A short walk down a ramshackle alley typical of Beijing’s hutong neighborhoods leads to a pivoting steel door deeply recessed between a pair of gray-brick buildings. Go through it and you are immediately swept away from the noise and frantic pace of the big city. A sleek glass corridor connects a trio of the tiny courtyards that comprise hutongs and a set of one-story structures, three of which are new and two that have been restored. Old and new, indoors and out fuse seamlessly. What had once been a crumbling courtyard residence now serves as a teahouse and retreat for the owner, a dealer of painting and calligraphy. The way the design resolves opposing elements says much about the work of Han Wen Qiang, who founded Arch Studio in Beijing in 2010. “What I want to do is find the wisdom of Chinese tradition and convert it to the construction of contemporary space that responds to the needs of today’s society,” says Han.
Born in Dalian, a coastal city about 300 miles east of Beijing, Han studied architecture at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, where he now teaches. As a student at CAFA, one of the top arts schools in China, he was drawn to architecture because it could “influence or even change people’s lives,” he says.
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