finland and China, analyzing various documents such as drawings, communication records, and meeting minutes. The study spans architectural competition proposals to completed projects and enhances understanding of recent developments in Finnish architecture and globalized architectural design by examining design thinking, social contexts, design execution, and cross-cultural interactions.
Materialism as A Cultural Medium Three Projects by Finnish Architects in China
(2023-05-29) Zhao, Yizhou; Sanaksenaho, Pirjo; Nieto Fernandez, Fernando
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
In an era of globalization, Finnish architects have developed a series of projects in China in recent years. These Chinese projects continue and expand the tradition of international practice of the Finnish architectural community and provide new perspectives for the observation and study of Finnish architecture. Finnish architecture is connected with Finnish national imagination and identity construction. Yet, in China, Finnish architects inevitably deal with their own cultural identity concerning their work context in various ways. This study attempts to combine the historical facts of Finnish architects' entry into China with an in-depth analysis of cases, showing how building materials can become carriers of design thinking and cultural mediators. Thus, the study can further demonstrate the reconciliation process between the expansion of architectural internationalism and its interactions with local conditions in the globalized practice of architecture. The choice of building materials carries the design ideas of the Finnish architects. Also, it serves as a cultural intermediary to explain the architects' identity and relationship to the Chinese context. Based on three specific cases, this study retraces the Finnish-based architect's design process and material considerations through interviews and a review of a large number of design documents, including drawings and models.
Super public, a housing project in China
(2014) Zhao, Yizhou
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
Nowadays urbanization has been processing in a very fast speed in China. Meanwhile, urbanization also leads to many negative effects on Chinese cities. Public space is widely undermined in housing blocks, streets and communities. By researching urbanism design theories and space types, the thesis attempts to conclude the design thinking for public space and provide suggestions for architectural design based on China's realities. With the conditions of Super Public, a housing project would comprehensively use design strategies to integrate public space and many other urban functions. "Isolation of crowds, foul air, excessive hours, chances of employment" the description of great industrial cities which appeared in Ebenezer Howard's book in 1897, Garden Cities of Tomorrow, reflects contemporary Chinese cities appropriately. On the one hand, China is repeating the dilemma that the developed western countries had experienced in their urbanizations in history. On the other hand, the problems in China also have some special aspects, such as the size of the population and the speed of development, which are difficult to find references from the rest of the world. China is undergoing the largest urbanization in human being's history, while many cities are losing their identities due to the wide range of demolishing and construction. Since the economic reform in 1979, a more authoritarian politic system has the ability to promote its vast urban renewal project in many cities. The urbanization processes with a huge movement of population from countryside to cities. In the foreseeable future, both of the size and density in Chinese cities will continue to have a large increase. Furthermore, urbanization also changes the mode of living. More people would live in isolated high-rise towers. The intimate residential areas in old downtown have been enlarged to huge scales and distances. Many alleys, streets and traditional yards where communal life happened have been demolished. The disappearance of public space are more and more common in Chinese cities. However, the new housing buildings in China still do not give enough attention to create new types of public space. The city renewal planning still works as a process of brutal expansion. The thesis will focus on the lost public space. The researching phase includes background description, phenomenon analysis and theories conclusion. A method of typology will be introduced to study the types of public space in various urban conditions. During the project phase, it aims to discover the usability of different public space. It is a schematical design with a precondition of Super Public. Super Public is a concept that inverts the existing proportion between public and private space in collective housing. Super Public gives enough space to designer to create scenarios and types for public space. With a very low density, it is not a practical design for a specific purpose. But it is a collective thinking about design strategies for public space. The design would attempt to involve various street events, common rooms and residential units. From urban street to each housing unit, the public space can be created in many levels. All in all, the public space aims at building up a vibrant community life for the inhabitants there. The site locates in Nanjing, China. It is a joint point of historical buildings(e.g. the city wall and city gate), landscape, river and old residential districts. Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu Province, around 300 kilometers away from Shanghai, the most important city in eastern China. As many other large Chinese cities, it has been expanding a lot during the past 30 years. The urban problems represented in Nanjing are also happening in other major cities in China. So the considerations and concepts in this design are not specifically connected with Nanjing, but also linked with a wider background of Chinese large cities.