We work for MAD：intern collection 9

MAD no doubt is one of the most recognized architectural practices in China and worldwide. Every year, MAD receives countless job and internship applications. To be able to work at MAD will definitely enrich your career as even though the people working here might have been lucky, but are undeniably outstanding. What could possibly be on the minds of the MAD interns?

MAD无疑是中国最受瞩目的建筑师事务所，同时在世界范围内也受到极高的关注。MAD每年都收到来自全世界不计其数的工作申请和实习申请。能够进入MAD学习和工作一段时间，职业生涯无疑会变得精彩丰富，在这里的人们，也许是幸运的，但肯定是优秀的。那些还没迈出学校门槛，在MAD工作的实习生们，他们脑子里天马星空的想法是什么样的 ？

Name: Dong Han Guang
Educational Institution: University of Waterloo School of Architecture
Year: 4B
Nationality: Chinese Canadian
Email: hdong88@gmail.com

Who is your favourite architect? Why?
I like Eisenman, more so as an academic than an architect. His lectures regurgitate decades of accumulated
architectural jargons into concepts and terms quite easily digested. He would also slip in a light hearted remark
here and there about watching baseball with his son on a sunday that tickles my North American
sentimentalities.

What is the major characteristic of your current school’s education?
Waterloo might be one of the few remaining architecture schools that still does the grand tour. Its cirriculum centers heavily on cultural history and historical paradigms and rhetorics. We were told to read Debord and Rossi when other kids were running around photocopying from YES IS MORE. Ironically, it seems that historicism can no longer congeal in anything meaningful these days outside the vintage wares of East London hipsters.

The school had never pushed for flashy, star-chitecture graphics, and for this reason it is rather hard for us to tap into mainstream markets outside Canada. Every year we spend more on iconography books than on model materials, and for a long time we thought this way other everyone else went about architecture as well. Only recently has this become a topic of discussion within the school. Students now want Rhino and Vray classes to be a part of the curriculum, and to have the oldser profs retired so they can spam some grasshopper and shoot for Evolo.

What have you gained during the MAD internship?
Many things. But the most important being the people I’ve met here and the perspectives they shared with me on matters big and small.

What are your thoughts and feelings upon Chinese Architecture and the environment?Any suggestion?
It seems that in recent years, the architecture of Chinese cities have come to a consensus in modernization. Despite giant red banners chanting constructive slogans flying over every demolition site, the city itself is still divided with those eager to adapt and those determined to remain stagnant. Apartment blocks have now spread to beyond the 6th ring road, while in the city center there are still those just learning escalators. The general living condition seems to have improved, but the gap between the rich and poor have also widened incomparably. You see this in the street, in the coexistence of BMV’s and the 50 cent breakfast place around the corner, and it surprises me more and more that people at either end of the spectrum are able to remain indifferent to such blatant polarities.

It had always bothered me that I knew very little about the ideas and forces that shaped those experiences of my childhood. Coming back after a decade overseas, I noticed that many things that I’ve held onto have long been jettisoned. Chinese cities are now full of with complexities and contradictions, opportunities and exploits, as much as I’d like to believe that it is rather our curiosities that draws us here. It’s nevertheless an amazing experience to be caught in the middle -and to witness first hand the clash of culture and architecture here, between east and west, old and new.

What is your dream?
Universal health care in China, standardized testing in Canada.

What would you do if you were not an architect?
I think a lot of us wouldn’t be here if we knew that answer.

What is your dream project?
Extension to the CCTV, in the shape of a shirt.

What is your favourite project in your portfolio? Why?
After four years I realized I have never done any architecture. Going through my portfolio, I see projects that either dances around obscure rhetorics or geeks out in parametrics; in both cases I feel likes I have overlooked the architecture. That is not to say I prefer an approach overburdened with building construction and craft, and even less one that encourages eccentricity and obsessions in the name of academia.  Is it better to be starving artist or the underpaid architect -this I have yet to figure out.

姓名:  董含光
学校: 滑铁卢大学建筑系
年级: 4年级
国籍: 中国/加拿大
电邮: hdong88@gmail.com

最喜欢的建筑师是谁？为什么？
我喜欢艾森曼，相较建筑师，他学术上更有贡献。他的言谈基于建筑行业几十年的积累，非常专业，值得人深味，同时又容易理解。他是一个好的建筑师，也是一个好的教育者。

你所在学校的教育特点？
我们学校比较保守。非常关注历史和文化。现在市场上到处都是《yes is more》这本书，这反映了一个时代。看起来我们学校这种教育模式在现在好像慢慢被淘汰了，似乎这种传统的教育方式让学生特别不好找工作。但是我喜欢我们学校这种教育方式。我对这种着眼于传统的教育方式有一些保留，我对参数化的观点是：参数化不是一种设计，他只是一种后期设计的工具。我们上4个月的学，接着再实习4个月，再上4个月的学，这样循环下去，直到毕业。这种学制安排是非常独特的。我们受非常传统的教育，但是我们有足够的时间和机会可以去全世界其它不同风格，比如先锋风格的地方进行实习。

在MAD实习最大的收获是什么？
学到了很多，我认识大家，并与大家不同程度的进行了交流。

对中国建筑有什么感触？你的建议是什么？
中国的两级分化比较严重。很多老的文化没有保护好。就拿北京来说，北京是一个超级大都市，容纳东西方文化，新与旧的文化，这是一个极其鲜明的特征。许多的钱都投在了建筑建设上，其实应该更多的投在软体上，比如人才和系统，这样才是一种长久而非短暂的投资。
我觉得中国的学生学习建筑，可以尝试接触更多的信息。学习过程中会学一些不太必要的东西，所以应该加一些新的东西去平衡。

你的梦想是什么？
中国有公费医疗，加拿大有统考。

你如果不当建筑师会选择什么职业？
如果有答案的话，那我就不在这里了。

你梦想中的项目是什么样的？
给CCTV这个大裤衩加一个大背心。

在自己的作品集中，你最喜欢的作品是什么？为什么？
没有最喜欢的。我觉得自己在这四年的学习生涯中做建筑都没有做到位，没有一个设计对建筑形成了整体的认识，很多设计都陷入到某个具体的东西中。这可能也和学校的课程时间只有4个月，设计时间不超过两个月有关。现在世界上的主流趋势是对建筑的形体（外形）非常重视，而更少的考虑文脉，我希望自己以后能够在这两者之间找到一种平衡。
（PS：中文基于口头采访速记，英文由董含光亲自撰写，引入详实和幽默的论述，更多请参见上方英文。）

WATERLOO PAVILION

design: Han Dong, Kelly Neil
construction: Dan Jessel, Heinz Koller,
budget: $4000 CDN

Chosen as the winning entry for the Waterloo Pavilion at Explore Design 2008, the project was realized within the span of 1 month with the help of Heinz Koller and Dan Jessel from the workshop. Explore Design is a University Fair tailored to young designers that showcases the varies design programs from post-secondary institutions across Canada. The competition called for the design of a new pavilion that would represent the Waterloo School of Architecture as the center piece of Explore Design 2008.Special thanks to and John Debrone, Vince Hui, and Gemma Selvenera.

2008年设计博览会获奖作品。耗时一个月，预算仅4千加元。要求设计一个新的展馆，并代表滑铁卢大学参加2008年设计展览会。

HEISENBERG CUBE

The uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot simultaneously be known to a certain precision. That is, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other. The Heisenberg Cube is an attempt to materialize and give form to the poetic notion of such duality.

The Cube consists of 8 identical pieces, each connected to its adjacent pieces through 3 joints to distribute lateral and axial forces. The simultaneous rotation of each piece is resolved using an system of internal hinges and springs. The exterior shell is assembled using a system of delauney panels and corresponding voronoi scaffold.

海森堡魔方
运用具体的道具从位置和动力上表达变化的原则，精度在同时不能保证。更多的注意单个物件的精确轨迹，而非其它。海森堡模魔方力求达到并展现出物件这种诗意的二元性。

PS1 REINTERPRETED
The unique geometry of the PS1 courtyard is seen as the result of the collision between twoneighbouring city grids. In this sense, the walls of the courtyards becomes a ideal site to investigatesuch observation. The proposed installation hopes to find means through which the idea of collisionand resolution could be demonstrated and made legible.

纽约P1广场再开发
城市的路网造成了P1广场的独特几何形。从这个意义上说，院墙反而是场地观察的理想的地点，在高处安置高的装置，希望强有力，明晰的引起思想碰撞和消解。

MUSEUM OF THE TIBER

collaboration with Leon LaiIn Rome, there exists a peculiar life cycle of inauguration, fossilization and excavation. The Tiber river, over the centuries, has experienced a transformation from an infrastructure to a mundane artifact. As its functional role is gradually erased by new technology and economy, the approach of architecture has also shifted from one of anticipation and adaptation to confrontation.

Rome today, has long withdrew its negotiation with the river, and has found a means to an end with its massive, overscaled embankments, striping the city and its architecture of its dialogue with the changing Tiber. The new imposed relationship of the city and the river is one of spectators and spectacle, in which the presence and transformation of the Tiber is experienced from 18 meters above.

The New Museum of the Tiber renounces the idea of exhibition and spectatorship, calling for a return to dialogue through excavation and an anticipatory architecture of the Tiber- to reconnect and perhaps one day reverse its present ongoing fossilization.

Rome is but an museum in itself -what is preserved is also reintegrated into the public realm, creating an collision of past and present that is the experience of the city. In the historical center, contemporary architecture must concerns the preservation of such identity. For this reason, the museum has adapted the language of excavation, as perhaps the most befitting translation in a dialogue with Rome.

台伯河博物馆位于罗马，临近一条河流，现场存在的基础设施被设计师用新技术改建利用，建筑尽可能适应场地。避开洪水，建筑与城市和自然进行对话，在两个现存基础设施之间，向下挖出空间，作为博物馆主要空间。罗马本身就是一个博物馆，是一个接纳度很高的公共领域，一个过去与现代在这里碰撞。在这样一个城市，现代建筑必须关注这种文脉。出于这个原因，用挖掘的空间处理博物馆空间，也许是与罗马产生对话的最好表达。

MORE:

Name: Dong Han Guang
Email: hdong88@gmail.com