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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Culture
China as a training ground for young expat architects
     2014-August-21  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Kevin Pinner

    kevindanielpinner@gmail.com

    FOR many young architects from abroad, China is a land of plenty: nonstop construction projects, a strong appetite for foreign designers and a regulatory system that gives inexperienced graduates responsibilities that would take decades to earn in their home countries.

    Architects come here from places like Europe to gain experience and work in a fast-paced environment. They are often placed in foreign designer roles at architecture and interior design firms across the country. Some of them are employed to design conceptual projects for competitions, some work on real projects, and some have jobs in which these tasks overlap.

    Rémi Loubsens, a 27-year-old French architect, worked in his home country for half a year upon graduating before embarking on a journey to Shenzhen, where he found an abundance of job opportunities and even managed to earn the honor of designing the entrance to an international architecture forum, the Shenzhen Urban Design Biennale.

    Yet despite his successes, Loubsens found that returning to France recently was a difficult transition.

    “I have been looking for a stable position in offices in France for a couple months,” he said. Without the right connections, unpaid internships seem to be the only option for him. In contrast: “After two weeks in China I found three offices who were ready to hire me.”

    When asked if he thought granting him the responsibility of being a key designer on a project was risky, Loubsens replied there was risk, but not in terms of safety.

    “The risk I see is more qualitative,” he said. “The loss of first ideas” and “considerations between an idealistic designer and pragmatic builders” caused his projects to suffer.

    Other architects expressed similar opinions about the quality suffering, yet all felt there was no safety hazard.

    A 25-year-old British architect in Shanghai who chose to go by George said that the main difference between buildings in Britain and China is that buildings here aren’t meant to last. In an interview with Shenzhen Daily, he said China offers architects “a lot more freedom” to work “above (their) experience level,” whereas “back home it would be months spent on a stair layout or a toilet.”

    He spoke of being “replaceable” in England, where hundreds of applicants vie for limited positions. In China, things are more transient, he says.

    While in China, George says he’s designed several “important structures,” though he was not keen to give more specifics, fearing it might put his or his company’s security in jeopardy. Back home, he wouldn’t be qualified to work on any structures under his own name, but that’s not an issue in China. Many architecture companies hire students from foreign countries straight after they receive their undergraduate architecture degrees like George.

    According to a June 2011 report by the Daily Telegraph, it takes seven years for students to legally declare themselves fully fledged architects in Britain. George’s alma matter, University College London, says on its website that graduates from its bachelor’s degree program normally take a year interning at an architecture office before applying for two years of graduate study. Only after that can they have the opportunity to do the kind of work that George and many others do in China.

    George said working here has given him an edge in terms of experience over his fellow graduates who stayed at home. “China has a pretty fun way of actually building the most ridiculous conceptual or literal things. I’ve worked on so many ‘lotus flower-shaped’ projects. I stopped worrying about the postmodern implications and tried to make them work as buildings.”

    Another young architect named Jimi Lee, 29, works for AECOM. Ltd, but before that the 29-year-old Serbian citizen first practiced in his home country for a year, then two years in Vienna and a short stint in Tokyo. He was the project manager for the Guangzhou Music Center, which is due to be completed this year.

    Lee thinks China is the No. 1 destination for young architects because they “have a chance to be involved in projects without basic local language skills and experience, which would be required in Germany, Britain or Australia.”

    He said that creativity is the top requirement in the country. It’s safe to give young architects more responsibility, he said, “as long as they are set in the right team with good support and communication.” Some of the lack of regulations might be for the better, according to him, especially when it comes to urban planning.

    “Chinese normative codes concerning safety and function are more or less understandable for architects. But urban planning regulations are not definite. China has a system where development companies are taking part in defining urban plans and laws as well,” said Lee. He added this may be a more effective system, “since it provides frequent communication” and satisfies the needs of “all the groups: users, the government, investors and architects.”

    When asked how Serbia compares, he said that they share some commonalities in that they have the “laws and expectations of a developed country, but not the standards.” Lee thinks that another reason coming to China is so popular among young architects is that it provides “equal status and opportunity for everyone.”

    All in all, it seems that while young, relatively inexperienced foreign architects might have more freedom here, there isn’t an immediate danger, but only because of the way things work in Chinese firms. The process is cooperative, more so than in the West, according to all the architects interviewed.

    The pipeline for a given project goes through so many people, including highly qualified professionals, that even though young foreigners might have their names put on projects, it’s being signed off on by their companies, who have accredited architects for that purpose.

    So while the young Europeans may be the ones doing the brunt of the design work, they are not legally responsible for anything that gets built. All the aforementioned architects said their company would take the heat in the event that a structure collapsed.

    With checks and balances in place as they are, China is a wonderfully opportunity-filled place for those who wish to design buildings, but don’t have the formal experience to do so back home.

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