In his two decades in China, architect Ben Wood has helped build over a dozen commercial projects that combine historic architectural styles with modern commerce—most famously in Shanghai's buzzy Xintiandi area, where you can find a Shake Shack or a Tiffany's housed in a 19th-century styled building.
Now Wood wants more of his fellow designers to ditch the glass and steel of modern buildings and embrace more traditional materials and designs. “Whether it’s natural stone, wood…what’s the most sustainable resource we have in this world right now?” Wood said last Thursday at Fortune China’s ESG Summit in Shanghai, China. These materials are “overlooked by the ‘50 Shades of Grey’ that high-rise architects are selling people in this room today."
