As the principal of beijing-based DnA_Design and architecture, Xu Tiantian is one of the few women to head an architectural practice in China. Yet in many ways, the 34-year-old architect is typical of her generation of compatriot designers, conveying less interest in formal expressions of “Chineseness” than in finding inventive solutions for specific conditions — which happen to be in China. “ ‘Chineseness’ is too general a term,” says Xu, an alumna of Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture. “I would rather our buildings be rooted in their given locations.
By deftly negotiating a building’s program and site, Xu has managed to build an impressive portfolio very early in her career. (Prolific building is another attribute she shares with many young Chinese architects.) Since founding her firm five years ago, Xu has completed projects ranging from a 29,000-square-foot art museum in Ordos, Inner Mongolia — its twisting form suggesting a desert viper — to a cluster of public toilets that sprout from the ground like periscopes at the Jinhua Architecture Park in Zhejiang Province, where artist and impresario Ai Weiwei invited 16 emerging and more established architects to design a series of small structures.
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