Hide & Seek

Open Architecture’s perfectly considered projects either disappear into the landscape or become new landmarks

- By Yoko Choy. Photographs by Jin Jia Ji, Zaiye Studio, Wu Qingshan, Jonathan Leijonhufrvud and Zhu Runzi

Huang Wenjing and Li Hu came of age as architects in New York, after they graduated from Beijing’s Tsinghua University in the 1990s. It was there – while Li was at Steven Holl Architects and Huang at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners – that they had the idea of starting their own practice. Having gained more experience and a clearer understanding of architecture, the pair eventually opened their Beijing office in 2008, the year of the Beijing Summer Olympics, on one of the capital’s distinctive hutongs; their office is still there today.

The name Open Architecture was inspired by the type of open-source computer hardware or software that allows a simple, free and customizable interchange of components. One of the pair’s earlier projects, Beehive Dorm, a 2009 modular building system made from prefabricated steel-framed hexagonal cells, could be seen as a direct architectural realization of this principle.

The practice’s breakthrough project was the Beijing No.4 High School Fangshan Campus (widely known as the ‘Garden School’) in 2014. At the time, local authorities were aiming to move away from standard inner-city schools – a big block adjacent to a vast, usually empty field – and build schools with more natural outdoor environments. ‘There is a huge demand for better education as the population is getting more affluent, and we wanted to create a new typology for schools,’ says Li. Open’s design placed communal facilities, such as the canteen, auditorium and gymnasium, underground, while covering the site with gardens that reached over the rooftops, giving a view of nature to the students and staff in the classrooms, laboratories and offices.