Siza in China – China in Siza. Observations and Reflections on “The Building on the Water”

ABSTRACT

The following article contributes to the inscription of Álvaro Siza and Carlos Castanheira’s Shihlien office building in China (2010–2014) within Siza’s body of work. The Shihlien, also known as the “The Building on the Water,” was an unusual commission for the Portuguese architects, located on a distant site and designed under essentially unknown conditions. The public and critical reception of the building has been shaped by its remote location and private use, as well as by its spectacular form and representation in the media. How, if at all, has China influenced the project and how, reciprocally, has the project influenced China? In analysing Siza and Castanheira’s work, the present article re-employs Kenneth Frampton’s well-known essays from 1983 on Critical Regionalism and enacts two responses to them: 1) on-site observations of the building, together with a response to the experience of the site in terms of the human senses; 2) critical reflections, supported by photographs and notes, directed back at the Critical Regionalist analysis. In conclusion, I argue that the Shihlien both responds to the local context at the geographical, historical, environmental, cultural levels, and offers a statement of continuity in relation to the rest of Siza’s modernist body of works.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Castanheira had been Siza’s office collaborator in 1985–1993, and an external collaborator on numerous projects since then. Siza and Castanheira’s first project in Asia was the Anyang Art Pavilion in South Korea (2005–2006). Their projects in Mainland China include the China Academy of Arts China Design Museum, Hangzhou (2012–2018), the MAOE – Humao Museum of Art Education, Dongqian, Ningbo (2014–2020), the Lake Club Houses 1–5, also in Dongqian (2014-), the Haishang Museum, Jiading, Shanghai (2016-), and the Green Dragon Belt Park, Jiangbei New Area, Nanjing (2019, not built). In addition, Siza designed the pavilion for the Camerich company at the 2019 China International Furniture Fair in Shanghai.

2. Shuenn-Ren Liou described Siza’s architectural and management strategies in Asia as a “passive extension” of his practice in Europe, highly dependent on Siza’s “personal experience and comprehensive judgment”, and therefore as one extreme of the “two typical models of the known western architects coming to Asia” for practice (the other being the Asia-targeted, theory-based practice). Shuenn-Ren Liou, “Rem Koolhaas and Álvaro Siza in Asia: An Architectural Comparison”, Athens Journal of Architecture, vol. 1, no. 3 (2015): 230–236.

3. Álvaro Siza, “The Client is More Important Than the Architect”, in Ultimately I Search For Clarity. Thirteen Conversations with Architects, ed. Sandra Hofmeister (München: Edition Detail, 2018), 13.

4. Lin commissioned from Siza and Castanheira other projects in Taiwan, including a Golf Club in Taifong (2009–2020) and a family mausoleum in New Taipei City (2015–2017). To get to know more about the client’s particular interest in Siza, however, one would need to interview the architects or client.

5. The building has been fairly widely published in magazines and online. For example, it received the ArchDaily website’s 2015 Building of the Year prize. Romullo Baratto, “Álvaro Siza Says ArchDaily’s Building of the Year Award Provides ‘Strong Incentive’ for Profession”, ArchDaily, 26 February 2015, https://www.archdaily.com/603212/alvaro-siza-says-archdaily-s-building-of-the-year-award-provides-strong-incentive-for-profession.

6. “The Building on the Water”, Carlos Castanheira Architects, accessed 12 November 2021, https://www.carloscastanheira.pt/project/the-building-on-the-water/.

7. Williams is openly humorous and polemical in his review of the building; for instance, he takes issue with the client’s idea of inviting a famous architect to design the project, then in turn scorns the motives of the architects, local officials, and users. Austin Williams, “Chemical Plant Offices in Huai’an City, China by Álvaro Siza”, Architectural-Review 1416 (February 2015), https://www.architectural-review.com/today/chemical-plant-offices-in-huaian-city-china-by-alvaro-siza.

8. Ángel Illescas Marín, “Álvaro Siza: Lugar y Crisis”, PhD dissertation, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, 2017, 333. Translation by author.

9. Illescas Marín is referring to the essay, Gaston Bachelard, L’eau et les rêves (Paris: José Corti, 1942).

10. A concept appropriated from Gilles Deleuze via Ignasi Solà-Morales. According to Solà-Morales, Deleuze restores through the concept of the fold the “decorative condition” of architecture, which is not the “trivialization of the vulgar”, but the recognition that for the work of art and architecture, “a certain weakness … may possibly be the condition of its greatest elegance and, ultimately, its greatest significance and import.” Ignasi Solà-Morales, “Weak Architecture”, in Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, ed. Sarah Whiting (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 70.

11. Illescas Marín, “Lugar y Crisis,” 279–281. Translation by author.

12. Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance”, in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (New York: The New Press, 1983), 17–34; and Kenneth Frampton, “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism”, Perspecta, Vol. 20 (1983): 147–162.

13. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 20–21.

14. See, for example, the recent number of the journal OASE: Critical Regionalism Revisited 103 (2019), https://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/103.

15. Frampton, “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism”, 148, 150.

16. Jean-Louis Cohen, “Architecture Without Capital Letters”, Álvaro Siza 1995–2016, AV Monografías, no. 186–187 (2016): 4–11.

17. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 28.

18. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (London: Wiley), 39–72.

19. Frampton, “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism”, 151.

20. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 17.

21. Williams, “Chemical Plant Offices”.

22. Williams, “Chemical Plant Offices”.

23. See, for example, Yuan Wang, “Management of the Grand Canal and its bid as a world cultural heritage site”, Frontiers of Architectural Research 1, no. 1 (March 2012): 34–39, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2012.02.004.

24. Illescas Marín, “Lugar y Crisis”, 327. Translation by author.

25. Álvaro Siza, “I should like to build in the Sahara Desert”, Quaderns 169–170 (April-September 1986): 91.

26. Siza, “I should like to build in the Sahara Desert”, 91.

27. Illescas Marín, “Lugar y Crisis,” 330–331. My translation.

28. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 26.

29. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 26.

30. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 24–25.

31. Williams, “Chemical Plant Offices”.

32. A typological approach, not in the narrow sense proposed by urban conservation but corresponding to the scientific moment of architecture. For more on this open understanding of typology see, Carlos Martí Arís, Las variaciones de la identidad. Ensayo sobre el tipo en arquitectura (Barcelona: Ediciones del Serbal, 1993).

33. Peter Testa, “The Architecture of Alvaro Siza”, Grad. thesis, MIT, 1984, 157.

34. Testa, “The Architecture of Alvaro Siza”, 159.

35. Wilfried Wang, “Discipline and Transform”, in Álvaro Siza: (In)Discipline, eds. Nuno Grande and Carlos Muro (Porto: Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019), 75–76.

36. The open courtyard plan possibly not only supported Siza’s practice in Asia, but also supported the local reception of his work. See, for example, Wei Xu and Ihsu Chiu, “Study of Alvaro Siza’s ‘U Type’ Architectural Thought and Its Operational Mechanism”, IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Vol. 392, Issue 6 (2009): 1–8.

37. There are many examples of reconstructed monasteries in contemporary Portuguese architecture, among which are Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura’s International Contemporary Sculpture Museum and Municipal Museum Abade Pedrosa, Santo Tirso (2012).

38. See, for example, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, Chinese Architecture: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 5–6. In a correspondence that should be noted but not overstated, Steinhardt lists eight “features of Chinese spatial arrangement”, all of which I would argue are manifested in Siza and Castanheira’s design: 1. “horizontal axis”, 2. “human-sized” heights, 3. three- and four-sided “courtyard”, 4. “interrelated buildings, courtyards, and enclosing arcades”, 5. “gates”, 6. “modularity”, 7. “rank” (ordering of the parts), 8. “privacy … the private space, sometimes a garden, is where one may find a pavilion or other structure that breaks out the standardized, modular system.”

39. Shatzman Steinhardt, Chinese Architecture, 298–313.

40. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 27.

41. As Riso put it, in Siza “the use of wide openings, clear cuts and cantilevers is achieved without disembodiment of the … building box.” Vincenzo Riso, “Building Methods in the Architecture of Álvaro Siza”, Architectural Research Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3 (September 2000): 265–267.

42. The building does have the standard lighting and air-conditioning systems, but does not depend exclusively on them.

43. As of October 2021, I could not confirm whether in the future the drawings of the Shihlien will be deposited in the archives of the Serralves Museum or in the Canadian Centre for Architecture, two of the joint custodians of the Álvaro Siza Archive.

44. According to the classical treatise Yingzao Fashi [Chinese Building Standards], this modular conception based on the transverse frame is especially important in tingtang or a lower rank building. See Shatzman Steinhardt, Chinese Architecture, 150–161. There are many other possible sources for this process of “cross-fertilization”, for example, one of the main examples of Frampton’s Critical Regionalism is Jørn Utzon’s Bagsvaerd Church in Copenhagen, Denmark (1976), a work whose relationship to place is achieved, as Frampton explains, through a dialogue between Western and Chinese traditions (Utzon’s study of Chinese architecture is well documented). Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 22–23.

45. Siza even explains that he preferred the white concrete of German technology “to achieve a perfect surface finish”. Siza, “The Client is More Important”, 17. The Shihlien Building is built with Aalborg White cement manufactured by the Danish company Aalborg Portland.

46. Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 19.

47. Busy with commissions reaching from different parts of the world, Le Corbusier sought in his original 1929 design to separate the interior from the exterior by means of a proto air-conditioning and a thermally active double-glazed wall. His ambition to create a 18°C year-round interior space proved too rigid and Cité was inhospitable. In 1954, Le Corbusier had the opportunity to correct the design by adding a brise-soleil to the glazed façade. The brise-soleil was introduced just as curtain walls and mechanically controlled interiors started becoming wide-spread. Banham, Well-tempered Environment, 153–163.

48. Despite the technical shortcomings, the aspiration for total environmental control has remained constant. Rem Koolhaas parodies how this has produced air-conditioned interiors that “mimic” the hazards of nature, creating “sudden storms, mini-tornadoes, freezing spells in the cafeteria, heat waves, even mist.” Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City”, in S, M, L, XL, eds. Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995), 1261. Note that in contrast to Siza, Koolhaas is of the opinion that architects cannot but embrace this development.

49. Banham distinguishes between conservative, selective and regenerative systems: the control of free energy by means of thermal mass, airflow/shading, and power-operated systems, respectively. Banham, Well-tempered Environment, 23–24. Paradoxically, for the remainder of the book, Banham argues for a shallower conception of architecture as the provider of comfortable, power-operated environments.

50. Here I think also of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret’s projects in India.

51. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 26.

52. Dean Hawkes, The Environmental Imagination: Technics and Poetics of the Architectural Environment (London: Routledge, 2008), xv-xix.

53. Hawkes’ case studies were the Serralves Museum in Porto (1991–99) and the Church in Marco de Canavezes (1996). Hawkes, The Environmental Imagination, 164–167, 190–195.

54. In the Shihlien, the hybrid environmental control design partly liberates the windows from this function. Still, as it was seen, Siza and Castanheira suggest that the environmental function remains visually represented.

55. After the visit, I was able to see these large models in the exhibition “Orient Express. Viagem de Retorno”, Serralves Museum, Porto, January 31^st to December 20^th, 2020.

56. Williams, “Chemical Plant Offices”.

57. Frustratingly, these offices are destined to be closed to the public. Visits and open house programs, however, could be a way to widen the reception of the building.

58. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 26.

59. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 24–25.

60. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 27–28.

61. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism”, 26.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under the Grant [SIZA/CPT/0021/2019]