West-Line Studio is based in Guizhou Province and exclusively works in South-West China, where most of the country ethnic minorities live, and has always been researching and working on local vernacular architecture and subcultures’ diversity. The practice, founded more than 15 years ago by Haobo Wei and Jingsong Xie, focuses on the study of traditional construction techniques and materials, in order to preserve and translate them in our works.
Our working method is strongly affected by local geopolitical order, social sub-cultural structure and public life organization, by the memory of the past, the relationship with nature, traditional construction technologies, together with rituals and cultural insights. With our theory and practice we aim to explore the relationship between architecture and human, architecture and contemporary society, architecture and nature.
2018 has been very exciting for us, we participated in many awards and we had the honour to be published by worldwide architectural media. It has also been a very busy period, where we have completed several major projects: a 935 sqm visitor and exhibition center in the rural Chetian Village and some projects in the Unesco World Heritage Chishui area, in northern Guizhou: a gateway to the Danxia World Heritage Site and a bigger complex of almost 138,000sqm which includes a tourist and an exhibition center. These three projects, very different in their scales, well show West-line Studio’s design approach in creating a strong and iconic relationship with the surroundings, through a deep understanding and innovative application of local materials.
To see more amazing entries from this year’s WAN Awards please click here.