“This is going to be amazing! I feel so excited,” says Zhu Pei about his now under-construction Majiayao Ruins Museum and Observatory in Lintao, Gansu province. The Beijing-based architect designed his building like a deeply embedded cavernous space evoking a giant fragment of ancient pottery, resembling an archaeological site from the Neolithic Age discovered here a century ago. The building is so unusual that it cannot be described in common architectural terms. For example, a vast cast-in-place concrete hyperbolic shell lies prone on the ground, blocking the cold wind from the northwest in winter. The architect used the sand and gravel from the local Tao River to produce a special rough concrete with horizontal scratches on the surface, symbolizing the traces of thousands of years of erosion. All of Zhu’s buildings are quite remarkable. Yet, despite their novelties, they are rooted in culture, nature, and climate. They are designed based on his architectural philosophy, Architecture of Nature, articulated in five fundamental points: incomplete integrity, sponge architecture, cave and nest, sitting posture, and structure and form.
The architect explained these guiding principles during our recent video interview. He sat in front of his architectural library, including Le Corbusier: Complete Works (Oeuvre Complete) in Eight Volumes, at his Spanish Colonial house with an ongoing contemporary renovation and addition in California. He splits his time between the US, where he often teaches and lectures, and Beijing, where he runs Studio Zhu Pei and has been the dean of Architecture School at CAFA, the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts. He told me, “Teaching is also learning.”
