Responsive Structure: Architecture as a Thing-scape

Liu Yichun

Structure should be not just a technical issue, but integral to architectural expression. As architect Yichun Liu argues here, the modern separation of architecture from structural engineering in both education and professional practice is impoverishing the built environment. The office that he co-founded, Atelier Deshaus, has evolved a new model of design that involves close collaboration with engineers from the outset, to generate works that respond richly to their physical and cultural context. Four projects in Shanghai, where the firm is based, illustrate how it works.

(The independent cantilever concrete vault-umbrella structure is structural, spatial as well as functional.)

Structure-related issues are fundamental in architecture. It is reflections on the currently distant working relationship between architects and engineers that have recently led the Shanghai practice Atelier Deshaus to revisit the importance of structure. The separation is apparent across the entire building industry in contemporary China. In Chinese architectural education, the subject of structure is independent from the subject of architecture, which aggravates the distance between the two even further in the professional capacity after graduation. At the same time, the dominance of political factors in the decision-making process for the construction of the country's public buildings has had the adverse effect of simplification and symbolisation in design. The more important the building is, the more prominent its symbolic features are. The winning design proposal is often chosen for the superficial reason of having features that are highly recognisable and iconic. The building's structure vanishes behind these features, its function retreating to merely a platform for the symbolism.

When preparing the design of the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai in 2012, Atelier Deshaus interviewed countless structural engineers. Confronted with the design challenge of such a cantilevered structure, most of them were resigned to the confines of the political system's requirements. Some considered that such a design could not be categorised into any established structural system; some, that it would never be able to pass the government's seismic assessment. Even though all of them agreed a vault-umbrella structure would be entirely suitable to bear the loads, they suggested the use of a standard steel frame with a skin designed to the architect's 'desire' – a much safer and more easily applied method. Later, the young structural engineer Zhun Zhang showed up and solved the so-called systematic and standardization problem admirably and without too much difficulty. He applied small connecting lintels to differentiate the loadbearing system so that it would suit all levels of seismic impact. This design solution also extended the originally spatial vault-umbrella, which had grown from the frame structure that already existed on the site, to a vault-umbrella that is structural, achieving consistency and the space defined by such consistency, in accordance with Atelier Deshaus's original vision.

This article does not intend to discuss the process of achieving an anticipated form in architecture, or whether it is more commendable to achieve such form through structural or, rather, non-structural practices. What is important is the issue of structural engineering gradually being separated from an architect's work, as a result of both autonomous subjects in education and division of labour in the profession today. It is a common phenomenon, with modern architects no longer required to be generalists in both art and technology like their Renaissance counterparts; an operating model consists of overtly job-specified professionals. The requirement for collaboration has resulted in the loss of both the self-evident nature of structures and the ultimate simplicity achieved through rigorous thinking. This misplaced modernity is particularly evident in architectural practice in contemporary China.

Objectivity and the Thing-scape

The design of the Long Museum West Bund, completed in 2014, has led Atelier Deshaus to appreciate the energy that structure has generated in space. The Middle Hall of the Tianwang Temple in Changzi county, Shanxi province, constructed during the Jin dynasty (1115–1234 AD), is a case in point. It was in the summer of the same year that I paid a visit there and instantly observed the gigantic timber columns and beams that almost fill the entire space. Instead of triggering any thoughts as to how they were constructed, however, what is more profound is the emotion provoked by the quality of the space, surprisingly similar to that generated in the Long Museum. The structural system of age-old Chinese architecture is based on experience, not on scientific calculations, but what we can still feel is the crucial part that structural elements played in creating and defining a space. They exist all around us, but at the same time disappear into the space they create. Such structure, responsive to both the physical and cultural context, embodies a state of objectivity in its own right. It is a state in which the functionality is no longer a dominant way of understanding structural elements; rich connotations of time, space, site etc are implied through their appearance. The scene hence created with these objects is what could be considered as a thing-scape. It is a desirable state, yet is almost impossible for architects to achieve alone, or even with structural engineers in the conventional working model.

(Gigantic timber column and beams filled the space and determine the quality of the space.)

Objectivity originally meant having a matter-of-fact attitude towards life and objects. In so doing, it simultaneously requires a reflection and inquiry into the essence of things. The word can be easily connected to the late 19th-/early 20th-century German architectural theory of Sachlichkeit.1 Architecture is a subject involved with and defined by many other subjects. Its ontology and autonomy are constantly evolving and debated. Sachlichkeit first appeared as a response to architectural realism, and was consequently applied in discussions of new facts faced by architecture and the rising imbalance between time, location, language and form. If structure can reappear with the backdrop of Chinese contemporary architecture, it can be understood as a contemporary action of Sachlichkeit and a belated modernity.

Working with Structural Engineers

(The renowned Chinese modern sculptor Zhan Wang uses mirrored stainless steel to imitate rock formation in Chinese gardens. It is a departure from nature, but a connection with the modern city. It is also a representation of objectivity.)

Since the design of Long Museum West Bund, Atelier Deshaus has gradually formed a working mode that involves structural engineers in the whole process of architectural design. By means of constant communication and efforts to understand each other's role, a collaborative process is established to convert structure from merely a technical element to part of the vocabulary for spatial construction and architectural context.

The following three recent projects – the Blossom Pavilion, the teahouse in the Li Garden, and the cafe and souvenir shop of the Modern Art Museum, all in Shanghai – describe how this collaboration between architecture and structure is established. On the one hand, the architects introduce the structural engineers to the architectural design process by proposing questions such as 'How can we achieve the maximum cantilever of a single steel board with six supporting points?', 'How can we achieve a reasonable structure with equal-sized horizontal and vertical parts?', 'How slender can they be?', or 'How can we incorporate a secondary structural system into an existing structure?' In fact, structural questions such as these already have implied architectural intention, and they establish a path for structure to eventually make the leap away from being a mere technical element. On the other hand, these three small projects present three entirely different approaches to structural expression.

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(The architect resolved and transformed the Scholar Rocks into an abstract rock-like space, reinterpreting the pavilion as an architecture type.)

(The artist deliberately chose stainless steel as the surface of the sides, which has a similar texture to stone rubbings. The surrounding plantation is blended into this pavilion through a blurred visual experience.)

(Usually this drawing will be considered complete as an architecture type – the pavilion. It is a very precise and very minimal industrial construction in the style of Mies van de Rohe.)

The Blossom Pavilion is a spatial installation designed in collaboration with artist Wang Zhan for the 2015 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season. Although it is a spatial interpretation of the artist's sculpture work Artificial Rocks, it began with a rigorous, even ruthless, structural design. The 12-by-8-millimetre (0.472-by- 0.315-inch) cover consists of steel boards in two thicknesses – 8 and 14 millimetres (0.315 and 0.551 inch) – arranged in a grid according to the load they are bearing. Cloud-like ribbed slabs 14 millimetres (0.551 inch) thick and of various heights (50–200 millimetres (2–8 inches)) sit above the steel boards, whilst underneath, six 60-by-60-millimetre (2.36-by-2.36-inch) single or A-shaped solid square steel columns are arranged according to spatial requirements. These elements all bear loads, the size and position of which stem from careful decisions made by the architects along with the structural engineers. However, these precise, even perfect, structural elements did not appear completely in the finished architecture. Specially treated stainless-steel facing made by the artist covered all of the carefully positioned columns, while the gradually rusted steel ceiling gained a sense of lightness thanks to the mirror polish of its supports. The space is a rock garden that fills visitors with bewilderment.

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(A paulownia tree closely living in the garden. Its 90cm circumference tree trunk became an important spatial element in the tea house, bringing the small courtyard at the back into the interior of the tea house.)

(A three layered slender cantilever structure reduces the footprint of the tea house, giving more space back to the garden.)

(A diagram showing the structure and load bearing of Liyuan tea house. The black coloured are load bearing transferring columns, yellow are side boards of book shelves, and the red are lateral.)

The teahouse in the Li Garden was completed in 2016. The most important design intention of this piece lies within the questions presented to the structural engineer. By adopting the same measurements for all horizontal and vertical supporting units, it was hoped that these units could form an abstract visual composition, realising their potential beyond that of structural elements. With both a length and a width of 6 centimetres (2.362 inches), the units are at the same scale as furniture, and create a more intimate relationship between the building and the body. It is this intimacy that blends the space of the teahouse into the garden completely. To achieve a lightness for the structure situated within the garden, the architect asked the engineer to design a top-down frame, using the entrance door and the wall of the service area at the north side to support the roof, while at the same time cantilevering the beam on both ends to hang two different levels of horizontal boards. This would give a ‘floating’ effect in the courtyard with hanging corner columns; however, in doing so, the horizontal boards are inclined to sway when bearing people's weight. As a solution, the engineer extended the internal columns to the ground to become a loadbearing unit, forming a structure that balance the upper and lower parts. The internal columns support the horizontal boards from the ground, bearing the load upwards, whilst external columns bear the load of the boards downwards through suspension, and are off the ground. Different architectural units combine to create a flexible structural system that works on the balance between different forces. The physics between overhanging and suspension on the upper part allow the slender columns bellow to touch the ground gently, therefore achieving a close relationship where structural intention and architectural intention go hand in hand.

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(The glass boxes with roofs suspended by the steel structure create a new time and scale system below the abandoned coal transport path.)

(New steel structure, while clamping the old concrete column, also supports the upper structure. The steel truss, rested on the old concrete framed girder, hangs new structure downwards.)

(Exploded axonometric. Abandonment gradually turns architecture transparent through weathering. The coexistence of old and new structures is a different type of premeditated transparency.)

Also completed in 2016, the cafe and souvenir shop of the Modern Art Museum, Shanghai, was converted from an abandoned coal-loading bridge. The design added a new steel frame and suspension system to the existing structure, supported by the ruinlike concrete frames left on the site. It not only strengthens the original structure, providing a secondary structure to the viewing pedestrian route above, but also functions as a suspension system for the glass cafe and the roof of the souvenir shop dotted beneath the elevated walkway. The glass cubes need no further vertical support, and are featured with transparent glass corners and fluid spaces. The standard and common glass spatial unit brought new life to this once abandoned and meaningless old dock, creating a new time and scale system, while merging into the surroundings, gentle, anonymous and easygoing. As user and viewer, we are able to choose between investigation or oblivion – a state that not only represents the structure's manner of existence within the setting, but also the modernity of Shanghai as a metropolis. The intervention of the new structure reinvented the old structure, without utilizing its entire loadbearing potential. The integration and interaction of precisely calculated new structure and excessive old structure demonstrates a responsiveness to time.

Structure Can Be Emotional

These three projects are small structures in the mega urban space of Shanghai. Although they still appear to be discussing the practical issue of construction, they bring warmth to the cold industrial materials, and a sense of happiness that is small but certain. The continuous and evolving thoughts in these projects prove that structure can serve space, body and context in many different ways. Once structure is able to transform into a spatial and symbolic role from an element merely bearing loads, it has the ability to appear and disappear from our view, and to produce firm and powerful emotions. The perception called forth is about structure, time and location; it is fine, precise and never excessive. It is generated firstly in the intelligence, and transformed later into emotions. In this way, structure goes towards the scenery of things, or 'thing-scape'.