Commerce is the most effective way to promote the art of architecture.
I ve never felt so special.
The People s Commune is back, but only for Very Important People. Save up to check into one of China s boldest, most innovative and controversial boutique hotels.
ALL I CAN SEE IS RUST. I m waiting for my butler to take me to my 600 per night room and everywhere I look is rust. The reception is rusty, the ground lights are rusty, the electricity box is rusty, the manholes are rusty. But this is no ordinary rust. This is avant-garde rust. Well, at least some of it is. I m at Commune by the Great Wall, the contemporary collection of architecture that now serves as China s most renowned boutique hotel.
Commune was born when Soho, one of China s most innovative property development companies, asked 12 Asian artists to create 11 holiday homes and a clubhouse suitable for China s burgeoning high-earners. With few limitations, and an estimated US$24 million budget, the result was a set of standard-shattering buildings, which opened to international acclaim, plus a fair dose of criticism, in 2002.
Traditionalists argued such modern buildings were out of place next to the nation s most famous piece of brickwork, while lovers of modern architecture were disappointed by the standards of craftsmanship present throughout the collection. Regardless, Commune was awarded a special prize at La Biennale di Venezia while the Pompidou Centre in Paris took Commune s original model as its first permanent collection from China.
Loved or loathed, Commune is undeniably bold and experimental. And standing in the centre of one of the buildings, listening to the crazy funk of Hong Kong s DJ Suki (commissioned to write a tune for each house), watching butterflies wheel up through sunbeams, one feels part of something exciting, something one million miles away from Mao suits and something that would never, ever have happened without China s recent, rapid regeneration.
Entrepreneur Zhang Xin is the mastermind behind the project and part of the husband-and-wife team who head up Soho. Commerce is the most effective way to promote the art of architecture she comments. Dismissive of any form of art that denies itself a relationship with an audience in the real world, she insists, Only through a process of commercialisation can people be connected with each other.
Commerce, however, seems a crass term to associate with the houses sequestered behind a large electronic gate in a private valley only minutes away from the Shuiguan section of the Great Wall. As my chauffeur-driven car floats past the coaches belching out tourists onto the stalls selling take-me-home gold walls, the scenes we pass appear the manifestation of commerce - and Commune, in comparison, swallows us up like an elitist escape.
The houses have names like The Twins, Airport House, Furniture House, Shared House, Distorted Courtyard House, Bamboo House, Cantilever House, See and Seen House and Split House. I m allocated Forest House and my own private butler, Anita. At first my house appears a little shabby - the garden hasn t been properly landscaped and its glass front reminds me of my secondary school. Like encountering a man you ve only seen in magazines, and realising he s balder than you thought, I m left disappointed.
But, as Antonio Ochoa, the Venezuelan-born designer of Cantilever House advises, Like a person you want to know deeply, you experience the space by trespassing its threshold. Then you know whether it is beautiful or not, sensible or fruitless, whether it is joyful, wise, flexible, strong, honest I penetrate the Forest s skin and quickly fall deeply and irreversibly in love. It s the little things; the way the high-ceilinged living areas refuse to let you feel cosy but force you instead into exhilarating encounters with space; and the way you feel outdoors even when you re in; the quiet rustle of the trees as you lie on the sofa reading a book and the squirrels you can watch foraging in the woods as you switch on the TV.
Anita, on the other hand, never for one moment feels shabby. She is attired like the rest of the Commune army in crisp black cotton and armed with a radio earpiece which allows every one of our movements to be co-ordinated with perfect precision; mention you might like to visit The Clubhouse and a chauffeur-driven car appears on the driveway; break out a bead of sweat and she appears with a bottle of chilled mineral water; should any member of the public dare to come within 20 metres of the house, she s chasing them off like a prize guard dog. I ve never felt so special.
Which is presumably part of the reason Commune is proving such a hit with multinational corporations. It s an avant-garde place and consequently very much in demand with companies wishing to portray their products as avant-garde, says Wang Chunlei, Soho s Communications Officer, before namedropping clients including Louis Vuitton, Hennessey, Audi and Mont Blanc.
Suitcase is very popular for meetings, says Anita. You can see why, it s the sort of building a schoolboy would dream of designing - and that s no criticism of Hong Kong architect Gary Cheung. For it breaks all your prejudices about what a house should look like, with every one of its kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms unpacked by lifting up sections of the wooden floor. It s difficult to imagine anyone would have had the courage to commission it elsewhere.
Other facilities include a restaurant (open to the public) with an Asian emphasis, a swimming pool and spa, a small cinema, lounge (disco glitter-balls spinning over a scattering of real rabbit fur bean bags and endless design magazines) plus a library attired in purple and peacock feathers.
When business and entertainment conclude, most houses sleep between six and eight guests while the more traditional Bamboo Wall designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma sleeps ten to 12. Ironically, in this ultra-modern commune, it s the most popular. Made from old bamboo, explains Anita. It s very beautiful. It s also one of five house designs to be reproduced in phase two and three of Commune where nearly 50 new houses will be built in the surrounding valleys before being sold as holiday homes.
In these later phases, expected to go on the market in 2005, Commune hopes to overcome the sub-standard craftsmanship and difficulty sourcing materials that hampered the first phase. The migrant workers in China built these houses, explains Chunlei. We definitely learned some lessons and know how to build better much better houses now. We also have skilled sub-contractors from our other projects and now we will only use the best, most skilful workers.
Whether this will result in improvements remains to be seen. In the meantime, Commune is without doubt an un-missable hotel experience with the added benefit of a practically private section of the Great Wall set in its grounds. I wandered up in late afternoon. The manager warned me the way was full of great danger ; whether this was due to a passing rain shower or the group of Siemens staff heading up to the watch tower for champagne at sunset I couldn t be sure, but before their arrival I had both the wall, and the view over Commune below, all to myself. Balanced on the old grey stones, I felt as though I was standing on all that was great about China looking down on all that could be.
Olivia Edward:
Olivia Edward is a Shanghai-based British journalist writing features on Chinese culture and society. She was previously Editor-in-chief of Voyage, China's first national English-language travel magazine.
