"THE SPIRIT OF SOHO CHINA IS ABOUT CREATING A MODERN URBAN METROPOLIS."-ZHANG XIN
On Jian Guo Men Boulevard a main thoroughfare that leads west toward the Forbidden City in Beijing dusty construction sites follow bland corporate buildings one after another. But just past the Third Ring Road on Jian Guo Men eight towering white skyscrapers rise boldly against this uninspired landscape.
Balancing the stark geometric proportions of Richard Meier with a finely tuned minimalist Japanese sensibility the tower which will become a small city of more than 20 when completed have banners on their top floors that tastefully declaim the name SOHO.
The project called Jianwai Soho is the latest to be completed by Soho China a real estate developer led by the husband-and-wife team of pan Shiyi 42 and Zhang Xin 39. In just nine years the company has completed several large-scale projects in Beijing including Commune by the Great Wall a complex of modernist villas by architects such as Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma near the Great Wall of China as well as Soho New Town a 5.2-million-square-foot housing complex that looks as if it were straight out of Rotterdam. More projects are in the planning phases including Soho Shang Du designed by Australian Peter Davidson and Soho City by London-based Zaba Hadid.
Their penchant for working with-and taking a risk on-visionary architects for their large-scale projects has helped the couple stand out in a city where banal high-density apartments are the norm. The spirit of Soho China is about creating a modern urban metropolis says Zhang a slight woman with a commanding presence.
In her spare white office on the top floor of Soho New Town she shows a visitor pictures of the large state-run factory that was demolished in order to build Jianwai Soho. The city life was never there she says. In the pictures a monotonous complex of anonymous buildings disappears in a shroud of white dust. In their place a modern vision of China begins to emerge.
Raised in Hong Kong and educated at Cambridge and the University of Sussex Zhang worked for Goldman Sachs before starting the company with her husband in late 1995.
In Jianwai Soho which was designed by Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto smaller three-story buildings are scattered throughout the skyscraper complex providing space for retail shops as well as neighborhood restaurants. Bridges connect the skyscrapers to these villa-type structures while openings in the plaza reveal what would normally be below-ground parking exposing it to sunlight. The overall result is a rich multilevel city.
On a recent Saturday a film crew scatters throughout the complex filming a commercial as children ride a carousel that was installed on the main plaza.Soho named for the familiar marketing acronym for Small Office/Home Office specializes in residential and business developments designed to accommodate budding entrepreneurs and a new generation of smaller independent companies in China. As one of the country s most media-savvy developers Soho China meticulously brands and markets all its projects. The company has been able to build so much so fast because it sells many of a project s units before construction and most sell incredibly well at that. Buyers visit full-scale mock-ups of apartments to purchase.
When we work with architects we tell them that it has to work in this ever-changing environment. The scale is big so big says Zhang who as co-chief executive officer sets the company s design direction. Many of the architects Soho China works with are untested but they are part of an emerging generation whose work is gaining considerable recognition. Before Jianwai Soho Yamamoto a relatively young architect had no significant building experience under his belt yet he beat out masters such as Arata Isozaki to win the commission And Yung Ho Chang a Chinese architect who designed a house for Commune by the Great Wall as well as Pan and Zhang s personal residence outside of Beijing was recently appointed chair of MIT s architecture school.
While the 2008 Olympics have caused a huge building boom in Beijing Zhang brushes aside the notion that they owe their success to the upcoming Games. Their work she insists has been about defining a long-term vision of China not a short-term goal. As the country s economy begins to shrug off 50 years of Communist control she adds it has become more important than ever to define a new culture.
The love of adventure and experimentation is the most important part of our work says Zhang who became the first nonarchitect to receive an award at the Venice Biennale in 2002.
For us it s about doing something that hasn t been done before.
