Lecture Record | Dong Gong: Outside the North Gate & Corn Fields, the Parallel Construction Process of Hand and Brain

Architects often use hand-painting to record scenes and inspirations, but for Dong Gong, founder of Zhixiang Architecture, the meaning of hand-painting is not limited to this: "Hands and brains are parallel, sometimes, it is difficult for me to distinguish between hands and brains in design. sequent relationship.”

On the evening of March 24th, Dong Gong was a guest at Architects, not Architecture (AnA) "Global Online Tour · China Station". In the 20-minute autobiographical narrative of "put aside the project and talk about himself", he shared his architecture with the global audience important passages in the journey. From the North Gate of Tsinghua University to the cornfields of UIUC, hand-painting inspired his perception of the site, and it is also a testimony of his architectural career.

The event was hosted by Fermin Tribaldos, co-founder of AnA, and Youfang was the exclusive live broadcast media in China. The following is the speech video and text transcript. Another keynote speaker at the same session, Neri & Hu's co-founder Guo Xi'en , was released yesterday .

Today I would like to share two very important and closely related experiences in my architectural career, which I refer to as "North Gate" and "Cornfield" - my alma mater in Beijing, Tsinghua University; and my alma mater in the United States University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

I will look back on this experience with more drawing than photographs. Hand drawing has been a habit of mine for many years, and for me it is a constant thread parallel to architectural design.

1994—1999

North Gate, Tsinghua North Gate

About thirty years ago, outside the north gate of Tsinghua campus was still a piece of primitive farmland, surrounded by small villages. Now it has been incorporated into the Tsinghua campus, and a dormitory building has been built. This is actually a very typical urbanization process in China in the past three decades.

Here I have to mention one person, Professor Zhou Hongzhi, my art teacher at Tsinghua University.

Tsinghua North Gate 30 years ago

Students in the School of Architecture have to take art classes such as sketching and watercolor, but because we are not art students, this kind of training is more about acquiring a skill of painting and rendering, rather than pure artistic expression.

But Teacher Zhou is different. He selected no more than 10 architecture students from across the academy to form a fine arts group. Every weekend, he took us out of the campus to sketch at the North Gate, and let us draw on the real site in the natural environment.

Group photo of Dong Gong and his friends outside the North Gate

At that time, there were still fields around the North Gate, very primitive and powerful. Usually, Teacher Zhou will let us observe the venue carefully, see and feel the space, and express the real emotion and atmosphere. This is very different from the training we receive within the architecture department.

This experience was almost a turning point in my study and made me think deeply for the first time about what is real art and what is the relationship between art and artists, art and architecture.

Dong Gong's sketches

The same site, we paint over and over again in different weather, time, atmosphere conditions. I still remember one time it was just after a heavy rain and there were clouds in the sky, and we quickly packed up our drawing equipment and headed out to the fields to capture the last moments of the sunset.

Now it seems that these trainings have helped me a lot in starting to develop some kind of emotional connection with the space or place around me. This experience even influenced my later architectural practice: after arriving at a site, how do you observe the site, what clues can you find from it, and how do you learn from the site? I think this is the sensitivity that architects need.

Dong Gong's sketches

When I paint, I use watercolors, inks, crayons, etc., and this one is drawn with charcoal. Here you may be able to see some impressionist influences, because the way of painting is almost the same: go to a real venue, feel the air, light, atmosphere, and vividly portray them.

Charcoal Drawing

The photo below is very interesting. On the left is Hua Li, one of the most important architects in China. I just finished a sketch that day, and I happened to meet these two people when I went back to the dormitory. They just finished rendering commercial renderings and made a lot of money (laughs), so we left a group photo like this.

Group photo of Dong Gong and his classmates

Dong Gong's sketches

Later, around 1996, with the encouragement of Teacher Zhou, I traveled to Tibet. At that time, people in the fields of culture and art all hoped to go to Tibet, a place like a holy land. But the journey to Tibet at that time was a bit dangerous, and the traffic and living conditions were harsh; so people who had been to Tibet at that time seemed to have obtained a "warrior certification", and others would think that you were a person.

During my travels in Tibet, I painted a series of works. The weather there is unpredictable, and sometimes it rains suddenly during the painting process, so the painting was very fast at that time. Compared with photos, hand-painting can leave a deeper impression on my mind and heart.

Paintings about Tibet

1999—2001

Cornfield, UIUC's cornfield

Another experience that was very important and influential in my architectural career was in the "cornfields". From 1999 to 2001, I was doing my second master's degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a campus surrounded by large fields of corn, so we took that nickname.

The second person I would like to introduce is Professor Henry Plummer, who was my thesis advisor during my master's study in the United States. It is difficult to express my gratitude to him.

Before studying abroad, the architectural education I received in Beijing was more about the specific content of function, streamline, form and composition. It was Professor Plummer who brought me into another area of ​​thinking about architecture, which is about natural light, atmosphere, immaterial intangible elements, emotions and time. These are the unspeakable parts of architecture, they are closely related to my practice and architectural thinking today, and are extremely inspiring key points.

Professor Henry Plummer

The first part of Professor Plummer's postgraduate program is a short period of study in Europe. At the time I went to the Technical University of Munich as an exchange and stayed there for the entire summer semester. He gave me a list of "must see buildings" that I traveled around every weekend, visiting these buildings while documenting and depicting moments of light in the buildings through sketches.

For example, the light and shadow in Zumthor's Bregenz Museum, the light and shade in many churches, museums, historical buildings, and the English Garden in Munich - this work was completed by me in the back light, and it is a work that I still have to this day. Moments that are still impressive.

morning light

Art Gallery Bregenz, design: Zumthor

English Garden in Munich, backlit painting

Light and shadow in a historic building in Vienna

One day I came out of school and saw the shadow of a tree on the wall when it was shaken by the wind. The distance between the leaves and the wall was different, and the shadow of the tree was different. I recorded this moment by hand; it was also recorded Below is the fascinating light and shadow in the Munich subway tunnel, as well as the section of the Munich subway system in my imagination; while in the Pinakothek Museum in Munich, I studied the light in the space through the section, and the natural light creates a different atmosphere quality in the interior; in addition, And Cobb's Ronchamp Church, Zumthor's Hannover Expo installation...

On a wall, the shadow of a tree as it is shaken by the wind

Munich's subway tunnel, interesting light and shadow moments

The Munich subway system drawn from the imagination

Pinakothek Museum

For the second part of Professor Plummer's graduate program, I returned to the United States. A design assignment was needed to design a museum on the Chicago River. The title of this assignment is "A place of silence", and the theme is to create a specific atmosphere in architecture and space, conduct light research.

All drawings, renderings, etc. presented for this job are handcrafted. There is a particular detail on the hand-drawn drawings of the time, it has a small mouth of light. I work by hand to study the changes in light over time, and the consequent changes in textures, atmospheres and shadows.

2008—

Vector Architects, Vertical Architecture

The two experiences in Tsinghua University and UIUC were two important nodes in my architectural study, which changed my architectural trajectory to some extent. In 2008, I founded Zhixiang Architecture, started my own practice, and still kept the habit of hand-painting.

Hand drawing is pretty much the most effective tool in my architectural design. To be more precise, for me, the hand is not only a tool for executing the thinking of the brain, it is parallel to the brain. I have a hard time figuring out the order in which the hands and the brain are in the design, and that's where it gets interesting. I think there is a lock-and-click relationship between my hands and my brain.

Below are some of my recent drawings. Some are based on the study of the place, establishing the connection between the architect and the physical environment through sketches; some are the imagination of the space, even before we have a plan, it embodies the initial spatial atmosphere; some are very conceptual, none of which is clear. It also contains some research drawings, and the hand-painting gives me the opportunity to conduct very detailed research on the historical information of ancient buildings; of course, some are purely for solving practical problems.

Fermin Tribaldos , you mentioned in the interview that there is a lot of effort involved in the design process and that every project has some painful struggles. Where exactly does this pain come from?

For Dong Gong , this kind of "pain" is normal for me, and the design has to face many problems from the beginning. But I think the design process is not a process of breaking down and stacking problems one by one, but a process of fusion, similar to a chemical reaction. All the problems must be integrated in the mind first, gradually try to understand, and then have a flash of inspiration, and then build a comprehensive solution. It's hard to predict when this moment of inspiration will come, but as long as you accumulate enough energy and time, it will always come.

Fermin Tribaldos The process sounds personal, so how do you share your thoughts with the team?

Dong Gongzhi has a specific way of promoting teamwork. We will complete the site and typology research in the early stage of design, and everyone will think about it and discuss it. Sometimes the team inspires me, and sometimes I'm on my own. Usually you have a hard time predicting when that moment of inspiration will come, and I think that's the difficulty of architecture.

Fermin Tribaldos So what is the happiest thing about being an architect?

Dong Gong I think there are two different stages of architecture. The first stage is that the architect designs the building with certain standards and goals, trying to achieve a certain quality. The second stage is when the building begins to be used by ordinary people. At this stage, the space will be closely related to many unpredictable factors such as people, climate, and plants.

In recent years, with the accumulation of experience, we have truly seen this very wonderful process. When a space design is completed, you can see how ordinary people interact with the space, how rain washes the walls, allowing rust layers to appear, how plants cover... This is probably my greatest joy as an architect: seeing the buildings I designed, Begin to really "grow".

How did Fermin Tribaldos growing up in Beijing and studying at Tsinghua University influence you to be a thinker, not just an architect?

Dong Gong Tsinghua had a very fundamental influence on me. Apart from the teachers, a very important part of the influence comes from my classmates and friends. Now many of them have become very important architects in China, and we still maintain exchanges, from architecture to art, and other fields. I think it's a strength that we inspire each other and progress, and I'm grateful.

Besides Hua Li mentioned by Fermin Tribaldos in the lecture, Zhang Ke is also one of them, right?

Dong Gong is right, he is one year older than me. We were very close at school, like brothers. We rented the same yard together and it was a great time.

Fermin Tribaldos As an architect, what do you think we can learn from the current practice in China?

Dong Gong is currently at a very special moment in the Chinese architectural world. We have too many construction projects, and Chinese architects have many opportunities to try and work hard. But at the same time, China does not seem to have a universal standard for judging the quality of architecture, which is very different from countries such as Japan or Switzerland: their goals are unified, and we all design with our own beliefs. Although it is difficult, it also means that there is some kind of opportunity and energy in it.

Another interesting thing about practicing in China is that China has a vast territory, and designing in different regions will face completely different cultures, lifestyles, climates and geographical features. It's challenging but also fun, architects have to study the specific conditions of the project carefully, the freshness of unfamiliar surroundings can be very inspiring to create good architecture.

Guo Xien I can often feel a "sense of eternity" in your projects, you have always held this belief, but this seems to contradict many realities in China. With the increase in the scale and number of projects, how do you make the team recognize and adhere to this eternity in a rapidly developing society?

Dong Gong , I do firmly believe that architecture contains eternal value. I think for human beings, this is the most important meaning of architecture, which can give a sense of belonging and security. But I have to mention the "adventure" side of architecture, the two are not in conflict, but have a balance.

Back to your question: First of all, we need to buy more time and design fee from the client (laughs). For some large projects, including some small-scale projects, our design time may be three or four times that of five years ago, and more manpower, design energy and time will be invested - of course, all of which need to be supported by expenses. The realization of this goal may be difficult, but I feel that the eternal value of architecture is a fundamental value that architects cannot compromise.