conceptual design for buildings in nanjing

what a crazy week. Having a conceptual talk on Monday about the approach towards this project in Nanjing (china), whether to try a curvilinear approach to the design or a more high-tech / minimal or ’stately’ approach as my principal calls it, and the capability of my current office to achieve that approach, was a real interesting and difficult discussion - diplomatically trying to feel my way through the situation - as well as my principal telling me that he was waiting for me to tell him what the building is supposed to be.

In this offic, it seems as if the design filters up from the middle rather than filtering down from the top at the offices of 'signature architects' such as Foster and Partners. Furthermore, the unfortunate realization that my original 'ribbon concept' developed for this project, or anything that resembles the BMW building (by Asymptote - used as an example of form) for that matter, was being pressurised by the main man (the owner and president) to be dumbed down, was painful to admit but understandable - no-one could possibly oversee such a complicated and idiosyncratic design concept through once its' designer is gone.

notwithstanding that, learning more about the process of designing large scale buildings from scratch on my own with little conceptual direction has been the single most interesting and valuable thing I have experienced this week, if not at all, besides the experience of creative exploration and development. To describe this process, its more of a to-and-fro or push-and-pull of planning and conceptualizing, massing the building based on those developments, then more conceptualizing and applying or massaging the concept to the massing of the programme, circulation and physical constraints in combination with good judgement and practical physical design principles, possibly combined with some sculpting of the massing and addition or subtraction of certain conceptual elements that are concurrent with the overall concept - the ribbon, or pods for instance.