American architect Ben Wood has participated from the ground up in the sweeping transformation of China’s largest cities in the past 15 years through a boom in demand for foreign architects. That opening has benefitted global industry giants such as Gensler and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, as well as smaller firms such as Wood’s Studio Shanghai.

A protégé of legendary Boston architect Benjamin Thompson, famed for his work on the city’s beloved Faneuil Hall area in the 1960s, Wood teamed up with Hong Kong billionaire developer Vincent Lo at the end of the 1990s to do much of the design on a retail, entertainment and commercial project in Shanghai, Xintiandi.  Rather than demolish the dilapidated buildings and built new apartments that would sell out quickly, Wood preserved much of the original construction materials in the area and turned it into a must-see icon for city visitors that is viewed by millions every year.

Xintiandi, the New Heaven and Earth

A trip to Shanghai isn’t complete without a stroll through Xintiandi. A crumbling residential district that once embodied Shanghai’s decades of decay under Maoist rule, the area has been turned into an iconic mix of vibrant boutiques and restaurants that today symbolize the city’s rebirth as a global business hub. Instead of sweeping away all of the older neighborhood when starting the project, billionaire Hong Kong developer Vincent Lo and American architect Ben Wood preserved the building materials of demolished homes and door styles, called shikumen.Xintiandi’s success at attracting millions of visitors a year has spawned clones all across China, as well as several follow-on collaborations by Lo and Wood in Hangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing and most recently, Foshan. Click through for images of the duo's Tiandi projects around China (Photo credits: Studio Shanghai)

More than a decade later, Lo and Wood have collaborated on several other “Tiandi” projects (click here for a slide slow), and more recently Lo hired Wood to design “The Hub” in the city’s new Hongqiao transportation hub.  Wood has other projects around China, too, as well as a passion for cars. He frequently can be found at a Xintiandi watering hole popular among architects, the DRbar.  

I caught up with Wood, 64, alongside Xintiandi yesterday afternoon and asked about current trends in architecture and retail estate in China.  Excerpts follow.

Q. What are some of the big trends in architecture in China these days?

A. I usually think about that question and say: When was Japan on fire in late ’80s to early ’90s, every famous architect in the world was in Japan. Every major hotel lobby would be filled with famous architects.  Today, there’s nobody there. The Japanese architects have taken control of their own country.  Now, the only people going work in Japan are Japanese architects. I have to believe that one day, the only people doing architecture in China will be Chinese architects. That’s one trend I watch, because I’m not a Chinese architect! (Chuckles.)

American architect Ben Wood, left, teamed up with Hong Kong billionaire developer Vincent Lo, right, at the end of the 1990s to launch Shanghai icon Xintiandi.

A. They’re not, yet. Just little steps.  Why?  First, think about high-rise (buildings).  The high rise is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere in the world. If you want a high rise, you don’t have to hire anyone with any cultural understanding of China, because high rises aren’t based on that intellectual premise.  That’s why they’re pretty much meaningless, by and large.  That’s why I don’t do them. That market is dominated by firms that have the technical expertise and have sophisticated engineers and mechanical engineers to design these inefficient, non-sustainable penises that litter the landscape. That will always be dominated by international firms because it is an international style of building. 

But when it comes to buildings that have cultural significance – like museums and arts centers, those buildings have also been dominated by foreign architects like Zaha Hadid or Norman Foster, who designed the Beijing Airport for example. But I think with the Pritzker Prize winner being a Chinese, Wang Shu, in 2012, you ‘ll find that when a building is important culturally and needs to relate to more to the Chinese culture, more and more that work will be done by Chinese architects.

I always make an analogy between fashion and architecture. Fashion can change overnight. It takes a decade or two to change architecture, because it takes so long to become an architect. You have to go through a rigorous training program. The Cultural Revolution arrested the development of architecture in China.  It has taken this long for it to start coming back. The architecture schools are starting to become confident enough that they are starting to encourage students to draw their inspiration from their own environment and culture.   Until now, they have pretty much been borrowing from the West.  Finally, the professors that weren’t happy about the Cultural Revolution are dying or retiring, and younger, less cynical professors are coming forward and saying, “Being a Chinese architect is good. “ Wang Shu won the Prizker Prize not because he was the world’s great architect, but because he was one of the first in his generation of Chinese architects to be original and be Chinese at the same time, and not borrow from the West.  That will happen more and more.

Q.  We’re sitting here at Xintiandi. Even Xintiandi has been affected by competition from luxury brand malls.  How are the long-established players like Xintiandi trying to become better?

A. That’s another interesting phenomena in China right now:  Why are Chinese so enamored with luxury brands? As long as that trend continues, you will see streets like Huai Hai Road continue to have a flagship Dolce & Gabbana. The distance between a metro stop is about the same distance between a flagship of the same brand!  In New York, we only have one flagship store for each brand. But Shanghai is twice the size of New York, and has three times more interest in brands.

This changes the developers’ mentality because they can charge more rent to a luxury flagship than they can charge a chain of shoe stores. Even in Xintiandi, there was a lot of discussion recently about shifting the focus was from entertainment to luxury brands, which I thought was not a good idea.  I think that a flagship doesn’t generate a lot of activity on the street level. It doesn’t take a lot of customers to pay the rent.  That would be counter to what I hope Xintiandi continues to be, which is a retail, dining and entertainment area that has some roots in the local culture.

So (Xintiandi) has decided not to reshift  Xintiandi to focus on luxury brands, even though they might make more revenue in the short term.  Instead, they went down to the Xintiandi Style shopping mall. The sidewalk was one of the problems with that mall – it had no new activity. Today, I went down there and they’ve already opened a couple of new bars .  Dwight Law, a landscape architect in Shanghai, was asked to redo the whole street, and now it’s turned into a scene down there. It’s just the beginning, but I would say by the end of the summer, it will be one of the new places that people will gather at night.

Q. What’s the most interesting project that you’re working on now, Ben?.Continue Reading

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