Zhang Xin, Chinese real estate businesswoman and co-CEO of SOHO China, won the 2004 Mont Blanc Arts Patronage Award recently, in recognition of her efforts to promote the development of contemporary architecture in Asia.
Last week, the award ceremony was held at the Commune by the Great Wall, Zhang's acclaimed villa project.
The winner was selected by 30 leading artists from 10 countries and regions, in the contest sponsored by the German company Mont Blanc.
The Commune by the Great Wall features 12 luxury villas with views over the Great Wall designed by 12 world-famous Asian architects.
It was exhibited at La Biennale di Venezia in 2002. The project's originality and the great freedom granted to the architects in designing it made a favourable impression on the judges, who gave Zhang Xin a special award as patron of the architectural project.
The Centre Pompidou, Paris, now houses the exhibit model made of wood and cardboard. It is the first piece from China in the Centre's permanent collection.
The architectural complex receives visitors from home and abroad every day. Most of them are architects, designers and students of architecture.
Born in Beijing in 1965 to parents who had once operated a confectionery business in Myanmar, Zhang spent much of her childhood in a village in Central China's Henan Province and then emigrated to Hong Kong with her parents in the early 1980s.
There, they worked 16-hour shifts in an electronics factory to scrape up enough money for the teenage girl to attend evening classes in accounting. This eventually paved the way for her to study in England, first at the University of Sussex and then at Cambridge, where she graduated in 1992 with a degree in development economics.
Wall Street soon beckoned and Zhang found herself ensconced at Goldman Sachs as an investment analyst and later worked at Travellers Group.
In 1994, she returned to China and married Pan Shiyi. The couple co-founded Beijing Redstone Industry, the predecessor of SOHO China, in 1995.
Ever since, the couple have become stars of the Chinese real estate market thanks to their outstanding entrepreneurial abilities and refined architectural tastes. "As China undergoes its economic transformation, the arts and culture should also be promoted," said Zhang at the ceremony.
"I never see business and the arts as contradictory. Arts and culture need financial support and we business people should do our part to promote the development of the contemporary arts including architecture," she said.
Zhang's international experience as well as her knowledge of and passion for art and architecture are central to the distinctiveness of the Commune by the Great Wall. She said she often askes if a new project would stand the historical test of time.
"Since architecture outlives its architects, I try to ascertain if it will stand the test of time," she said.
In 1992, Mont Blanc established the Mont Blanc Foundation for Arts and Culture, to present the Mont Blanc Art Patronage Award to world-renowned artists whose commitment and achievements deserve wider recognition. Over the past 10 years, nearly 100 artists from 10 countries have received the award. Chinese movie director Zhang Yang, cinematographer Gu Changwei, conductor Yu Long, violinist Lu Siqing and Yuju Opera actress Xiao Xiangyu have all won the award in the past two years.
