Ren; The People’s Building

plot-peoples-building.jpg
To start off, all of you architects / know-it-alls [same thing, I know] out there need to suspend your criticism briefly to enjoy this project. Yes, it would be [somewhat] structurally complicated, and no, nobody seems to know how elevators and all that junk would work. But who cares? Point is, Ren, designed by the Danish firm PLOT [now split into BIG and JDS] is pretty sick looking.

The project is in the good ol’ People’s Republic of China, intended for the World Expo of 2010, which is set to take place in Shanghai. Here’s a description of the building from Eikongraphia, which I decided I wouldn’t bother rephrasing, since they were quoting it anyway:

‘The REN Building is a proposal for a hotel, sports and conference center for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The building is conceived as two buildings merging into one. The first building, emerging from the water, is devoted to the activities of the body, and houses the sports and water culture center. The second building emerging from land, is devoted to the spirit and enlightment, and houses the conference center and meeting facilities. The two buildings meet in a 1000 room hotel, a building for living. The building becomes the Chinese sign for ‘The People’, and a recognizable landmark for the World Expo in China.’

plot-peoples-building-2.jpg

plot-peoples-building-4.jpg
The most interesting aspect of this project [outside of the obvious interest in its form] is what it and the growing number of new projects in China suggest about communism and architecture. Discussions of form and all that aside, does communism promote ‘better’ architecture than capitalism? I mean, they’re not necessarily designing everything to be the cheapest project possible all the time [as the recent work there shows].

I’d suggest peeping the entire article here, at Eikongraphia, as its [pretty] interesting.
More on this project [and a bunch of others] at BIG and JDS [interesting side-note: they both worked for OMA, which MNP will look into some other time, before starting off on their own]

email

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook

Posted: November 15th, 2006
at 11:20am by orangemenace


Categories: architecture,design

Comments: 14 comments



 

14 Responses to 'Ren; The People’s Building'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Ren; The People’s Building'.

  1. two thoughts. one. i am clearly not as talented a designer as i might have once believed. two. i have to get myself in a position to be able to create designs like this – FOR REAL – christ, that is excellent.

    okay, three thoughts. there is a strong communication of communism in this design, and others in china as was pointed out. never thought about the koolhaas project in that aspect before (as you know, from Mete’s class). a very interesting design indeed.

    dubs

    15 Nov 06 at 2:30 pm

     

  2. i want to live/work in that building. it’s off the chains

    black octagons

    15 Nov 06 at 3:33 pm

     

  3. I love the lines, the organic tones and of course the overlaid scale that creates the illusion of depth. First off, structurally it shouldn’t be that difficult to use the skin of the building as the main support, it appears that simple compressive rings within a segmented rigid frame are all the skin is (luckily it rests upon a mirror of itself too). Secondly conveyance shouldn’t be too difficult either. There is an elevator/lift in the St. Louis arch that has to contend with the fact that it is, well, in an arch. A top suspension system that allows the cab to rotate should do the trick nicely.

    I just had to respond if only to point out that if the human mind can dream it, we can eventually build it (having an ulimited budget no doubt helps too).

    Dru McKeown

    19 Nov 06 at 12:19 pm

     

  4. i wanna drop in off the top like a monster halfpipe of death… except i would live and it would be the most illest intense shit ever done by anyone ever, except for that time i boogie-boarded frank lloyd wrights falling water, definately harder than it sounds.

    Jaromir Jagrmeister

    20 Nov 06 at 6:35 am

     

  5. what a building. It looks so plant friendly. so this is what the futhur looks like

    sara ogun

    21 Aug 07 at 10:01 am

     

  6. Koookiecrumbles

    24 Sep 07 at 12:27 am

     

  7. [...] Ren at mnp [...]

     

  8. I haven’t seen you in a while there cheezy! how goes it?

    gonzobeans

    15 Oct 07 at 6:45 pm

     

  9. that is so cool!

    jesus

    15 Oct 07 at 6:30 pm

     

  10. the form is quite interesting , the location near the water is quite awsome ..nd well cool organic form also…………afr above that is unifies at the top but the fact i believe is that this is a very old concept of joining two parts 2 gether in architecture………do something that wud u know be like wow man thats impossible here general ppl hav a lot of options nd answers 4 u ppl. do something like that wud be ……..man what the hell is this.how will they build it nd u do that ill definately give u an standing owation 4 that…….. be different in that sense……………not every thing in life settles at the end something hav 2 distribute………..

    NEERAJ BAJAJ

    18 Feb 09 at 9:30 am

     

  11. wow!!!!!!!!!!!!! it’s really awesome………and no more words in dictionary to praise it of…. i

    indumathi

    29 Jul 10 at 12:09 pm

     

  12. its totally cool dude……!

    swati

    21 Sep 10 at 9:45 am

     

  13. wow it so niceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

    eskedar

    10 Mar 12 at 7:41 am

     

  14. how is it form.who was the inventor of this building coz it’s very nice and wonderful

    danica

    2 Jul 12 at 2:02 am

     


 

Leave a Reply