Interview with Ziyu Zhuang

Ziyu Zhuang ("ZZ") interviewed on Friday, 4 May.

How do you keep up with latest design trends? To what extent do design trends matter?

ZZ : We don't think there is such a design trend or matter. You know, it’s about the society, it’s about how you look at the current society or day to day life. Uh, design is a mirror as a reflection of yourself and the whole society. So the trend is always coming from your inner heart. Especially you know, architecture design is dealing with a series of questions of contradictions of the daily life, individuals or the bigger public. So of course, you know, the world is changing and the attitude of the people is changing. So this is called trend. The trend is not a symbolic thing, is not a kind of form, whatever color or whatever material. It’s about day to day thinking, a way of everyone's life. Uh, so we designed for people and we designed for the site. So we don't follow such a trend, we only follow what's going on here.

Would you tell us a bit about your lifestyle and culture?

ZZ : I think as an architect you playing different types of roles. We're basically a carrier, basically a watcher, observer, because what the production itself is fun. Not making up for yourself. Someone making up foruh, you made the project for your client and society. So basically, observing what's going on around is one of my most important task. And think about how this could be physically be located into your project. It's really hard to call it’s a ¬kind of lifestyle, people always talk about what kind of cloth your dress, which kind of words you're talking about. But for me, it's more casual way of dealing with your life and your work and your production is one package for us. Work culture is the same thing. We live in beijing so that you know the culture itself influence us. But culture is not the so called symbolic culture as whatever these key words kind of type culture chinese or Beijing. You know, forbidden city you where Hutong, is not those symbolic thing. It’s the daily life of reality. What we experience here and that became part of our design scope and that became colorful lifestyle that changed the people's ideas to make new production together with the really fast growing, moving forward society.

Would you tell us more about your work culture and business philosophy?

ZZ : That's a really good question. I think quite any kind of designing culture. We can't stand out without talking about your business model. To create a good lifestyle for the team and yourself. It's very important because the design coming from your daily experience as what I said. So creating a nice atmosphere for the staff and yourself is very important to create a nice circulation of making good design.