Street View, People’s Architecture Office 2010-2020
Sunshine Kindergarten
(Photographer：People’s Architecture Office)
Fuqiang Primary School
(Photographer：People’s Architecture Office)
Tubular Mentougou
(Photographer：People’s Architecture Office)
Street View chronicles social change from the vantage point of People’s Architecture Office (PAO) and the streets of contemporary China between 2010-2020. This decade, bookended by major global and domestic crises, was a time of unparalleled change. In the background of a society striving for a better life while confronting ever greater uncertainty, PAO’s design approach is optimistic in its humanist ideals while grounded in its connection to street life. This book presents everyday situations that inspire, and are triggered by the work of PAO in the form of photography, drawings, writings, and built projects. Intermittent through the book are essays by diverse contributors from across disciplines, offering alternative views against a field dominated by Western scholarship and frameworks. Ultimately, the book provides strategies to engage the public in ways that adapt to tumultuous times, while highlighting the possibility for greater social inclusion within architectural design projects.
Street View chronicles social change from the vantage point of People’s Architecture Office (PAO) and the streets of contemporary China between 2010-2020. This decade, bookended by major global and domestic crises, was a time of unparalleled change. In the background of a society striving for a better life while confronting ever greater uncertainty, PAO’s design approach is optimistic in its humanist ideals while grounded in its connection to street life. This book presents everyday situations that inspire, and are triggered by the work of PAO in the form of photography, drawings, writings, and built projects. Intermittent through the book are essays by diverse contributors from across disciplines, offering alternative views against a field dominated by Western scholarship and frameworks. Ultimately, the book provides strategies to engage the public in ways that adapt to tumultuous times, while highlighting the possibility for greater social inclusion within architectural design projects.
- 2021
- Grantee: He Zhe, James Shen, Zang Feng
He Zhe is Principal and Founding Partner of PAO/PIDO. Originally from Jinhua, China, HE Zhe is a Registered Architect in China. He has a Bachelor in Architecture and received his Master of Urbanism from Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology.
James Shen is Principal and Founding Partner of PAO/PIDO. He received his Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Product Design from California State University, Long Beach. Shen has been a Loeb Fellow at Harvard, a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and an Innovation Fellow at MIT’s China Future City Lab.
Zang Feng is Principal and Founding Partner of PAO/PIDO. Zang Feng is a Registered Architect in China. He has a Bachelor in Architecture and received his Master of Architecture from the Graduate Center of Architecture, Peking University.
- Organisation: People’s Architecture Office (PAO)
People’s Architecture Office (PAO) is an international practice with offices based in Beijing, China and Boston, USA. Founded in 2010 by James Shen, He Zhe, and Zang Feng, the firm is a multi-disciplinary studio focused on social impact through design particularly in the areas of housing, urban regeneration, and education.
People’s Architecture Office is the first architecture firm certified as a B-Corporation in Asia and serves as a model social enterprise. Domus named PAO as one of the world’s best architecture firms of 2019 and Fast Company listed PAO as one of the world’s ten most innovative architecture companies in 2018. The studio’s award-winning works have been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Harvard Graduate School of Design and the London Design Museum.