GAD Editorial · Published · · English study · Chinese summary · Study dated 2026-10-07
Amateur Architecture Studio was founded in Hangzhou in 1997 by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu. Its name points towards an architectural position rather than a lack of expertise: attention to everyday construction, craft knowledge and the possibilities of working with what is already available. The practice is especially significant where the reuse of materials becomes a way to organise a new building, instead of a decorative reference to a vanished past.
The Ningbo History Museum, completed in 2008, presents that question at a civic scale. Recovered bricks and roof tiles contribute to the varied surfaces of a large contemporary institution. The materials arrive with differences in colour, dimension and condition, so the wall cannot be understood simply as a uniform manufactured skin. Its character depends on how unlike pieces are brought together and on the knowledge needed to work with them.
This gives the museum two scales of reading. At a distance, the building has the presence of a substantial constructed landform. Up close, the wall breaks into individual fragments and patterns of assembly. The smaller pieces complicate the apparent unity of the large volume. Material history is encountered through the act of looking closely, as part of an architecture that also has to accommodate the contemporary work of a museum.
The Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou moves the same enquiry into a dispersed setting. Its first two phases were completed in 2004 and 2007. Rather than concentrating the programme in one object, the campus places a group of buildings in relation to the site's hill, water and vegetation. Recovered roof tiles participate in the construction, while changing building forms and the spaces between them give the campus a varied character.
The comparison reveals that reuse need not dictate one appearance. In Ningbo, it contributes to the reading of a concentrated mass. At Xiangshan, it helps establish relationships among separate buildings. The continuity lies in the process of selecting, assembling and giving new work to existing material. The resulting architecture can be large and unmistakably contemporary without treating every component as newly produced and interchangeable.
That position also connects practice and teaching. The China Academy of Art describes the architectural education developed by Wang and Lu as grounded in materials, manual work and the study of Chinese gardens. This makes construction knowledge part of architectural enquiry, not merely the means of executing a design decided elsewhere. The studio's projects suggest how such knowledge can influence the character of a wall, a roof or a sequence of outdoor spaces.
The work nevertheless deserves a precise reading. Salvaged material does not by itself establish the total environmental performance of a building, and reusing fragments is different from preserving the houses or communities from which they came. These distinctions sharpen the studio's contribution. Its buildings make the consequences of demolition materially visible while testing how inherited resources and skills can remain active in new construction. For designers, the challenge is to carry that care into sourcing, detailing and collaboration, rather than borrowing the appearance of an irregular wall.