Lai Jun ;Class 1 Registered Architect; Graduated from Tianjin University in 1990; Mochen Architects & Engineers Partner/Vice president/ Design Principal.
domus: Many young Chinese designers are showing their work all over the world. You have joined lots of international architectural exhibitions. What are some of your impressions?
Lai Jun: At the Sao Paolo Biennale, we realized our own design defects, but we also gained a lot of confidence. Indeed there are still huge gaps between foreign architects and us. First, foreign architects can devote their entire mind to the essential factors of design, while Chinese architects must take it into consideration that economic factors and their project’s social acceptance as well as design. Thus, what they design are creations whose essential characteristics have been somewhat reduced. Second, in terms of philosophy, there are lots of differences. Maybe it seems that it is simply a matter of different methods Western architects use. Actually, it is a question of a different cognition and perception about the things they design. In the past, we focused on Chinese traditons. When mentioned the word “traditon”, we would refer to something similar in shape or in spirit, but those things cannot escape the perception and judgment of the form. As a matter of fact, designs must include something philosophical. The characteristics of Eastern philosophy are obscurity, vagueness and something mysterious, so the Eastern way of representing something is indirect, while the Western representational view is totally the opposite. In Chinese architecture, the concept of “grey space” has existed for a long time, and the management of space and order in architecture itself has been an important thing for us to ponder. Chinese style truly has little to do with form. If we make it more abstract and elevate it to a higher extent we could even use modern and futuristic styles to express form rather than the traditional approach.
What is good architecture? It is a difficult question. There will always be defects in Chinese architectural education. People regard form as most important; they don’t care if there is something profound for them to consider in your work. But for most architecture, you can’t simply judge by appearance whether it is beautiful or not. For example, the pyramids in Egypt, their form may not be attractive, but they are still powerful and amazing. Their effect on the spirit is of much more importance than their beauty in form. Once this point on how we perceive architecture changes, the angle of design will change along with it, and so will the methodology. The highest Chinese architecture should express Eastern intelligence to the fullest extent.
Now there is another area for Chinese architects to explore and build on: the scope of their thinking. Although there are so many outstanding architects in China who have solid expertise, they are indifferent to things that don’t seem related to architecture. As a result, their scope of knowledge is too limited. But in fact, somany things could be potentially treated as architecture, and architecture can also be seen as an art. The integration between these interrelated disciplines is a trend, but only by getting in touch with and understanding other disciplines more profoundly, we can gain a brand new point of view.

domus: How do you determine the direction of development in MoChen?
Lai Jun: It is really quite contradictory to the project to set a clear direction for MoChen. You know，China is developing at unprecedented speeds and such a country with such a large population and complex social structure urbanizing at such speeds has never been seen in human history. Therefore we have so many new chances in this society. In this context, architects are playing an important role and shouldering such huge responsibilities. From this angle, Mochen is really fortunate. We have the chance to undertake a great amount of projects and likewise make a contribution to the development of our society. But from another angle, those projects require a greater speed and increase in quantity we cannot guarantee the best quality in each one of our projects. This is a contradiction. As architects, we should improve everything to our greatest professional ability. If we always accept these kinds of projects, it will eventually do great harm to the development and advancement of our own progress. So we are trying to find a balance between quantity and quality.
Our operation mode lies somewhere between large-scale architectural designing institutes and small studios. But as for MoChen itself, the way to progress is quite clear. First, as an office constituting of 110 staff members, we all have to shoulder certain social responsibilities. Now we have projects whose total area covers an average of 1,000,000 square meters per year. This would be unfathomable in foreign countries. But at the same time, we are still trying our best to perfect our office and become a studio that can output something refined and creativ, and we are constantly making preparations to realize out hope. For example, we plan to establish some smaller studios within our office and allow them to take on small-scale, interesting projects.

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