Europe 40 Under 40 Awards Tell a friend

Suzhou, Shanghai, China

Coming from France, qualified as architects at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, then established in Shanghai for five years. We search for a keen understanding of the contemporary plurality with a perspective enriched from this international path. That is the reason why the memory of a place is always the foundation of all our concepts.

Tianzhushan Refuge is located in a sacred Taoist mountain in China. In the Taoist iconography, architecture is one of the elements of a complex composition and testifies to the human presence in an ideal context, where the natural and the artificial are united in harmony and coherence. The project aims to this philosophy of self-effacement. So, the building is considered as the extension of the existing topography. The principal stakes of the project were the difficulties related to the collection of the materials on the site, because without an access suitable for motor vehicles, the materials had to be carried on the back of men through the mountain.