WHEN IN SHENZHEN

In Shenzhen, which is the city (pop. 8.6 M) just North (17 miles) of the Hong Kong (pop. 7M) boarder, they have an amazing place, where this entire district are home to artist that will paint everything under the sun.

HONG KONG

I am going to start uploading pictures from my iphone. I'm really impressed with the quality of the pictures that the phone takes. The resolution is not that high but the lighting quality that it takes always surprises me.

The Hong Kong skyline is amazing and unique. Outside of the food, this is how to experience HK. This picture was taken from the Peak.

BEIJING TRAFFIC

This is what Beijing traffic looks like, well it looks like everywhere else that has bad congestion. As most people know getting to certain spots in the central areas is a wait like no other. There are 3.5 million cars in Beijing for a population of 15 million. Compared to Los Angeles which has 6.9 million cars for 3.8 million people. They will have to have a road expansions on a different olympian scale if they reach 1.8 cars per person as in LA.

Beijing Dining

If you are looking for an interesting place to eat in Beijing, you may want to try Da Dong. Yes once you get past the "dong" jokes the restaurant is quite nice. The dining room is pleasant without being over designed. The food is upscale Contemporary Chinese, and the service was pleasant on the day i went at least.


 Across the street you have a well preserved historical monument.

I guess I am curious as to weather the name and graphics were conscious and intentional or completely accidental, or both.


Here is the address:
5/F, Jinbao Dasha, Jinbao Jie, Dongcheng District

BEIJING TOWER

The CCTV Tower post fire. There are certain events that seem to define an era or age or transition point. I wonder if this event will be a historical icon representing a change in architectural production in China.

On the other hand someone told me that, for Chinese fire brings good fortune.

LA Times Article

here is an article on our work

All about us.

ORDOS

This is a villa project in Ordos Inner Mongolia. It's not part of the famous Ordos 100, but it's the same client. The concept and geometry is derived from the site conditions (views,wind,solar,land forms..etc..) combined with the local (non yurt) brick constructed homes that dot the landscape.

You don't get many opportunities to build a single family detached house in China. What they tend to build is dense urban residential towers. So there has not been much evolution of the single family detached home. We resisted the temptation to do an updated yurt which I believe will ultimately finds its design zenith when its framed by a mega mall courtyard. Instead we focused on the local farm house that is in fact more connected to traditional living while at the same time becoming extinct by the modernization that was blanketing the landscape.

for the first time

we have been avoiding blogging for years. but it seems like this is the most useful way to get the message out in a casual manner.

we have designed a number of web sites in the past for clients and ourselves. they were usually very flash driven with lots of bells and whistles. So in our updated version of our web site I wanted to change our approach and simplify. I have chosen to use iweb, that comes with any mac, its limited but I like the challenge of making something beautiful and useful with limited tools. It seem more of the times..