Interview with Young Architects & Urban Designers Yuntian Shi, Yuan Xu, and Senmiao Guo

We are Yuntian, Yuan, and Senmiao. We studied architecture and urban design as undergraduates in China, and completed graduate studies at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Michigan respectively.

We initially became designers just out of interest in drawing and making physical models, but in the process of learning, we gained more satisfaction by creating people-centric spaces to meet the needs of users.

After graduating from school, we are now working in different design firms as architectural designers and urban designers.

For us, “Design” is a form that comes naturally from a deep exploration of user experience. We believe that the underlying logic of a good design is to solve the problems faced by users and improve the experience required by users.

Our favourite kind of design is projects related to Adaptive Reuse. Because in the current life cycle of buildings, the reuse of building materials has always been a neglected process, and the current common reuse strategy represents a waste of the potential value of building materials. So we are very interested in how to regard abandoned buildings as energy that has been consumed in the urban environment and directly utilise them.

I wanted to create a design that supports certain minority groups, specifically those facing skin concerns. My research revealed that for many individuals, these concerns are not just cosmetic issues; they can significantly impact their social and professional lives. This understanding inspired me to develop a solution that empowers individuals with skin conditions to express their natural beauty with confidence.

We believe that "focus on the user" is a necessary condition for a good design. The purpose of design cannot be limited to the designer's self-satisfaction, but should be to optimise the user experience to the greatest extent with limited resources.

Each of the projects in the competition had a unique core concept. In the ‘The Gravity - Winery’ project, the design concept focused on exploring the limits of Mass Timber as a design element. From the beginning, we considered how to use Mass Timber Trusses to create an efficient column-free interior space. Therefore, we studied how to use the minimum number of trusses to create a structure that can support five floors, and considered the process details of Mass Timber from manufacturing, transportation, to on-site assembly, and finally came up with a structural design of two sets of perpendicular trusses attached on the concrete cores.

In the ‘Shanghai Labor’s Museum’, we studied the history of Shanghai’s older generation of workers and divided the history into three stages based on the emotions of the workers: Misery, Achievement, and Absence. And these three emotions also became the logical source of the spatial sequence of this project. What we did next was not to directly present historical objects and stories as exhibits, but to create a space that evokes similar emotions of the workers through building materials, spatial scale, and natural light.

The project of ‘The Gravity - Winery’ is inspired by the wine production process. During the whole process, grapes undergo a series of transformations from solid to liquid under physical and chemical reactions. We hope to integrate the natural rolling of grapes and the natural flow of wine under the action of gravity into the production process and display process, so we decided to create a spiral production circulation from top to bottom.

The inspiration for “Shanghai Labor’s Museum” comes from a site survey, the site is located on Chifeng Road where Tongji University is located. We found that in the process of Shanghai’s transformation from industrial production to intellectual industry, the older generation of workers who once made outstanding contributions to Shanghai’s economy were gradually ignored with time. In a community dominated by the knowledge industry, they live like an invisible group. Therefore, through this museum project, we hope to provide the once-proud workers with a sense of belonging and the opportunity to reintegrate into the community.

Yes, our life experience in China has enabled us to better understand the groups that have made outstanding contributions to China’s rapid development in the past half century, as well as the difficulties these groups face in today’s society. It is this experience that enables us to best grasp the different emotions of the workers in different eras, and ultimately guides us to complete the design of the “Shanghai Labor’s Museum”.

We are honoured to win the London Design Awards. This award is a recognition of our design abilities and will also support our continued exploration of design in the future.

‘The Gravity - Winery’ is our favourite among the three projects. Customers enter the winery through the ground-floor retail area and take the guest elevator to the fifth floor, the main area to the market and performance space. From there, they walk down through the building, engaging with and participating in the wine production process on each floor, and eventually arriving at the barrel storage and tasting room in the basement.

To ensure unobstructed circulation for both customers and wine production , we designed a column-free interior space. The building’s primary load-bearing structure consists of three components: concrete cores, primary trusses attached to the cores, and the secondary trusses attached to the primary trusses on the facade. This structural strategy creates an atrium that allows natural sunlight into the interior and enables the display of barrels from the entire production process simultaneously.

Additionally, the column-free design allows the ground floor to serve as an outdoor space for entry, parking, and unloading, while the basement accommodates the barrel storage, which requires specific temperature control.

We chose this to enter this project because this project is our first material exploration of Mass Timber, and this material provides us with a new perspective of 'design from material detail'.

The main challenge we encountered in the design process was to find a balance between the conceptual effect and practicality of the building. For example, in the project ‘The Gravity - Winery’, we wanted to display the complete Mass Timber Truss on the second and fourth floors, but the presence of air ducts and fire sprinklers would squeeze the visual area of ​​the Truss.

In the end, we decided to use both raised floors and dropped ceilings on floors other than the second and fourth floors to accommodate air ducts and water pipes, so as to achieve the goal of fully displaying the mass timber trusses.

Winning this award has raised our confidence in our work and given us more passion to create our future work.

The drawing process, collaboration process with team members, and visiting the construction site to see the project being built.

We believe that the success of a design project comes from refining and strengthening a single design concept. For example, in the project ‘The Gravity - Winery’, the design concept is only focused on exploring the limits of Mass Timber as the main design element.

While infrastructure can meet most of the basic needs of the social operation, users have higher requirements for the aesthetics, comfort, accessibility, sustainability, etc. of the design itself. Therefore, we believe that in the next 5-10 years, the higher design requirements expected by clients will lead to the creation of better designs, which will have a positive impact on the design industry.

We believe that design concepts can be as concise as possible, and it is best if one design concept can summarise the entire project.

We recommend participating in as many competitions as possible. Practice is the most efficient way to improve skills. Only when skills are learned with a "practical" approach can they be effective and efficient.

In the physical model of ‘The Gravity - Winery’, we modeled it exactly as we envisioned how the building would be constructed: first completing the concrete core, then assembling the prefabricated mass timber trusses on the concrete core, and finally installing the facade modules, air ducts, fire sprinklers, and flooring.

A professor of the construction class in our graduate study inspired us. He is an experienced architect who taught us the application and construction of mass timber, which led to our strong interest in Mass Timber Architecture and the completion of ‘The Gravity - Winery’ project.

Completion is more important than perfection.