Magazine

As is the case for many other building typologies in China today, schools are often realised with standardised building modules designed independent of any location or topography. Hongling High School in the Futian district of Shenzhen is no exception. While it tends to be assumed that the... Eduard Kögel

China Merchants Group was founded in 1872 and will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2025. To mark the occasion, a new China Merchants History Museum tells the story of the (state-owned) enterprise. This specially commissioned museum is located in the Shekou district of Shenzhen and was... Eduard Kögel

The city of Jingdezhen in the province of Jiangxi is renowned beyond China since historical times for its porcelain production. More recently, the Imperial Kiln... Eduard Kögel

Since 2017, when the architects from urbanus identified Nantou as the focus for the Shenzhen – Hong Kong Biennale, several buildings have been... Eduard Kögel

In China, everyone knows the saying “In heaven there is paradise, on earth there is Suzhou and Hangzhou”. In Suzhou, the many historic gardens and the old city centre with its whitewashed buildings and grey roofs along the canals have been protected for fifty years. New high-rise districts... Eduard Kögel

Hainan Island, located in the South China Sea, has a tropical climate all year round. Since 1988, the island has been an independent province and the largest special economic zone in the People’s Republic. The capital Haikou is located at the northern end of the island with a population of... Eduard Kögel

In recent decades, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone has developed into the fastest growing metropolis in the world. As a result, new ways of natural resource management are needed. Doreen Heng Liu and her  Eduard Kögel

The Upper Cloister is a modern-day interpretation of an ancient temple-complex, where the urban middle class from Beijing can find rest and relaxation within a grandiose natural and cultural landscape with a view of The Great Wall. It is located halfway between the Chinese capital and Chengde,... Eduard Kögel

On 10 December 2022, the 9th Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale for Urbanism/Architecture (UABB) curated by Lu Andong, Prince Gong, and Aric Chen, opened at the newly converted Kingway Brewery, in the Luohu District in Shenzhen. The conversion of the brewery... Eduard Kögel

In recent years, new residential quarters, office buildings and businesses have been built on the Pudong side of Shanghai. Now the Culture Community Complex follows, with three large buildings: the Pudong Library planned by Nihon Sekkei, already completed in 2010 at the northern end of the... Eduard Kögel

The first phase of the new China Academy of Art (CAA) Liangzhu Campus in Hangzhou has been inaugurated and the second phase of the complex, designed by Atelier... Eduard Kögel

Eduard Kögel reviews Walter Koditek's HONG KONG MODERN, Architecture of the 1950s–1970s, which documents more than 300 buildings and ensembles and, per DOM Publishers, "gives an unprecedented comprehensive overview on the architecture of that transformative period" in Hong Kong. Eduard Kögel

Beijing-based designers of 3andwich Design/He Wei Studio recently completed a tourist infrastructure building in the Tengger Desert in the Ningxia Autonomous Region in northwest... Eduard Kögel

Under the direction of Ma Yansong, the office MAD Architects has realised its first social housing project. MAD Architects, known for spectacular forms and spaces in their projects, in... Eduard Kögel

In April 2021, Xu Tiantian and her office DnA_Design and Architecture were invited by the local authority of Jinyun County to develop ideas for the conversion of former quarries. Those... Eduard Kögel

The XXIV Winter Olympics will take place in China in February 2022. The various sporting competitions will be held at a location in Beijing and in Yanqing and Zhangjiakou, located 75 km and 100 km northwest of the capital. While snowboarding has been an Olympic discipline since 1998, the big... Eduard Kögel

Songyang has a new poetry museum. The Beijing-based architect Xu Tiantian received the commission for this. With her office DnA_Design and Architecture, she has already completed many small interventions in... Eduard Kögel

Public space in China developed completely differently than it did in European cities of the twentieth century. In imperial China there was no open public space that had been fought for and defended by the citizens. Cities were shaped by streets and alleys, markets and temple courtyards, as... Eduard Kögel

The youngest mega-city in China is Shenzhen. Since its designation as a special economic zone 40 years ago not only have many immigrants found a new home here, but also an innovative atmosphere has established itself. This is reflected in the Shenzhen College of International Education... Eduard Kögel

The Shanghai office Scenic Architecture was commissioned to design a rowing club for young people at an inner-city wetland park in Shanghai. The park is located in the Pudong district planned by Arte Charpentier in 1999 and ends an urban development axis that begins in the Lujiazui financial... Eduard Kögel

Atelier Zhang Lei (AZL Architects) in Nanjing recently completed a new hotel project, just 300 meters north of the Eduard Kögel

The city of Yangshuo in Guangxi Province lays about 65 kilometres south of Guilin and is surrounded by a dramatic landscape of towering karst mountains, which as a tourist attraction have been a highlight of domestic and foreign visitor programs for decades. The karst landscape has been on the... Eduard Kögel

Studio Zhu-Pei designed the new Imperial Kiln Museum that unpretentiously tells the stories from the porcelain-manufacturing town of Jingdezhen in terms of shape and material, and in so doing comments on the future-potentials of the past far beyond this one town. Eduard Kögel

Fighting rural poverty is one of the major goals of the Beijing government. Investments should increase the attractiveness and the economic prosperity of rural areas so as to generate viable alternative perspectives for local people to leaving their home village. CU Office has been working on... Eduard Kögel

Hong Kong is considered a city of extreme density due to the large number of high-rise buildings. This brings advantages; for public transport provision, for example. A limited buildable area causes high site values, that in turn necessitate this high building density. Some negatives of this... Eduard Kögel

Designed by Studio Zhu Pei from Beijing, the District Arts and Culture Centre is adjacent to the old city of Shouxian, in the southeast Chinese province of Anhui. Eduard Kögel

Taiyuan is the largest city in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, where about a quarter of Chinese coal is mined. There are over three million inhabitants in Taiyuan city centre and the city has long been known for its high levels of air pollution. In recent years, air quality has... Eduard Kögel

Today, officially about 31 million of the 1.4 billion inhabitants of the People’s Republic of China are counted as Christians. With the economic opening-up of China in the early 1980s, the communist party used capitalist principles to marginalize the radical socialism of Mao Zedong, and in the... Eduard Kögel

China has a variety of natural landscapes ranging from dry sandy deserts to tropical islands and snow-capped mountains. Little by little, places are discovered and then developed so as to be suitable for tourism projects. Depending on the location or concept, large infrastructures or exclusive... Eduard Kögel

Jishou city is the regional capital of the autonomous prefecture of the Tujia and Miao ethnic minorities. It is located within in the Western Hunan province, and has a population of over 300,000 people. Huang Yongyu, a famous artist belonging to the Tujia minority led an initiative for a... Eduard Kögel

As with many other things, vinegar has a very long history in China: its importance for food preparation and health is mentioned in the book The Rites of Zhou, which dates back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770BC–476BC). This history is presented in dedicated museum in a former... Eduard Kögel

The architects at Crossboundaries in Beijing designed the Chaoyang Future School for Peking University, with the brief to create a new spatial environment for pupils that conveys the new pedagogical content of the classroom. Eduard Kögel

The Thousand Islands Lake (Qiandao Hu) was created as an artificial reservoir almost 60 years ago. The water masses drive the Xin’an river hydroelectric station, completed in 1959. The water covered countless villages and an ancient city, which is still well preserved today. The... Eduard Kögel

The province of Anhui lies on the border between temperate and subtropical climates in east China. The township of Sun is located in the heart of the scenic Dabie Mountains, in Huashan County in the southwest of the province. Eduard Kögel

2011 is considered the year when the urbanization rate in China exceeded the fifty per cent mark. Young people have been moving to cities because they cannot see a future in their rural places of their origin. As early as 2006, the National People’s Congress decided to introduce a... Eduard Kögel

In this first-of-a-kind case, the Shenzhen government has leased 35 handshake towers in an urban village from the former farmers, with the aim of converting them into affordable housing. During the planning phase, six owners of residential towers withdrew, making the situation more... Eduard Kögel