“Atelier Internationale d'Architecture Construite”(AIAC) for 14 Years

1. Origin: A beautiful invitation from Paris

The predecessor of“AIAC”is an international architectural design competition jointly organized by Professor ERIC DUBOSC of l'Ecole Nationale superieure d'Architecture de Paris la villette and Professor ETTORE ZAMBELLI of Politecnico di Milano. In 2002, with the gracious invitation of Professor DUBOSC, the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University dispatched a team of teachers and students led by Professor Li Dexiang to participate in the activity. In the same year, the School of Architecture of Hanyang University, R.O.Korea and School of Architecture of Naples from Italy also attended the event. Through the activity in 2002, all participating schools agreed with an intention of establishing a long-term cooperative alliance through joint consultation, and a framework agreement was successfully passed. Henceforth, the early structure of“AIAC”came into being. As the members then were from five schools of four countries, the activity is therefore abbreviated as the Four Coutries Five Schools joint studio.

Early after its establishment,“AIAC”has confirmed a clear working method: to follow the key thought of promoting the exchange between the occidental and the oriental architectural education. Participants are mainly first-year graduate students. The activity is held once in each spring term, hosted by all schools in turn. According to the design progress, the cooperation and exchange take in two steps. In the first step, teachers and students from all schools will visit the selected country for site selection and academic exchange. In the second step, they will go to the country that is responsible for exhibition and appraisal to exhibit their final achievements and contest for excellent works. The investigation of site selection and work appraisal will be conducted respectively in two countries, so as to create an opportunity by which students of all countries can personally experience a different architectural and cultural environment.

The preliminary activities of“AIAC”were mainly conducted among the Four Coutries Five Schools, namely, China, France, Italy and R.O.Korea. As time goes on, this activity has aroused the interest of more and more Universities from other countries gradually, for its unique charm. The excellent architecture schools from Germany, Malaysia, Japan, Colombia, Peru, Vietnam, Thailand and Spain have also introduced rich ideas about foreign architectural cultures, which also create a broader space of exchange for teachers and students.

Fourteen years ago, the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University has been fated to have a permanent relation with“AIAC”since a beautiful invitation from Paris. One of the reasons is that the key thought of the activity coincides with Tsinghua's concept of actively expanding the international cooperation in education. As one of the founders, the team of teachers and students from Tsinghua has so far participated in fourteen sessions consecutively.“AIAC”has been gradually included in the graduate student pedagogic programme of Tsinghua's specialty of Architecture, developed from an extracurricular selective design competition at the early days. Till 2006, this has been one of the special topics of required design curriculum. In that process, we jointly explored the leading topics in the field of architecture and shared our creative design concepts and achievements with peers from all over the world, from which we have benefited a great deal.

2. Exploration: A new model of cooperation in architectural education

Since the reform and opening up, the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University has been expanding its cooperation in international education continuously. As the foreign exchange is strengthened, the exchange patterns at the level of architectural education have been enriched ceaselessly: From government-sponsored visiting scholars in the 1980s to the cultivation of student exchange in the 1990s, the early exchange focused on sending talents abroad unilaterally via the foreign educational platforms, so that the features of professional architectural education had not been highlighted yet and participants were quite limited. Since 2000, the increasing international joint design has ushered in a new pattern of cooperation in the architectural education. The international joint design agrees with the features of architecture, with an aim to enhance understanding and mutual learning. The emphasis of exchange is changed into the establishment of an educational platform that is fair for both China and foreign countries. The activity pays equal attention to both sending and introducing of talents and its participants are increasing sharply, realizing the full coverage for graduate students. In recent years, the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University has continuously developed the international joint design and it played an increasingly significant role in postgraduate education. These are inseparable of the following basic concepts:

·The Principle of Cooperation-To establish an common stage

During the long process of construction of“AIAC”, countries and schools with different cultural backgrounds always abide by the premise of respecting each other and abandon certain prejudices on the size of country, economic strength and cultural context. Members include not only the world's developed countries and well-known schools but also developing countries and emerging schools with unique regional characteristics. A total of 21 schools from 12 countries have participated in this activity. Equality is the basis to sustain the mutual friendship and stable cooperation among members. In our visits to each school of each country, we saw different teaching environment and unique teaching methodology, and also the same pursuit for specialty and prominent disciplinary advantages. The difference itself is one of the driving forces to promote mutual learning and combined development. The common exchange stage has created a perspective for us to appreciate the essence of different architectural cultures. The complementarity in exchange gives an impetus to the advancement of educational concept.

·The Key Difficulties-To coordinate teaching concepts

“AIAC”covers a number of countries and schools in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The big difference in the system, time and requirements of teaching has imposed a considerably great barrier to the formation of sustained cooperative relationship. The early activities focused on the unconsolidated competition, students may participate in of their own will, but the achievements were not included in the curriculum. Consequently, this was quite unfavorable to stimulate the students' enthusiasm and to deepen their design scheme. On this ground, all members made dedicated efforts to tackle the key difficulties such as“How to coordinate the activity time?”“How to include it in the formal curriculum?”“How to exert the advantages of each school under the common proposition?”This also obtained the great support of all schools. A stable and harmonious cooperative relationship has been established gradually along with the mutual coordination among the different concepts. Currently, all key members have included this activity into the pedagogic programme of postgraduates, and deepened the corresponding thesis research, technical design and other personalized contents in addition to completing the joint design achievement, in view of different teaching features of each member.

·The Teaching Priority-To develop a professional view

As a design project of postgraduates, the teaching priority of“AIAC”is by no means to impart the specific design techniques, but to help students enhance their ability of comprehensively analyzing and establish a logical design methodology. In particular, the maximum benefit is to widen their professional view. The wide-ranging exchange platform of“AIAC”provides students with an opportunity to experience different cultures in the world. In the annual activity, we organize twice academic exchanges and visits for students, so as to help them profoundly understand the historical context and future development of construction environment. Teaching activities are not limited to lectures in campus and guidance from teachers, but to widely invite experts from the governmental administration and planning departments, construction and development units, and regional representative architects to introduce the local needs and progress of urban space. This has created a quite rare opportunity of learning. Students can have an intuitive understanding to the development issues of different cities, know the cutting-edge theory of the international architectural fields, explore the similarities and differences between Chinese and western architectural thinking, and make field inspection on excellent design cases. These aspects are of positive significance to form all-round architectural values.

·The Teaching Methodology-To emphasize the stimulated interaction

By combining the pedagogic objective of Tsinghua's architecture postgraduates,“AIAC”attaches importance to imparting the methodology and adopts the teaching method of stimulated interaction with seminars as the main teaching form. On the one hand, students are encouraged to actively make independent research and exercise their ability of problem finding by starting with history, cultures and social development studies of local country of each project; on the other hand, teachers impose the requirements for phased results according to the teaching schedule, so as to help students continuously deepen their research and design step by step, form the design concept with clear logic and boost their ability of problem finding; meanwhile, multi-disciplinary teaching contents are introduced to deepen the students' projects and enhance their professional design ability.

·The Core Objective-To return to native cultures

The“Harmony in diversity”represents the unique concept of Chinese people regarding different cultures; such concept suggests that people agree with foreign cultures but not obliterate their own characteristics. These two complementary aspects are indispensable of each other. On this ground, in the teaching process of“AIAC”, the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University has been always adhering to the basic approach of enhancing the teaching level and promoting the confidence in cultures by mutual interaction of heterogeneous cultures. The core objective of exchange is to return to native cultures, which is also recognized by each member school. During fourteen years of teaching practices, we not only emphasize the respect to the local environment and regional cultures but also encourage students to boldly propose a design scheme based on their own understanding, instead of rigidly adhering to the construction conditions. As the teaching ideas are matured increasingly, Tsinghua's students have manifested the works that boast rich oriental ideas and prospective design concept, and thus won the widespread appraisal among the international peers. In the annual exhibition and appraisal of results, we are delighted with the design concepts of teachers and students of all schools. Their works are in possession of unique features and different ways. We believe that these different thinking based on different cultural background is of positive enlightenment for the development of each country and each city.

3. Perception: Collision and sublimation of heterogeneous cultures

In fourteen years of practices of“AIAC”, what we have most realised is the collision of heterogeneous cultures. As those schools have different cultural context and teaching concept, we generally adopt the thinking methods and solutions with great difference in face of the same research subjects. Hence, to earnestly analyze different teaching concept and actively learn the practical experience from each other is of great benefit to enhancing each other's teaching achievement.

·Viewpoints in Common

Since its establishment,“AIAC”has always paid attention to the frontier questions about the development of cities and architecture, and emphasized the perceptiveness of propositions. In the previous selected subjects, all sponsoring schools actively sought for the key difficulties facing the development of cities and architecture as the assignments of research and design. Despite different environment and contents, all those subjects shared viewpoints in common, specifically, taking ecological technologies, urban renewals and regional cultures as the core objectives of contemporary architecture.

At the early stages, the design subjects were required to highlight green building and energy-saving technology. While completing the basic design scheme, the selected subjects must also go further into technical simulation and detail design. Upon the selection, the green technology shall be especially specific to the different conditions of a site. For example, Beijing high-rise complex design in 2003 manifested an active exploration into passive energy conservation technology for high-rise buildings in areas which are hot in summer and cold in winter. The scheme made a multi-dimensional exploration and simulation specific to heat preservation, ventilation and heat isolation. This had good reference value for practices of green building design in the subtropical environment. In the design of residential buildings for Malacca Wetland in 2007 and public building design of Shenzhen in 2008, the warm and wet climate features had a big impact on the projects. Hence, the innovative solutions such as building on stilts, sunshade, ventilation alley, waterwall and vegetation maintenance structure played an important role in promoting the research into building energy efficiency in the tropical environment.

Another key concern of“AIAC”is the renewal of cities and buildings. Whether the design of modern arts center in the neighbour of Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul or reconstruction of Napoleon barracks in the riverside of Bayonne, and whether the renewal of old buildings along the Grand Canal in Venice or reutilization of elevated highway in Nihonbashi of Tokyo, each of those topics, without exception, took on the development context of the whole country and demonstrated the historical changes of each city. The concerns to history, culture, city and social development have deepened our thinking about individual architectural performance. One of the important guiding ideologies for teaching is to integrate the existing spatial patterns, realize the combination of new and old buildings and reconstruct the beautiful urban environment. Following such an ideology, we will make unremitting efforts to activate the vitality of each country.

As the participating members are increasing, the subjects of“AIAC”affected by heterogeneous cultures are becoming richer and richer. In particular, the exploration in the regional cultural features are strengthened continuously. The time-honored European classicism buildings, orderly palaces and gardens of R.O.Korea, characteristic Malaysian residential buildings and creative Graffiti arts in Latin American cities, have brought rich source of creation and artistic inspiration. It is most likely to“eliminate all but the essence”and harvest the enlightening sparks of thought by carefully examining the heterogeneous cultures from a differentiated perspective and explore the regional buildings under different cultural contexts.

·Disparate solutions

The exhibition and appraisal of designing results constitute an important link of exchange that“AIAC”has always adhered to. Every year, dozens of projects are assembled for inspection and learning from each other. Through the strict appraisal and review, the most excellent designs will come out. However, the objective of this process is to promote participants to learn from each other's teaching concepts and methodologies by the exhibition of those unique solutions as proposed by different schools under the same subject. Each group of project often clearly embodies the prominent academic advantages of each school and reflects their bright ideas. All schools in the cooperation have a quite obvious emphasis of pedagogy. For instance, Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy pays more attention on the trainings of techniques and construction levels, whose projects manifest obvious technical advantages; University IUAV of Venice focuses on thinking about design concept, especially the philosophical concept, and the project boasts sophisticated concept and means of expression; ENSAPLV boasts rich experience in light steel structure system, whose project is full of lightness and romantic atmosphere; by contrast, all schools in Asia focus far more on reflection the historical context and thinking about dimension of the city, and the final results stand out of the contradictions between regional characters and sense of modernity.

·Sublimating in the collision

In the peer evaluation of“AIAC”, the progress of Tsinghua's team in these years is well known. From struggling exploration at the beginning to adapting itself to the rules slowly, Tsinghua's team has integrated itself into the activity perfectly and played a significant role. Through the transition from a passive to an active role, this team is gradually forming its obvious academic advantages. While we as teachers feel proud of it, we also realize clearly that this is closely related to the prosperity of our nation and its influence abroad. In the early days,“AIAC”was one of the few windows through which Tsinghua's students could know the international architectural education. However, nowadays,“AIAC”has gradually become a stage of reflecting the elegant demeanor of Tsinghua's scholars along with the widened international view of students, the improving ability of language communication and the improved design concept creativity. Tsinghua's team has obtained good results in the appraisal for years consecutively, which has further enhanced our cultural confidence. We believe that, for each student participating in this activity, the enlightenment and achievements they have obtained from“AIAC”will benefit them for life.

Similarly, we continuously improve the postgraduate teaching system of architecture of Tsinghua University during the exchange with international peers. To a certain extent, our reforms in emphasizing the methodological training, conducting seminars and interdisciplinary cooperation, and deepening technical design also benefit from mutual learning via“AIAC”.

4. Achievements: Incentives and growth on the way

In fourteen years, it appears that we have always walked in the path of pursuing our architectural ideal. We have been to many beautiful cities, seen numerous fantastic sights, shocked by superlative craftsmanship of the nature and moved by wonderful workmanship of human beings. The beautiful memory is unforgettable and still visible: the tranquil red sandstone building ruins in Sicily and the poor boat dwellers in Johor, Malaysia; the harmony and elegancy of the Renaissance city and colorful“Burano Island”of Venice; morning bell and evening drum in Gyeongsangnam-do old temple and joyful“wedding ceremony”of Fujian Tulou; the most majestic Machu Picchu and the magnificent Napoleon barracks; campus life full of joy and laughter in University of the Andes, the sacred and solemn awarding ceremony in the UNESCO mansion... The achievements we've made through“AIAC”are pleasurable and valuable:

Firstly, as educators-we have made friends from all countries, learned fresh pedagogic ideas from them and enhanced our own via the platform of“AIAC”. In all our teaching practices, we have made much more efforts in this course. Each teaching process we design is also a learning process. We experience and share it together with our students. We were concerned about each student's confusion and we were inspired by the progress of each project. Our teaching concept has been enhanced in the subtle influence.

Secondly, as architects-we have widen our professional view, exchanged the cutting-edge theory and shared our creation in the activity of“AIAC”. The specialty education of architecture is a special undertaking. Each teacher is also an architect. On the way of personal development, design practices and theoretical teaching are indispensable of each other, as the saying goes that“teaching and learning benefit each other”. The enhancement in pedagogic concept is similarly reflected in the design creation of architects.

Thirdly, as members of Tsinghua- we cheer for and feel proud of the outstanding performance of our students. They have contributed beautiful creativity and ideas for humans' architectural undertaking through their intelligence and wisdom. Their diligence and endeavors have won the great international fame for Tsinghua.

At last, as witnesses- we have witnessed the growth history of“AIAC”from tough establishment to flourishing development. With the common professional pursuit, the peers from all over the world have continuously explored how to build a perfect educational exchange platform. During this unforgettable journey, we have encouraged each other and grow up.

5. Vision: To construct the“Silk Road”of architectural education

Time flies like an arrow. So far,“AIAC”has been held for 14 years. Fourteen years, for life, represents a considerably long experience. Similarly, for“AIAC”, it seems that a babbling infant is growing with lively spirits as the members have been increasing and exchange deepened. Looking back at this unforgettable process, we haveto acknowledge that we indeed felt bitter and astringent somewhat: Professor ZAMBELLI, one of the early founders, passed away, leaving us in deep yearnings; part of domestic and foreign teachers who hosted this activity have retired and left from classroom. However, in the meantime, we have seen that more and more architectural scholars are joining us, and they bring new thought and vigor. It is encouraging to know that students who once participated in this activity have been active on the architectural field in the world, and they are actively practicing and creating on their respective post. Even some of the students have returned to their homeland to serve as teachers and taken the heavy responsibility for promoting and inheriting“AIAC”. In 2015,“AIAC”is held in Hanoi, Vietnam for the first time, with the increase of participating countries and schools. With More than 200 students participating in the activity, its international influence has been more and more apparent.

The original intention of“AIAC”is to establish a bridge occidental and oriental cooperation in the architectural education and aim to develop the“Silk Road”for architectural education. We would like to appreciate it that peers of all countries have witnessed our common advancement. This is a group of people who have love for architecture deeply. With the borderless architectural ideal, we are making efforts to achieve joint development of human beings. We might say that, through this activity, we love this beautiful world more and more, and it is also the great cause we are striving for.

May our friendship last forever! And“AIAC”is sincerely wished to grow vigorously generation by generation!

Cheng Xiaoqing Zou Huan

Tsinghua University, July 2015