Chinese Architects Directory

Global slowdown and skew-whiff nature of Olympic economics.

(Image credit: press)

published 13 May 2009

Despite the global slowdown and skew-whiff nature of Olympic economics, there's no doubting the ongoing hunger for architectural innovation in China. For a nation that once favoured state-controlled super-studios, the rise to prominence of small practices is remarkable. A fusion of art and commerce, new Chinese modernism has - at times - made the more ascetic elements of the Western avant-garde wince. But there's also an increasing maturity.

In this month's issue of Wallpaper* we present a selection of Chinese architectural studios that are busy stamping their own aesthetic on the country's built environment.

On wallpaper.com we take a deeper look at these eight practices portfolios, simply click on the images above to see a gallery of their past work and future projects.

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture Editor at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018) and Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020).