First published in InMagazine.
Interview carried out by Robin Peckham with Yaohua Wang.
Yaohua Wang captured the imaginations of forward-thinking sectors of the architectural world while still a student in Los Angeles, releasing a series of increasingly radical projects in terms of both politics and aesthetics, all delivered in a set of neat animations that quickly circulated through a global network focused on the architecture of emerging media. In one of these, entitled “Latent City,” Wang narrates the story of an architect who, contracted to design an industrial manufacturing district in the Chinese interior, subversively embeds the infrastructure of a city of the future within his design, recognizing that time is on the side of the built environment and awaiting the latent potential of this structure. In another, “Project Carbon,” Wang inverts the current processes of form-driven digital design, discovering new architectural styles based on the potential of an unexploited building material. Recognizing the obstacles of politically-motivated planning decisions, Wang is poised to make a difference even as he launches his career.
Where are you from originally, and where are you headed now that you’ve completed your thesis project? Your education has been split between Beijing and Los Angeles.. How do you think these two different approaches to design education have affected your work?
My hometown is in Shanxi. After studying at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc), I am planing to work for one year in Los Angeles and then go to graduate school on the east coast of United States. I will be working at Eric Owen Moss’s office, who is now the director of SCIArc, and also at the office of Wes Jones, who was one of my thesis mentors. Indeed, my study at SCIArc affects my work the most. However, my studies at Beijing Jiaotong University were also important to me. I gained a fundamental understanding of architecture there, which helped me take a more critical position when I was suddenly facing the overwhelming digital trend after coming to the U.S.
Tell me about your architectural and theoretical influences. What designers do you admire, especially among those working in greater China?
The architectural theories of Rem Koolhaas and Wes Jones have exerted the greatest influence on my thought. Equally important are the influences from all of the instructors I had at SCIArc, including Peter Cook, Hernan Diaz Alonso, and Peter Testa. I also pay close attention to a range of contemporary architects like Tom Wiscombe, Patrick Schumacher, Thom Mayne, Sou Fujimoto, and so on. I can’t say that I have already decided on a certain type of architectural style yet, and I do believe that a good a student should open his eyes and keep an open mind to diverse thoughts in the world of architecture. In terms of Chinese architects, I like Ma Yansong and Wang Shu, because in China, when you stand in front of a client, it is hard to hold your own as an architect, but they manage to do that.
You say your understanding of architecture is “against capital … against constraints … against power.” Can you describe precedents for this oppositional architecture? Do you see architecture functioning this way anywhere in China today?
Maybe I should say “against the irresponsible power.” I don’t think architecture functions in this way anywhere in China, or even elsewhere in the world. This is not because Chinese architects don’t have dreams, but rather because it seems that this is the way that the world operates now: under the control of people who have the real power based on the principle of maximizing profit. Up against this rule, the architect seems powerless and can do nothing but watch irresponsible decisions being made one after another. That’s why so many utopian architectural dreams have died. That’s why the world is are still running on the same old track.
Under such conditions, some architects choose not to see reality and keep on enjoying their sweet dreams of the so-called academic utopia. Others retreat back to make beautiful object-buildings without any political attitude. But for me it make no sense to be stuck in either of these positions, which is why I really want to find a third way. That’s the moment at which the notion of latency came to my mind.
Your notion of latency seems like it can be a very powerful tool, if it can avoid the trap of delayed social responsibility. Could you describe how this concept works in the “Latent City,” and perhaps provide other hypothetical examples of how this could work in the real world?
I am certainly not the creator of the concept of latency. For example, the [rejected Miami Performing Arts Center] theater project Rem Koolhaas did in Miami, where he hid his derision of the bourgeoisie within his design, or Wes Jones’s idea of “smartness,” which require designers to find a loophole in the system use it to reverse the negative condition into a positive one. Although they haven’t mention the idea of latency outright, this attempt at the oppositional inspires me.
As the story goes, the architect has a dream of “a city with no dead end” that would have great spatial and architectural advantage, but the problem with his ambitious idea is that it would require significant investment into infrastructure without really bringing the developer more profit, so construction seems impossible. Then, he noticed shifting trends of industrial China in 2010 and made a plan to hide the infrastructural system for this new city into an energy-saving design proposal for a new industry city needed at that time. With the passage of time, after the downfall of this industry city, the architect emerges and declares his secret plan to the government, so the city with no dead end can be reborn from the ruins of the old industrial complex in 2030.
Because of this, people named the new city “Latent City.” But the hidden story that no one knew is that, at the very outset, the deal had already been made between the architect and the government. He demonstrated to the government that they could not only get a great city without any investment for infrastructure, but also could earn a great amount of money. They then set the whole plan up together and made the industrial enterprises pay the bill for the infrastructure of the new city without knowing about the the deal. This hidden agreement is the real latency behind latent city.
The notion of latency is general, but the methods must be very specific to the context, which means that I can’t provide any other hypothetical examples without doing deep research and thinking carefully. Because this was a thesis project, the most important thing for me was to make a conclusion to the end of my five years of study: that is, do I still believe that architecture is powerful? If so, how could this power work?
Much of your previous research has revolved around the rise of inland industrial districts that you believe will be made possible with the ever-expanding road and rail infrastructure coming together in China. The first wave of inland development in China occurred in the Republican period, largely with British funding and expertise, while the second wave grew out of Maoist paranoia of aerial attack on seaboard industrial areas. How does this current third wave differ from its predecessors? How do you see the design of these new industrial districts differing from the high-technology manufacturing around the Pearl River Delta and the low-end product manufacturing around the Yangtze Delta?
The current wave is happening because coastal areas like the Pearl River Delta need to upgrade their industrial bases, while conventional labor-intensive industry is moved to the inland area. For my story, the design of the new inland industrial district relocated from the coast needs to satisfy two sets of requirements. One is the infrastructural system needed for the “city with no dead end.” The other is an environmentally friendly industrial district, newly created but still containing the operations of labor intensive conventional industry. Most importantly, the first one must be hidden within the second one.
Since I got the idea of the form of the city with no dead end quite early on, much of my previous research has been about this second set of requirements. Based on that research I learned what an environmentally friendly industrial district would require. And by combining both sides, I managed to design a dual layer industrial district.
From what I understand your “Project Carbon” marks a significant technical advance, building upon the work of Peter Testa and others. What kind of new forms will this allow, and how could they differ from the parametric design that dominates the so-called avant-garde today?
It’s kind of like trying to find a new type of “box” for our time. We build the conventional box not only because it is easy to use but also because it is easy to build. This is one of the reasons that some doubt has been cast on form-driven digital architecture recently. The main concern of this digital architecture is form; only afterwards do they try to find materials to complete the building of the form. To the contrary, what I did with “Project Carbon” was to reverse this process: to find the new materials of today, in this case carbon fiber, to analyze its advantages and disadvantages, and then to find out what new forms this material can create. And contemporary robotic technology makes it possible that free-form building with carbon fiber structures can be made even easier than the process of constructing the conventional box.
My project is just one possible application of this material, which has great potential. Instead of saying that this project is different from parametric design, I prefer to say that contemporary parametric design is not yet a comprehensive concept. It still need to be supplemented. Thus I see this project as one attempt to consummate that concept from a material point of view.
Many of your major projects are presented in the form of concise, didactic, and technically proficient animations. To what extent does the cinematic mode affect your design process? How did you arrive at this form of exposition?
My idea for “Latent City” appeared in my head a long time ago, so since I was quite sure that I wanted to tell a long story and that animation might be the best way to do it, I began to accumulate the skills and experience for animation. That’s when I started to use animation as the major tool for my other presentations as well, as I found it the clearest way to explain my ideas. In the other projects, animation is mainly a tool for presentation and did not really affect my design process. But for the thesis project, it affected my design in a major way.
Where and when does your next project begin?
I am working on several competitions right now, one of which is in China, and the deadlines are all quite close, but nothing is public yet.
