Commune by the Great Wall

Commune by the Great WallShi Jian (Editor)The Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences Press, 2003Paperback | 11-1/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 194 pages | Chinese/English | ISBN: 978-7805639673 | $X.00Publisher's Description:A private collection of contemporary architecture exhibited at the 2002 la Biennale di Venezia, awarded by a special prize. Its exhibited model has been collected by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, as its first permanent collection from China. Includes DVD video documentary about the Commune By The Great Wall. dDAB Commentary:On Monday I featured Natured, a monograph on Korean architect Seung H-Sang and his firm IROJE, in which I mentioned that before reading the book I was only familiar with one of his projects: The Clubhouse at the Commune by the Great Wall. The project, now nearly twenty years old, consisted of a dozen buildings in its first phase, each one designed by a different architect from China, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries. Developed by Zhang Xin, co-founder and CEO of SOHO, the project's most unique aspect was clearly its location northwest of Beijing near the Great Wall. The architecture wasn't bad either, and in turn the Commune by the Great Wall was exhibited in Beijing in 2001 and in the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002.This book tells the story of the project and documents the eleven villas designed by Gary Chang, Cui Kai, Antonio Ochoa, Rocco Yim, and Yung Ho Chang from China; Shigeru Ban, Kengo Kuma, and Nobuaki Furuya from Japan; Kay Ngee Tan from Singapore; Chien Hsueh-Yi from Taiwan; and Kanika R'kul from Thailand; plus the Clubhouse by Seung H-Sang from South Korea. The written narrative is in Chinese, apparently not translated into English; instead an article by Ricky Burdett from Domus is included. The bulk of the book though is the presentation of each building through color photos, drawings, and bilingual text. There's also a companion DVD, in which "leading Chinese woman film director Ning Ying presents this short film about the Commune by the Great Wall" — a 12-minute film that is part of a longer 22-minute film on SOHO and its other developments. These two films don't add much to the book, outside of the aerial views that show how some of the houses relate to each other. The whole is — a bit like The Houses at Sagaponac — for hardcore fans of the project or for people fortunate enough to have seen it and the nearby Great Wall in person. Spreads:Author Bio:N/A Purchase Links:(Note: Books bought via these links send a few cents to this blog, keeping it afloat.)Email Subscriptions:Subscribe to A Daily Dose of Architecture Books by Email