I’m sure everyone has by now heard of Google’s announcement that they may ‘leave the Chinese market’. Although it is not clear what is fully meant by this at this time, it is a situation which poses many ethical questions for all foreign-owned enterprises currently undertaking work in China or similar political contexts.

Google claims that their period of reflection is as a result of what they believe to be state-sponsored manipulation of their Googlemail application. This somewhat ignores the overwhelming animosity that the company received in the West prior to entering the market in early 2006. This was in response to the company’s apparent decision to comply with Chinese censorship legislation requiring it to hide search results from a variety of different subjects.

This is a dilemma that certain architectural sectors have had to deal with many times in the past. One may, possibly naively, assume that, as a liberal profession, the position of the architect may be not to engage with the dictator or the authoritarian regime, but I think we would be wrong. I am specifically reminded of Foster and Partners’ recent works in many questionable democracies on the central Asian steppes.

An interesting case in point is in fact the company I now work for, Ove Arup. The firm has been a market leader in Hong Kong for decades, but was also one of the first of the foreign practices to use this foundation to enter the mainland market. The first mainland office opened in 1984 in Shanghai and remained a lone outpost until quite recently. It was only upon China’s succession to the WTO in 2000 that the practice initiated a series of new openings along the eastern and southern seaboards. So, why the delay?

One could argue that this was because the country at this point received the international ’seal of approval’ - a collective decision had been reached to work with the state, putting other pressing rights issues on the backburner. The Peoples’ Republic gained full legitimacy at this time - for the first time more countries recognised the PRC over the ROC as the ‘real’ China, Beijing was awarded the Olympics. I think it is actually  more simple than this even. Although the morality of such a decision is ambiguous, the economics are not. China is too big a market to ignore and it was at this point that the scale of development became too large not to engage.

I heard recently an extremely interesting analysis by the eminent historian of political government Peter Hennessy on BBC Radio. In this piece he described the government here as a, “tyranny by any other name,” and took the stance that companies should never, “dicker around with tyrants, however important they are in the world.” Although I must say that this utopian and principled position is morally appealing it is not, as I have described, realistic in the world that we inhabit. It is the received opinion that liberal democracy won the cold war. This is clearly not true. Of the CIS states today, only those on the Baltic could be described as fully functioning democracies. And China has only continued to grow. Do we ignore these billions of people?

The common comparison, made by many wishing to disengage, with the economic blockade South African apartheid regime in the 1970s and 1980s is, in my opinion, both unfair and unhelpful. Any blockade would today be unilateral, many of these states are members of the WTO and active members of the international community. They cannot and will not be frozen out. We no longer live in a world dominated by the postwar allied powers and have, realistically, no choice, economically and politically, but to engage due their sheer power and influence. I believe the arts and architecture in particular, are therefore extremely relevant as ambassadors for change in these lands.

As a result of the political stability that many of these regimes provide (regardless that this may be to the detriment of civil rights), there is an opportunity for economic and civic development that will improve people’s lives. Architects are at the forefront of this change. They are a medium for the physical transformation of the world in which the citizens of these states live. One could therefore argue that they have a responsibility to be there, to enable change.

So. Should Google pull out? I’m not so sure. Maybe they should never have entered the market in the first place in order to comply with their mantra, ‘don’t be evil’. But they did, and they are now here. This changes the situation enormously in my opinion and loads upon them more responsibility due to their adopted role as a stakeholder in Chinese society. Maybe their responsibility is to stay? Maybe we should ask the shareholders…

The RIBA has called for an ambitious and effective international response to climate change, to be agreed at the 15th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, Denmark, 7–18 December 2009.

See the RIBA’s climate change policy.

Well I’ve just returned from an interesting weekend in the city of Foshan. I was invited by my boss, Jane, to attend the annual architecture forum in her home city of Foshan. This is a city of a few million (small in the Chinese context), situated about three hours north-west of Shenzhen.

It was great to get out of the city and see some more of the region. What most surprised me was the urban environment. Shenzhen merges into Dongguan, which merges into Guangzhou which merges into Foshan. Guangdong Province is a sea of dense urban sprawl - the world’s factory floor.

Foshan was a delight, however. As it was Jane’s home town she took us to a great local noodle shop, although to be honest I can’t describe the joy I felt when presented with the Swissotel breakfast buffet! A proper English Breakfast, with baked beans.

My room on the forty-sixth floor had a fantastic view of the city laid out below. Foshan is an ancient city and although now much smaller than its neighbour Guangzhou, the two maintain a rivalry as to which is the birthplace of Cantonese culture.

Unusually for traditional Chinese cities, Foshan has no urban centre, but instead a string of neighborhood clusters organised around the many waterways that intersects the urban fabric. This gives the city a smaller, more human scale that is both unusual and at risk of being lost forever in the contemporary Chinese developmental context.

Arup were presenting a recent project in the city - the Culture Mall. This project is massive by European standards and designed to equip the city with the cultural capital in museums, auditoria and the like to enable it to compete both nationally and internationally. The form of the project was inspired by the unique urban fabric of the city and is such extremely fitting in its exciting and eclectic design.

The forum was an interesting opportunity for me to see the kind of work going on in the city and it was extremely impressive to see the focus the city and it’s government were putting on the implementation of good design principles. This does not mean, however, that I was overly impressed with all of the projects. It was clear to me that good design in this region seems to be dominated by a few select firms which sadly means that the majority of developments are made up of buildings - not architecture. Some may argue that this is the norm in most of the world and I would agree. The fundamental difference is that here in China the scale is so different and the amount of construction is so huge that this situation can have a much larger detrimental effect on the urban environment due to the sheer greater number of users involved.

Finally. This is the first time I have had to sit down and write this blog since I arrived in China in September. It was with great joy I opened the email from RIBA Education earlier this summer, informing me that I had jointly won the RIBA Boyd Auger Scholarship 2009. The funding from this enabled me to take up my place as a RIBA Part I intern in the Shenzhen office of Ove Arup & Partners.

This came at the end of a hectic three months of interviews, applications and and inductions. I’m combining the award with a British and Chinese government programme - the UK China Graduate Work Experience Programme. Essentially this means that I get free Mandarin language lessons and support from Shenzhen University (and we even got to study at China’s premier university Tsinghua in Beijing for a couple of weeks).

I’m here in the city of Shenzhen in southern China with three engineers, all working for Arup. It’s a real boom town on the border with the ‘Special Autonomous Region’ of Hong Kong - but it feels like a world away. This is very much mainland China.

I was asked to write a blog following my experiences in practice here in China. I’m only now, however, getting round to doing this. I have never been so busy in my life. It is my intention from this point to try to give an insight into real working practices and to describe the good and bad points of life here. Hopefully, this will be of some use to graduates considering coming out here for work experience in the current economic climate.

So a little about me. I’m James. I graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2008 and didn’t fancy immediately going into practice. Instead I spent the summer studying at university in China and travelling the north west of this massive country. I then enrolled on the MSc in Construction Economics and Management at the Bartlett, UCL. And then… came here.

So. I promise that there will be much more to come. In fact I might start another post right now! ‘Till then.

Hearing some exciting live pitches for solutions for vacant shop units from Feix & Merlin, and Piercy Connor Architects…

Feix and Merlin live pitching

More to follow.

Very informative conference, dealing with many pertinent issues for architects in the UK today. I will edit and add full stories over the next few days, there has been a lot to take in today!

Bompas & Parr - Jelly Barajas

Fantastic session from three young designers, employing architectural skills in a diverse range of situations.

More details to follow…

Engaging Communities

Angela Brady kicks off this session on how to engage with your local community and involve people with design and the built environment.

http://www.bradymallalieu.com/

Reading Situations

Liza Fior presents some of muf’s work, demonstrating how to encourage involvement, rewrite briefs and use architectural skills to reveal existing situations and what is possible.

http://www.muf.co.uk/

An Alternative Belfast

Mark Hackett discusses the need for discussion and engagement with the built environment, and presents his practice’s work which acts as a critique to planned developments and proposes alternatives.

Belfast provides an interesting situation, where developments such as the Westlink urban motorway, and cul-de-sac housing, has had a divisive effect on an already polarised city.

http://www.hhmck.com/

Jane Duncan opens this discussion on the long running issue of architects’ fees. With the recent removal of the fee graph as mentioned by Ruth Reed earlier, it is suggested that the fee graph has been holding the profession back.

Navigating client relationships

Stephen Davy shows the conference how he has changed the way his practice calculates their fees, away from the RIBA scale. He suggests architects need to look more closely at their own costs in order to produce accurate fee proposals that work for both client and architect.

In establishing costs, Davy identifies the following areas:

1. Create a list of work (drawing schedule)
2. Establish a programme of when the work takes place
3. Calculate the number of staff, and the number of hours required
4. Add internal costs and overheads
5. Generate fee

Chaired by Chris Foges, editor of Architecture Today, this session looked at examples of architects diversifying their practice into development, community engagement, and international work.

Doubling up as developers

Trevor Horne presents his map of diversification, with spin off projects resulting from the development of the practice’s own studio.

http://www.trevorhorne.com/

Cultural Interpreters

Daisy Froud of AOC explains the development of her practice’s work in the field of consultation.

http://www.theaoc.co.uk/

The Shop Window

Neil Deeley from Metropolitan Workshop talked through the practice’s experiences of working abroad and the opportunities emerging from competitions.

http://www.metwork.co.uk/

More details to follow…

Session 2 Panel

Ruth Reed, President of the RIBA, opened the conference, discussing what she has discovered in her visits to practice since taking her position. The removal of fee data, the challenges of lobbying politicians, the issues of public procurement (particularly for small practices) and the inability of practices to provide sufficient experience for Part 1 and Part 2 students are all pertinent areas for practices in the UK at the moment.

The first session was chaired by Vicky Richardson, editor of Blueprint magazine, and looked at the benefits of collaboration with other architects, professionals and organisations.

Collaboration is the ideal state of architecture

Richardson’s opening address discussed the collective effort involved in producing a building, and how architects can be the leaders of collaboration in the design process.

With reference to small practice in particular, it is suggested that there is now no real advantage of being a large practice - smaller firms now have as much of an opportunity to work with a multitude of professionals and agencies. We are reminded that a collaboration is only ever as good as the people involved, and sometimes there may be a tendency to try to find the most extreme collaboration, or perhaps for the sake of including it as a box ticking exercise around the latest buzzword.

http://www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk/

Serendipity

Paul Monaghan explains how his practice (AHMM) produced a series of RIBA exhibitions in the early 90s, leading to potential routes for collaboration and diversification of the sectors that the practice was able to find work in. By putting on an exhibition entitled ‘Design for Doctors’, inviting other practices to submit, along with presenting one of their own schemes, AHMM were then asked to design a series of healthcare projects. The production of a design for the ‘Classroom of the Future’ led to further work in the education sector.

There is an emphasis on needing to be in the right place at the right time, and by embracing opportunities for collaboration, maintaining contact with architectural peers, taking initially small jobs and not always working with the easiest of people, bigger opportunities will emerge.

http://www.ahmm.co.uk/

Unintended Consequences

Simon Foxell discusses the process of public procurement with particular reference to the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in Birmingham. He discussed the seemingly large number of architects that can be involved in the process (architects producing a reference scheme, design managers, CABE enablers, bidding architects, the CABE review panel). The benefit of this number of architects in such a variety of roles is that they are all passionate about design, with the emphasis of the BSF programme being on “what design can do for education in Birmingham”.

Appearing bigger than you are

Andrew Waugh presents the story behind Stadhaus (a housing scheme in Hoxton, London), the world’s tallest timber building, a collaboration between Waugh Thistleton Architects, Techniker Structural Engineers and KLH Timber.

By working closely with the engineers and manufacturers, the possibility for an alternative to a concrete framed tower was explored and presented to the client in a convincing manner, with relation to the cost, environmental and time benefits of the cross laminated timber panel method. The team produced a sketch for the client, comparing the construction methods, making the benefits apparent in terms of density, weight and programme.

Working with the local authority, it was established that by using the timber structure CO2 savings equivalent to 210 years of alternative sustainable technology (solar panels resulting in a 10% saving of the buildings emissions) could be achieved, and this would meet the demands of legislation whilst saving the client additional expenditure on sustainable technology.

http://www.waughthistleton.com/
http://www.techniker.co.uk/
http://www.klhuk.com/site/

Session 1 Panel