The International Institute of Architects Triennial Award ceremony for the August Perret Architectural Technology Award took place in Copenhagen on July 6. Yuan Feng, an architect and professor from Tongji University, made history by becoming the first Chinese scholar to receive this prestigious award in its 62-year existence.

▲Award ceremony scene

For the past 15 years, Yuan Feng has dedicated himself to the exploration of robot construction, with a specific focus on integrating robots into China's architectural field. Throughout this time, he has achieved remarkable milestones in the realm of robot design and the construction of houses from scratch. One notable accomplishment is the Chengdu RuiXue Multi-hall, a project that was successfully completed in 2022. This architectural marvel boasts an impressive smart construction rate of 90%, positioning it as one of the leading examples of advanced construction practices in China.

▲Chengdu RuiXue Multi-hall

▲Yuan Feng's works, made of hard building materials, express a soft and dynamic temperament

Despite not being particularly young, at the age of 37, he embarked on a dedicated journey of studying digital construction. With a deep immersion in this field for 15 years, he remains actively engaged even at the age of 52. His unwavering commitment lies in revolutionizing the construction industry, aiming to liberate people from the shackles of inefficient, time-consuming, and hazardous construction practices.

During the month of June, Yi Tiao paid a visit to Yuan Feng's most recent undertaking in Chengdu. Additionally, Yi Tiao had the opportunity to explore the studio that Yuan Feng had refurbished 15 years ago and continues to utilize to this day. This studio is nestled in a tranquil corner of an industrial park, providing a secluded sanctuary for Yuan's creative endeavors.

Written by: You Weiling

Responsible editor: Deng Kailei

01. Over the past 62 Years, the first time a Chinese person won this prize

▲The UIA Triennial Prizes ceremony took place on July 6th, showcasing the pinnacle of achievement in the global architecture industry across different domains. In the photograph, we see Yuan Feng alongside José Luis Cortés Delgado, the esteemed president of the UIA.

At the end of June, after the Dragon Boat Festival, the humidity and heat of the plum rain season permeated in Shanghai. Yitiao camera crew travelled to a remote industrial park located in the north of Shanghai to visit Yuan Feng, a professor and architect at Tongji University who had just won the Auguste Perret Prize for Technology from the International Institute of Architects.

▲Yuan Feng in Yitiao’s interview

At that time, the news of the award has been delivered more than a month, Yuan Feng was going to Copenhagen on July 6 to receive the award, and then to Australia to participate in an international architecture forum. The day before the interview, the summer camp of DigitalFUTURES, a digital construction exchange platform he founded, had just opened. Yuan Feng was particularly busy and energetic, which made our first impression of the 52-year-old architect.

Established in 1961, the Auguste Perret Architectural Technology Award is 18 years earlier than the Pritzker Prize in 1979, and is one of the highest awards in the field of architectural design. Yuan Feng is also the first Chinese winner of this award since its establishment 62 years ago.

▲Winners of the 1978 Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture, architects Piano and Rogers ©RSHP

▲Among the outstanding architects who won the Construction Technology Award,

the first winners Felix Candela (born in 1910, awarded in 1961) and Frei Otto (born in 1925, awarded in 1967)

were crucial to the formation of Yuan Feng's architectural ideals. Now, the former architectural descendant is on the same list with his "idols".

Unfolding the list of previous winners is like opening the history of the evolution of modern architecture, and the winners are all important innovative forces in construction and design, such as Norman Foster, the master of high-tech architecture, Shigeru Ban, the representative of low-tech architecture, Piano and Rogers, the architects of the Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture in Paris.

"It is true that there were no Chinese figures in the more than 20 award presentations before, Chinese people have made a lot of contributions in the cultural level, but we have been avoiding the technical aspect, in another words, always been in a state of application." he said.

▲Yuan Feng in the studio

From learning and following technology to independent research and development and leadership today, China has stepped into the forefront of the world in the era of digital construction.

"More than 10 years ago, there were no more than 10 teams in the world working on this," Yuan Feng told us. Johannes Braumann, president of the Association for Robots in Architecture, presented three global popular building robot research institutions at the Rob|Arch 2016 Conference in Sydney: the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zurich), the University of Michigan (UMich) and China's Tongji University (TJU). Tongji University, more specifically, is Yuan Feng and his team.

▲The truss robotic arm independently developed by Yuan Feng in 2015, with an arm span of 11 meters,

has a load capacity of 125 kilograms, and can realize free processing in the range of 11 meters to 14 meters

Digital construction and design is still a fresh term. Yuan Feng has been in this field for 15 years, introducing industrial robotic arms into the architectural discipline, allowing robots to enter the construction industry, and allowing artificial intelligence to participate in the whole process of building from design to construction.

▲The robot construction factory

As for the long-term problems in construction industry, like extensive development, large waste and high carbon emissions, the biggest significance of building digital construction is to rewrite the industrial development through human-machine collaboration machine intelligence. "Just as the advent of internal combustion engine in the era of the carriage, mankind has bid farewell to the era of the carriage and ushered in the era of the automobile. Now, the emergence of robots is bound to usher in a new era of construction."

▲The view of Chengdu Ruixue Multi-hall from the air

The Chengdu Ruixue Multi-hall, which has just been completed in 2022, is still the best achievements and epitome of Yuan Feng's 15 years of research. The 1,836 square meter house achieves a smart construction rate of nearly 90 percent.

Compared with traditional design and construction, the architect integrates his spatial imagination with computational design, and then the required building components are processed by the machine construction factory and shipped to the site for point-to-point assembly. Compared with traditional design and construction, this method is accurate and efficient, can minimize the waste of resources, reduce the dependence on human resources.

▲A bird’s-eye view of RuiXue

In addition to the concrete placement of the ground, all of Ruixue's construction, from the installation of the wooden structure to the surface material of the roof, has been digitally constructed.

02. 15 years, starting from zero

▲Ruixue outdoor theater

Ruixue Multi-hall is located in Tianfu Agricultural Expo Park, Xinjin District, Chengdu, including exhibition, theater and office three functions, and a total of 4 spaces.

▲Ruixue in autumn and summer

As its name — RuiXue (Seasonal Snow), the whole building is like a rolling white hill, rolling up layers of snow, and like a white silk fell on the ground, soft and dynamic.

▲Architectural appearance

The entire roof, which is 3D printed with modified plastic of recyclable materials, covers an area of nearly 2,200 square meters and is composed of 4,150 printing plates, all of which are precisely customized according to the design in the factory, and there are no identical two pieces.

▲Exhibition hall, outdoor theater

The concept of a clear distinction between the wall and the roof has also been eliminated, and the roof of Ruixue is also a wall. At a height of nearly 9 meters, the height between the undulation is the roof, and the slope is the wall, which naturally separates the inside and outside of the building, and thus forms the four main interior spaces of the exhibition hall.

What looks like a futuristic, pioneering building is backed by sophisticated digital construction techniques, but for Yuan Feng, the most important thing in the space is the exposed wooden structure that can be directly seen when raising your eyes.

"In Chinese tradition, when you walk into a temple, you will find that the whole temple is made of wood, and the whole temple is realized through the construction of materials. From the spiritual origin, there is still a Chinese complex in it."

In RuiXue, small, short pieces of wood joins one by one to each other, and timber frames combine with each other. Finally, a stable and solid roof structure under stress is formed.

"In our ancient Chinese buildings, there are only a few pillars. Most of beams on them complement each other with Dougong, and through such mutual bearing method, a large construction span is achieved."

In Yuan Feng's view, architects should not lose their own cultural traditions and cultural self-confidence, but also face the technology of this era.

"Digital is the means, respecting the material, respecting each screw, expressing their aesthetics, which I think is what we insist on doing. With a cultural heritage, and expressing it by a completely new technology, it will develop a new culture."

▲Yuan Feng's study

With the help of new construction technology, inheritance of traditional culture and creation of different spaces, Yuan Feng's selection for the studio in 2009 can be traced and understood.

At that time, Yuan Feng had two options in front of him. One was to rent a small bourgeois house in the center of Shanghai. The other is to go to a remote industrial park, which has the advantage of cheap rent and a large enough area to have a life: a yard, a tea room, and a place for him to do all kinds of construction experiments and exploration.

▲Inside and outside the study

He chose the latter, after staying for 15 years, this remote industrial park, so far there is no convenient subway access, the road outside the park is full of old industrial plants. Along the wide road, there is no familiar shopping malls or residential communities in the city, like a rural-urban fringe zone. But after several twists and turns, having full of doubts in the head, suddenly a secluded paradise appeared.

▲Office area in Yuan Feng’s studio, two sides adjacent to the courtyard

The old large-span factory was transformed into a yard by him, and the exposed wooden structure of the old factory above the roof of the yard showed where they came from, as if they could step into the bustling industrial era at any time.

▲The study

Deep in the office, there is a hidden courtyard, with deep and dense bamboo shadows, surrounded by a pool. With a tall tree that covers the sun and sky, Yuan Feng's two-story study and tea room are hidden under it. Alongside the way to the office, it may be said as "The winding path leads to a secluded atmosphere".

▲The silk wall

In such a secluded courtyard, the outermost, is a gray brick wall, that is Yuan Feng's iconic "silk wall". These gray, hard bricks, through rotating each brick in different directions, staggering, combining, formed a dynamic effect like water flow, soft as silk. Yuan Feng still clearly remember that, when the wall was born in 2009, the aesthetics embodied by it stunned a lot of people.

▲The first version of silk wall were built by hand

This is the starting point of Yuan Feng's design, the early digital construction. Recalling the construction of the wall, "At that time, there was only digital aesthetics, there was no mechanical arm to help me implement this project. I completed the design, and I tried to design the caliper. Through manual masonry construction, the first version of the digital wall was completed." Yuan Feng said.

▲The "upgraded" silk wall was built with robotic arms

This situation was completely reversed six years later. In 2015, in the Pond Society,  a small art museum in the West Bund of Shanghai, Yuan Feng and his design team realized the mechanical arm on-site bricklaying for the first time. Looking at the whole world at that time, which was a groundbreaking first time." Despite its small size, the Pond Society has entered architectural history."

The base of the Pond Society is also an abandoned old industrial site, full of discarded bricks. Yuan Feng designed for the robot to recognize and grasp the materials on the spot, and make the masonry autonomously and independently.

A silk wall, from manual to mechanical arm operation, took 6 years.

▲In Bamboo Community Center in Chengdu

After the robot can lay bricks, the next step is to process wood structures. In 2017, Yuan Feng completed a comprehensive community center in ‘In Bamboo Community Center’, a village in Chongzhou City, Chengdu. He connected two houses with wood structures from traditional Chinese dwelling houses and constructed a building shaped like the Möbius strip.

▲In Bamboo in Chengdu

▲In Bamboo on stage at the Venice Biennale

This house, the first of its kind in contemporary rural timber architecture, "If you go to Chengdu today, you will see a lot of this kind of fluid aesthetic and fusions with traditional materials, large-scale, non-linear space. it starts from this project, it has had a profound impact on the face of the contemporary village."

▲Inkstone House, OCT Linpan Cultural Center in Chengdu

At the end of 2018, in Anren Town, Chengdu, Yuan Feng also completed a comprehensive station - Inkstone House, in which he realized the integration of three robot construction technologies: bricking, wooden frame making and 3D printing.

▲Light of Internet World Internet Conference Center in Wuzhen

In the 2019 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, Yuan Feng spent 6 and a half months to build a 35,000 square meters pillar-free, ultra-large exhibition space: Light of Internet World Internet Conference Center in Wuzhen. This project was later awarded the Honor Awards for Architecture by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), one of only two projects in the world to be awarded that year.

▲The mechanical arm processes Ruixue's wooden frame structure

The Ruixue Multi-hall in 2022, its robot intelligent construction rate has achieved the national lead. Yuan Feng's self-developed robot can already handle 15 kinds of construction material processing techniques.

Just looking at the time, you can also perceive that after completing the difficult breakthrough of the first six years, the technology of digital construction has been developing at a faster pace.

▲The mechanical arms processes metals

Looking back on the past 15 years of explorations and discoveries, Yuan Feng summarized the digital construction in his eyes with "more, faster, better, and more economical":

"More — the problem before China's urbanization is “less” that thousands of cities are all built in a same pattern; So “more”, refers to diversity, more diverse aesthetics and possibilities;

Faster and better — in the past, construction relied on manual labour. Compared with robot, the construction effect of manual work is difficult to guarantee. But a robot can work accurately 24 hours, fast and good;

More economical — through a precise design, and even high-performance solutions, structural optimization, to support a heavier structure with the minimal frames as well as reducing material waste.

▲Light of Internet World Internet Conference Center in Wuzhen

"In the next 5 to 10 years, labor costs are getting higher as population growth is slowing down. Whether we accept it or not, we will encounter a change brought by the dramatic transformation of the labor force. In the future, perhaps a construction site used to have thousands of workers will become a precision construction of unmanned chemical industry and few people chemical industry."

03. It’s never too late to start learning again at the age of 37.

▲At a corner of the studio, sunlight pass through the branches,

paints the intensities of shadows.

Yuan Feng’s architecture, the architectural shell of the pioneer, hides the poetic heart of the Chinese traditional intellectuals for thousands of years. The characteristics of the intertwining tradition and modernity have been imprinted during Yuan Feng's academic period.

▲In Bamboo

“As an undergraduate at Hunan University, when I ran to Yuelu Academy every day to recite English words, this scene is full of contrast. The bamboo forest and water outside the office we see now are not high-rise buildings or high-density spaces, but a working environment with natural and humanistic feelings. These are reflected in your blood, which are some characteristic Chinese contents.” Yuan Feng said, looked at the green shadow outside the deep, there was quite a sense and atmosphere like “Sitting among bamboos alone, the deep woods where I’m unknown”.

▲Over the past decade, people, bamboo and trees have been thriving vigorously

When Yuan Feng studied architecture as an undergraduate, he originally wanted to stay away from art. Unexpectedly, after studying architecture and working in the construction industry for so many years, his works are getting closer and closer to art.

Yuan Feng was born in an artistic family in 1971. His grandmother is a pianist, his grandfather is a viola enthusiast, one sister is a violinist, and the other is a dancer. The artistic atmosphere is what he grew up with.

His mother hopes not to have a whole family engaged in art, and expects at least one who doesn't study art in this family. In this way, as a child born in an artistic family, he learned architecture, which he thought was unlikely to be artistic.

▲In DigitalFUTURE Summer Camp 2023, Yuan Feng's team built a tree tower with discarded branches picked up from the green belt.

From Hunan University to Tongji University, Yuan Feng studied from undergraduate all the way to the PhD degree. In 1999, Yuan Feng, who was still studying for a PhD, won the bid for his first project in his life following with his mentor. Since then, he has successively participated in the design of many projects. In the golden age of construction industry, he had some architectural works, until 2008, the uncertainty in his heart was magnified to the extreme.

"Am I going to be an architect who serves developers with standardized and customized products, or am I going to face my own inner dream and be an architect who explores architecture as art?"

At the age of 37, Yuan Feng decided to go to the United States. From 2008 to 2009, he took the role of visiting acholar in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and MIT is the first institute in the world to introduce robotics into the architectural discipline and initiate researches.

Yuan Feng just came at the right time, when the most discussed topic in the institute was whether robots could be used to build houses and whether man-machine collaboration could be possible.

▲“Heart of Yong’an” Community Center

“On the one hand, I have to teach design, but I have taken many courses, including philosophy, art and technology. As a student, every day from morning to night, I learned different knowledge, and that had a big and systematic impact on my mind”

Finishing this year as a visiting scholar, Yuan Feng returned to China and also brought architectural digital technology to the forefront of architectural education in China.

▲“Heart of Yong’an” Community Center

He recalls how he has changed since then: "After 2009, my works have become smaller and smaller, but my heart has become more and more secure."

Yuan Feng joked that he went abroad at an old age. Looking back on this opportunity, he was very grateful: "Studying in the United States at the age of 26 and 37, the benefits are quite different. At 37, I have better foundations and experiences, and thinking with them had a greater significance in my later works and changes."

"I told my own children the same — don't define yourself, but follow your heart, adhere to your dreams, and be brave to make choices. Ultimately you will do what you love. Life should never be limited by format.”

Provider of some pictures: Archi-Union Architects

Photographs: Su Shengliang, Wang Ke, Arch-Exist, Lu Ningjue, Schran Images, Bian Lin

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