Zhejiang University: ZJU’s UAD wins ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2022

Recently, the Awards Ceremony for the ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2022 was staged in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Building B1 of the Architectural Design & Research Institute of Zhejiang University (UAD) in ZITOWN, designed by the UAD, received a nomination award in the category of public facilities / commercial buildings.

The ARCASIA Awards for Architecture is the most prestigious award in the architecture community in the Asian region. It is parallel to the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Gold Nugget Awards, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the International Architecture Awards and the Open Architecture Prize.

It aims to unite on a democratic basis and to foster friendly, intellectual, artistic, educational and scientific ties, maintain professional contacts, mutual cooperation and assistance, and promote the development and education of architects to serve society.
Against the backdrop of building industrialization, rapid construction has increasingly become the mainstream in the market. This construction mode crosses conventional boundaries, but are industrialized architectures the equivalent of being “coarse” and “inferior”, and how can they speak of architectural poetry in their own terms?

Building B1 of the UAD is located in Zijin Mass Innovation Town (ZITOWN), which is jointly established by the People’s Government of the West Lake District and Zhejiang University. In this project, a harmonious balance among technology, art and nature is the key to design. Poetic architecture can be defined this way: Building design is no more exclusively rational thinking or sentimental output; rather it is based on rationality and sensibility. Instead of being constrained by technology, architecture should embody the sense that “industrialization is also poetic, thus breaking the stereotype of general fabricated buildings as rough, simple and cold.