'Shan shui' you can literally translate as 'mountain and water.' In traditional Chinese culture, there are a lot of paintings about shan shui, but now we're talking about a shan-shui city.
We need architects to be visionaries.
The shan-shui city idea is trying to bring traditional values and ways of living to modern high-rise architecture.
I think where traditional values are concerned, Chinese people see nature as very symbolic. It's a form of culture.
Tiananmen Square is a sensitive topic because many things happened there. The idea of turning the plaza into a forest makes many people feel uncomfortable.
Chaoyang Park Plaza is about how to carry the traditional culture into a new format in modern architecture. Instead of building a boundary between the city and the park, I tried to design this building to emerge from the natural landscape.
