gooood Interview NO.7 – Dong Gong
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Dec 16, 2022 10:18 AM
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gooood团队采访世界各地的有趣建筑师，欢迎您的推荐和建议。 第7期为您奉上的是直向建筑主持建筑师 董功 ，更多关于： Vector Architects on gooood.
采访人： 向玲 （特别鸣谢：李硕对采访问题的部分贡献）
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Interviewgooood x Dong Gong 董功
1.
董老师回国前在美国待了七年，现在已经回国七年，这两个七年您觉得自己有什么转变？为什么？
You had been in the USA for seven years before coming back to China, and then worked in China for another seven years. What do you think you have changed betweeen those Two Seven years?
董：I think my goal in general has been always architectural design, since my early years and never been changed.
The key difference between the 2 stages is that, the first seven years is the stage of experience accumulation; the second one is the stage of startup and practice. Under the current circumstance of China, the challenge for an architect is how to control the pace, you know,China is progressing very fast. I feel that for an architect, you should not be in a hurry; to act slowly but firmly, with more time for accumulation, would be better.
2.
看到您的作品中有不少售楼处，完成度极高，材料和建造令人耳目一新，但在其临时作用——销售——结束后就被拆除，而留下的永久建筑却是类似“新古典”的住宅，这种“临时”与“永久”，“现代”与“古典”的问题您怎么看？
In your works, there are quite a few sales offices, which are quite fresh in material and construction, and highly accomplished, but as a sales office, they are doomed to be ephemeral, and going to be demolished eventually; what remain at last are homely “Neoclassicism” buildings. How do you think about this condition that seems absurd?
董：The Neoclassicism buildings were not made by us, what we had done is the part doomed to be demolished.
I feel rather helpless on that, and I think only in China you can see that, the sales office is often much more interesting than the long-lasting buildings.
I have been to a sales office too in US. There are two glass residential towers alongside the Hudson River designed by Richard Meier, and the sales office is just a very simple space renovated from an old factory building.
Perhaps within the Chinese commercial culture, the publicity stunt is so crucial for a successful sales achievement.I think this kind of condition is a delimma for Chinese architects.I discussed it with Teacher Liu Dongyang a few days ago, when he visited my project in Bayuquan Yingkou. I think many independent architectural firms in China, especially the small ones, are related to such a building type.
It’s not difficult to understand the case. Only a building within such kind of small scale like the sales office, the clients are willing and capable of focusing their energy to make it perfect. The “energy” refers to the financial investment, the ability of controlling the quality, etc. If the building scale gets bigger, the client might become less proficient.
From my own perspective, how to say, there are not much difference of designing a “short-life” building or a “long-life” one, in term of how serious I treat the design. I do as much as I can for each project. ‘Temporality” dose not necessarily equal to low-quality-construction. The nature of temporality even could be positive as a lead of the inspiration, such as the Guanganmen project we designed in Beijing. But for now, after five years of the inception of Vector Architects, I would not be very interested by a sales office project for many complicated overlapping reasons.
3.
看到您作品中有着极强的材料与构造的逻辑关系，但对于受众人群，也许根本不会试图理解建筑师这些工作价值，对于这点您怎么看？是否会响您对工作价值的坚持？
I think there are always strong logical relationships in the materials and construction details of the buildings you have designed, but perhaps for the audience crowd, what you try to achieve is rather irrelevant. How do you think about that?
董：I do not agree. I don’t think what I want to achieve is just for the professional standard, and would be irrelevant to the general audience crowd. I would rather believe that, we made many efforts on the materials and details, and when a regular prople walks in, he (she) would feel something different, although he (she) could not explain why. I believe that as a space for human experience, the details could always make difference. The importance of details is no less than concept. They are just 2 different aspects of one thing. You can’t simply say which one is more important than the other.
4.
直向新进完成的一个万科地产售楼中心，其建筑内部专门为公众提供了一条活动流线，且与销售无关，我们可以理解为您利用企业资本做了一件公益的事情。这个过程是否遇到了阻力？如何克服的？
Recently, Vector Architects designed a sales office for Vanke Group, in which there is a particular passage for public crowd, with no direct linkage to sales, could we understand that you take advantage of the business capital to undertake public welfare? And have you faced any difficulty in that process?
董：I don’t think that kind of understanding is accurate. Good business is not always on the opposite side of public welfare. Business should be part of the social advantage. It’s a pity that it is so hard to be realized in China.
But this project has its own particularity. The Vanke sales office is located in a public park. Therefore, it is important for the building to establish a kind of good relationships with the citizens nearby. The government agree with the idea as well, since they have to be cautious of permitting a developer’s building being built at such a public spot. So Vanke Group, the government, and I have the same notion about the “public passage” at the first place. Actually it was the reason why I was interested of being part of this project. It is a challenge of dealing with the relationship between the public and private, as I always addressed in when designing a building in the urban context.
5.
直向在成立短短几年的时间里完成了很多设计，而且每个房子都保持了极高的完成度，这在同等规模的国内事务所里是难得一见的。Vector Architects的团队如此年轻，您是如何保证每个项目都按一定的标准完成？这期间是否遇到过不可逾越的困难？
Vector Architects has done many designs in a few years, and each of them is highly accomplished, it’s rarely seen in the architecture firms of same scale. How do you manage to finish all these projects in such a standard with a so young team? Have you meet with any insurmountable difficulty?
董：It’s not so sophisticated as you think. A team is an accumulation of energy. How far the team could march forward within a certain period of time, will depend on the amount of energy that the team could hold.
We have done so many things in so few years. It is definitely related to the active engagement of the team. But on the other side of the picture, the problems of its own also rise, such as overloaded working pressure. I think we are at the stage of transition, from rapid-rising to sustainable-developing.
People always mention the fine finish quality when they talk about our design work. I don’t think that is the core of our design. We just did what the qualified architecture firms should do during the execution procedure. If you see something different, that’s because the average line in China is too low. We think we should achieve our standard, and we fight for it, while some other architects in China would not notice, or desperately believe that even they want to do, the workers and client would be too unprofessional to cooperate with them, so they might just give up. We just spend more time and energy on this issue.
6.
我发现直向建筑最近的项目，例如阳朔项目，采摘亭项目，大多处于风景优美的地方。现在中国受众最广的项目，比如一线城市中的住宅区或城市综合体，主要公建大多被设计院和国外事务所完成，对这种现象您怎么看？是否觉得中国部分的建筑师应该担当更多一些？
I had noticed that most of your projects, such as Yangshuo project, harvest pavilion project, are located in remote area with nice scenery. But the projects with the vastest audience, such as residential compound in first-tier cities, major public buildings, are mostly done by big designing institutes or foreign architecture firms, how do you think about that? Do you think some of the Chinese architects should be more responsible?
董：I don’t think it’s the problem of architects. It’s problem of environment of this profession, and I dislike it. I think the private design firms could do better if they get such opportunities, because they have better design capability and more responsive in general.
Projects like what you have mentioned are difficult to distribute to design firms like us. There are many reasons for that, for example, the major governmental projects are often assigned to “players within the system”, and the independent design firms would be excluded.
I have undergone repeatedly that the governments of the second or third-tier cities, let alone the first-tier cities, don’t know what an “independent design firm” was; “some under-rated, marginal units “, they would think perhaps. But I think along with the rising power of us, this situation is changing.
As for the residential projects, we always keep distance to them. It is because most of the residential projects are all merely commercial goods for selling in china. We want to make residential building a space for life experience, but we gradually find out the decision maker are not in the same line. So we’d rather keep ourselves away from it.
7.
在最近的项目当中您从自然中寻求灵感，提到了“空”、“远”、“轻”、“透”这种具有禅宗意味的词，这种理念是如何出现的，您是怎么看待它们以及它们之间的联系的？
In recent projects, you get inspiration from the nature, and bring up the concepts of “emptiness”, “distance”, “lightness”, “transparency”, which remind me the ideas of Zen. Where all these concepts come from, and how do you define them and their connections?
董：I think the concepts are related to personality, inclinations and interests. Another reason is most of our recent projects is located in natural landscape, so I have more chance of thinking of the relationship between the nature and the building.
Furthermore, I always believe that an architect should has a reverence, or even awe, to what is called “Tian” in Chinese, or “nature” in western culture. That means when you are on a site, you should understand site with your heart. Because no matter how lackluster a site seems to be, it always posses something energetic and meaningful for architecture.
The relationship of place and site becomes more and more appealing to me. It became the topic of my lecture in a university. If you look upon building as a kind of media, or a potential power, a kind of being, its involvement to site could make it into a place, something people could feel and experience.
Once a person begins to experience a site, he (she) would build up some kind of relationship with the site, otherwise it would be only a physical existence. How to build that kind of relationship is the major issue that I pay more and more attention in the project in Yangshuo hotel, Cafe In The Orchard , and projects in Kunshan.
The key is how to release the potential power of the site by the ingenious involvement of building, make it something could be experienced by people, that’s just the meaning of the key words you mentioned before, such as “emptiness”, “distance”, “lightness”, “transparency”. These words represent some intuitive understandings on the relationship between space and landscape of mine, but that doesn’t mean we would use them dogmatically in each project.
For example, there is a kind of relationship between “emptiness” and “distance”. A building in a certain environment, per say, a broad landscape, should achieve its ultimate value– to make a more active relationship between landscape and people.
That means if there is not the building, a person might be able to experience the landscape, but with the existence of that building, he (she) could experience the relationship of a place and the landscape, a relationship of sublimation, not the raw physical relationship.
Only “emptiness”, the void in space, or a kind of relax psychologically, could build a kind of relationship between the faraway landscape and a certain space.
The end of the most pure state of emptiness, may be is to absorb, absorb the influence that the landscape could make on the building, and the same for “lightness” and “transparency”. Within our recent projects, we have a tendency to make a building interpose the nature with a gesture of lightness, to build relationships with the surrounding earth, sky and landscape.
8.
刚才您讲的有一点就是代表直向未来的走向，我发现直向建筑过去和目前正在进行的项目，无论身处城市还是自然，都很少使用到曲线和自然形体，起码在我看来，其他一些建筑师的作品虽然是直线的，但是可以忘记直线的存在，而直向的作品，直线本身就是一个让人感受强烈的存在。而且在材料的使用上经常出现粗加工的材料，比如说质感直接的混凝土，肌理痕迹明晰的锈蚀钢板，色彩上就是跳跃的橙色也经常出现，就是直线啊，粗加工啊这些常见的元素您是如何定义的？它们是否属于您的个人偏好？或者说是风格？它们是否重要？在未来的发展转变中会消失么？
I realized that in the projects of Vector Architects, either previous or current, city or countryside, you rarely use curve and organic shape. At least for me, though in some other architect’s works there are straight lines, but you could not notice them; but in Vector Architect’s works, straight lines jump out as an un-ignorable existence. And you often use rough materials, for example, exposed concrete, rusty iron with strong textures. And even the color you like the most is the dramatic ones, such as bright orange. How do you define all these elements? Are they your personal inclination, or style? Would they be kept being important, or turned fading in the future?
董：I think a designer should have an direction, an attitude, a stand point, that’s something metaphysical, for example, the source of your idea, your view on culture. When a project comes to your hand, these things could be materialized into the language of design.
The elements you mentioned, such as the straight lines, the choice of texture, maybe related to the language of design, which is really personal.
I don’t think my way is the only right one, never was it. In a certain project, in a given site, if you choose 100 good architects all around the world to submit their works, you would get 100 different answers, and in great possibility that all the answers are right. What I had done is rather personal. I don’t think there was anything absolutely rational.
That doesn’t mean logic, reasoning is not important, you must make many things clear in the first stage, it’s the foundation of design.
But at last, the close relationship between building and people could not be expressed by merely logic and reasoning. It also relies on the designers’ affection of emotion, from their heart.
So more often than not, why a building is built by iron rather than stone could not be explained only by reasoning. Of course, I must point out that design is not the same as art. In art, you could do without explaining why, but in design, you must know the reason why you do in that way.
But furthermore, I still think that a good design comes out from a designer is not the direct result of reasoning. A good design is a process of morphing: you melt all these physical reasons with personal feeling and wisdom, and then cast them into a new thing. Maybe you could not find straight lines connecting the beginning and the end of a design, but you can see some more sophisticated connections under the surface.
9.
未来发展会转变吗？因为之前您刚刚回国的时候还没有提到“轻”、“透”，但是在这七年的实践当中，您提到了这种转变，我也察觉到了这种转变??
You mention the concept “lightness” and “transparency” after you come back to China. Will you go further and make something different in the future?
董：Indeed, I am beginning to be interested by the concept “heaviness”. Such as the model of the Cafe in front of you, you can see a part that crouching on the ground, it’s heave, and another part is floating, it’s light. You can see the relationship of lightness and heaviness. And in our project in Yangshou, you can see the expression of “heaviness”.
I think a designer should suit his (her) measures to conditions, you should chose your answers according to the environment and local culture.
For example, in the Kunshan Project, I think in the culture of south of the Yangtze River, the relationship between the buildings and the surroundings is something between attachment and detachment, something vibrant and ethereal, so I choose the theme of lightness.
But in the north, such as the Bayuquan Vanke Brand Centre project, is something heavy: a big wooden box on the top of an earth slop, only if you step into that space, the metal surface could give you a feeling of lightness.
Vector Architects is only five years old, with only six or seven accomplished building, so I don’t think our style has been fixed, so to ask “how would we change” is a rather irrelevant question. I don’t believe we had brand-like language like famous architects, like Richard Meier or Sejima, and I don’t think I should become someone like them. I don’t agree with some designers of adding the “label” of him (her) on every project, since each project has very unique background and context.
10.
什么是您下一步想坚持的？
Then, is there something you would insist along the way?
董：I think Vector Architects has gotten a certain way of doing things, it’s a kind of attitude, earnest and down-to-earth rather than ungoverned and floating-in-sky.
I hope as a company, Vector Architects could keep in that state, even after five or ten years, be earnest and down-to-earth in each project. I think I would change by time, change according to different conditions, when you go further and further, you will definitely change, it’s good to change naturally. But the attitude is what I would keep. In Vector Architects, the fundamental goal from the beginning is to design good buildings, rather than do something irrelevant to the building itself or achieve some wild ambition, it would always be true to me.
后记
By Xiangling 向玲
多年前，曾有幸跟着董老师（董功）做了项目，回想起来，那个时期是我迄今为止建筑师工作历程中最为辛苦但也是收获最多的时期。
非常幸运的在短短几个月之内，经历了一个完整小项目的前期，概念，扩出，施工图，现场等各个阶段。董老师对项目的控制力，我个人在后来的建筑师工作经历中没有遇到比他更强的建筑师。通常董老师在最初构思的时候就会考虑到节点做法，甚至把细部草图画了出来。预防了在后期因为思考不周，而被施工图设计师改得面目全非，或者材料商和建造商无法完成设计效果的情况。董老师是一位能力综合，控制力很强的建筑师。这样全面发展的建筑师在中国尤为可贵。不少建筑师会抱怨中国的施工技术做不出来自己的东西，还有不少建筑师压根也不在意建成后的效果，这两种极端都让人觉得遗憾。
记得某天和前同事李硕聊天，他提到自己想念董老师的严格作风，后来没有遇到这般的人，缺点劲儿。
“建筑不是有机会就能做好。这是跟人的觉悟程度，做事的要求，控制能力和美学判断都有很大关系的。”这句话说得相当有道理。
几年后再见到董老师，他的公司规模在精心的控制下稳步发展。在建筑行业上，几乎所有人都说中国机会很多，可是这些机会也伴随着魔幻奇葩色彩 的困难和风险。
期待董老师未来走得更远，更发展，以及更多的实践作品。
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