When architect Zhang Ke set up Standardarchitecture in Beijing, he chose the name because “it sounds neutral. It doesn’t imply any specific form,” he says. But for a studio that’s on a roll, in a country stuck in fast-forward, perhaps it’s equally fitting that the firm recently adopted the shorter alias START (as in Standard Architecture Team). “For every project, we want a completely new start, to throw off all preconceptions — like we’re almost pretending we don’t know anything,” says Zhang Ke. Founded in 2001, and now including partners Zhang Hong and Claudia Taborda (a Lisbon-based landscape architect), Standard is positioned at the forefront of China’s latest generation of emerging architects. It takes each brief as a new point of departure — a series of existing givens — and has shown itself flexible enough to explore projects both massive and small, spectacular and understated.
In Tibet, for example, the firm has built a number of much-praised projects in the Yalu Tsangpo Grand Canyon region, including the Yalu Tsangpo River Boat Terminal (2008), the Niyang River Visitor Center (2009), and the forthcoming Niangou Wharf. Quietly emerging from a landscape of dramatic mountains and pristine water, these modest projects consist of austere pavilions and meandering ramps constructed from locally gathered stone and timber. “They’re like experiments in how we can make contemporary architecture that feels like it’s actually growing out of the place,” Zhang Ke says.
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