Duoxiang Studio, a comprehensive conceptually oriented design office founded by a group of architects, has long been a household name in Chinese design circles, particularly after their well-received work with the And Art Lab, a pioneering gallery space in Beijing’s 798 art district, and participation in the “Get it Louder” exhibition initiated by curator Ou Ning, then seen as an arbiter of forward-thinking local design. Within the last year, however, the visibility of Duoxiang has multiplied on the international stage, particularly after its principals have found opportunities to engage in their true speciality: architecture. During the Milan Design Week earlier this year, furniture designs by the studio were included in curator Beatrice Leanza’s exhibition “Supernatural! The Secret Life of Things in Chinese Art and Design.” Closer to home, Duoxiang also designed the corporate pavilion for Vanke at the Shanghai Expo, an important commission signalling a measure of success in a corporate field spanning China that places the studio on a level with architects like Steven Holl, who recently completed the Vanke headquarters complex in Shenzhen.

Robin Peckham: First, could you describe the special aspects of the composition of Duoxiang Studio? Do the four of you come from different backgrounds or take responsibility for different aspects of the studio?

Jia Lianna: Duoxiang Studio consists of four partners and four other employees. We are all architects, and all were formerly employed at Atelier Feichang Jianzhu; in addition, three of us were university classmates. Mutual identification with a shared system of values has allowed us to work together. All along our “master-style” education has caused us to habitually accept a certain point of view: that of the architect as “the one who knows” and is therefore elevated or elevating. We, on the other hand, are normal people without any sense of the elite, and enjoy a common style of life. If you consciously observe and contemplate throughout life, you will be forced to ask: Why is something the way it is? How should I attempt to understand it? Is it possible to make something for “us”? Daily life is the source of all of our design impulses.

Our work originates in collective wisdom. Everyone will engage in discussion at every important stage of a given project in order to determine the direction of the next step. Each of the four of us will separately take responsibility for different projects, but the establishment of this “person in charge” is primarily to guarantee the high quality realization of every project.

Could you describe the work you exhibited in Milan? It seems that the aesthetic logic of this chair continues what has become a trademark visual style of Duoxiang: that is to say, the repetition of straight vertical lines, also evident in “No Clip” in the “Get it Louder” exhibition, “Metamorphosis” for the Art Now Hotel Beijing, and “No Clip” again on Nanjing Road. When did you begin using this style, and how was it developed? Is there a particular theoretical origin to this porous architecture?

Your understanding comes from an analysis of the formal result, but we do not wish to establish a “trademark visual style,” as our working methods do not allow for presupposed formal results; we are more interested in excavating the productive mechanisms behind things themselves. The “No Clip” series actually interrogates the opposition of “the wall” and “the hole,” as well as that between “to pass through” and “to cut off.” The work for the “Fragment” exhibition at Chagang in Shanghai, on the other hand, and the later “Comb Furniture” are more microscopic investigations, something like the production of a new material. We began by attempting to make a solid piece of wood “loose” through a series of cuts, causing this originally rigid material to achieve flexibility, but of course this flexibility is not the same as that of other materials like sponge. At the beginning we intended to use this new material to create flooring because the motion walking would upset a portion of the sticks in a reaction of sorts to the pedestrian, and on returning to their original positions the sticks would produce a crisp noise upon impact. Also, different shoes, walking speeds, and postures would all deliver different reactions. Later, we started to use this same material to create furniture, seats, chairs, and sofas; different uses create different forms of flexibility. The piece exhibited in Milan is a sofa from this series.

Duoxiang only recently began to design complete buildings, including the Vanke Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo and the IVYKKI Factory. How do you see the transition from your previous exhibition design and retail interior design projects to this stage? How does your practice understand the idea of scale?

When the studio was first established there were very few clients asking for home designs, but there were opportunities for interior design and even graphic design. For example, our first project was the And Art Lab in 798, the scope of design of which included architectural renovation, interior deign, product design, graphic design, and exhibition design. Although we did not design any full buildings during that period we were still doing energetic and substantial work, so you could say that our experience of that period allowed us to see ourselves much more clearly. One of our desires ever since beginning was to “start from small things,” and the smallest thing we ever designed was a set of office products for And Art Lab later called “Pod.” That belongs to the category of graphic design, but we discovered our point of entry to that kind of project differed from that of the typical graphic designer. We never initially thought about whether anything was good looking or not, or whether it looked like “design.” Instead, we wanted to begin from observation of ordinary life and the production doubt towards the habitual use of things, making the final product an optimization of use habits. That practice caused us to more clearly realize the value of our own work outside of obsolete categorization in terms of an essential difference: a difference in styles of thinking rather than objects of production. We have defined Duoxiang as design by architects, emphasizing a process of “construction” after “interrogation,” but the object of this construction need not be solely architectural. From this perspective we might appear to be attending to our proper duties, but if we emphasize the aspect of “construction” itself we discover that production of “Pod” office supplies and the building of a house are actually quite similar.

After two years of operation, we have slowly accumulated a few opportunities for architectural design, of which the Vanke Pavilion was our first project to be realized. The difference between “small” and “large” may perhaps be this: if you build a building, more people will know about you, and this might bring more opportunities. We do not reject large projects, but “big” is not our ideal.

What kind of incomplete projects are you working on? What kind of projects do you hope to work on in the future?

We expect to complete two buildings this year, and hope for ever more interesting and challenging projects.