吴彦祖：被演技耽误了的设计师? 设计作品入围建筑界“奥斯卡”

American actor Daniel Wu, who acted in several prominent Hong Kong movies, has earned a nomination for the “Oscars” of architecture.

While he is better known for his acting chops, a building that the architecture grad co-designed has earned a nod from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

The design that earned the nomination is the Mulan Weichang Visitor Center located in Hebei, near Inner Mongolia.

Wu and architect Zhang Hai’ao are listed as the chief designers for the building, in collaboration with Shanghai architecture firm HDD.

Other Asian celebrities were involved in the project as part of a Chinese reality show called “Dream House.”

On the show, Wu helped to design four projects, and the center was featured in an episode that aired on December 24, 2017.

The center, inspired by the traditional Mongolian yurt, had a budget of 800,000 yuan (US$122,880). It is an enormous library with a skylight that allows for star-gazing at night and six residential rooms.

According to the Hong Kong news site Oriental Sunday, the library was built from scratch. Wu expressed his delight on his Instagram account on Friday. In his post, he said that it “has been a great year” for him to get back to his design roots.

Apart from the nomination in the RIBA, Wu added that a car he designed called The Tanto finished among the top 10 at the SEMA car show held in November last year.

According to the Oriental Sunday, Wu majored in architecture at the University of Oregon in the United States. He graduated in 1997.

The Mulan Weichang Visitor Center is up against 61 other nominations. Other entries include a forest chapel in Japan, an oyster-shell-inspired ferry terminal in Italy, and an art museum in South Africa that used to be a grain silo.

The list will eventually be cut to just four and a grand jury will pick the winner in December this year. (SD-Agencies)