Artificial boulders fill the studio of Vector architects in Beijing, like the result of a dramatic landslide, their craggy polystyrene surfaces rendered with chalky grey plaster. One rock has a striking house sprouting from its summit, a group of intersecting cubic volumes crowned with a curving barrel-vaulted roof. Another has a cluster of industrial looking buildings nestled at its base, connected by an intricate colonnade. A third features a series of momentous terraces and rectangular pits carved into a gulley, with the air of an ancient burial site.
These are the enigmatic visions of Dong Gong, an architect who has risen to prominence in China as a conjuror of mesmerising spaces, crafting libraries, schools and museums that feel grown out of, or hewn into, their sites, built with extraordinary attention to detail. His seashore library in Aranya feels like a miniature jewel-like version of Le Corbusier’s La Tourette monastery, marooned on the beach, where daylight pierces through angled shafts and plays across the sculpted concrete walls.
