Stirring China – OK Do visited Shanghai-based KUU architects

While in China, we visited the homely Shanghai studio of Singaporean Kok-Meng Tan (b. 1964) and Japanese Satoko Saeki’s (b. 1973) architecture and design practice KUU. Known for their critical design thinking, KUU applies a direct and simple approach across their design and writing as well as their teaching at Shenzen University. We talked with Kok-Meng and Satoko about Shanghai, sharing and encouraging positive chaos.

Here and there – Satoko and Kok-Meng's office mixes inside and outside spaces.

Thanks for inviting us over! How did you end up in Shanghai?

Satoko Saeki: I first came to China in 2000 for an internship, as a result of studying architecture under the guidance of a Chinese professor in Pennsylvania. Having lived in Tokyo and New York, I immediately felt that China was different. I was not interested in its architectural scene but more the atmosphere. Instead of being established and “ready”, there was an air of dynamism and potential – something was about to happen.

Kok-Meng Tan: I came in the end of 2003 to work on a large conservation project in the former French Concession. Then I met Satoko in a café where we both used to hang out. She had started her own practice a little earlier and asked me to join her.

Which café was that?

SS: It was a small casual café called Le Petite, run by our Japanese friend Noriko. Since then, she has made the place more private and moved it to her home. She used to work as a designer for Muji and has lived in Shanghai for many years. I can call Noriko if you would like to visit her.

We would, thanks (see the interview with Noriko)! Could you tell us about your design approach?

KMT: We are not interested in the kind of design that is currently hyped all over. We rather believe in the genres of “under design” (design that falls below conventional contemporary design as deemed too simple or too banal) “super design” (design that exceeds the conventional because it may be too extreme, too personal or just useless) and “non-design” (functional and straightforward items and ideas that were developed before the advent of “design”).

SS: We are also interested in creating experiences and affecting behaviour in spaces instead of designing expressive buildings.

“We believe in the genres of under design, super design and non-design.”

What kinds of projects do you carry out?

SS: We mainly do interiors and small-scale architecture because, as foreigners, it’s difficult for us to get hold of bigger development projects.

KMT: Lately, we’ve been working on a small housing project for two families based on the ideas of sharing and interconnection.

SS: The project is called Minus K House. In Japan, homes are often described as 3LDK (3 x Living Dining Kitchen rooms) or 4LDK, etc. But for these two houses, the kitchen is shared, and therefore not fully a K. In practice, all the 19 rooms of 3 x 3 square metres also function as passages: to move around the building, you need to pass from one room to another, and there are many ways to experience the house. One of the families uses their part of the building as a weekend house and the other part is used as a regular home. The openness allows each family to be aware of the other.

KMT: In the Minus K House, we also wanted to mix inside and outside spaces – to make the whole concept of ‘inside and outside’ insignificant so that the relationships between this and that, and here and there would become more important. When this happens, the walls become less important, even unnoticed, emphasising a communality in the space.

KUU is working on interiors and small-scale architecture for sharing and interconnection.

We definitely feel that Chinese culture is more inclined to sharing than our own. Could you tell us more about your view on the concept of sharing in Chinese architecture?

SS: After the Communist Liberation in 1949, families typically had to share their bathrooms and kitchens with others. This was not very convenient but people got used to it. Nowadays, Chinese people are wealthier, but through urbanisation, like in most of the other big cities, people have to move to tower blocks which diminish communality. We wish to bring the concept of sharing back to Chinese architecture, but in a more comfortable way than before.

KMT: We think that sharing, or the presence and recognition of somebody else, makes people more in touch with reality. In our office, a partially roofless space built in the 1930s for residential use, we can smell the cooking of our neighbours, see their underwear drying, and hear them chatting. We really like the setting because it reminds us that we are working in a real context, mixing the inside and outside spaces together.

“We wish to bring the concept of sharing back to Chinese architecture, but in a more comfortable way than before.”

How do you find clients and collaborators?

KMT: In China, everything happens through the people you know. Satoko just visited a really nice indigo dyeing workshop outside Shanghai which we found through Noriko.

SS: It’s a workshop run by a 75-year-old couple who use natural indigo and cotton and dye everything by hand. In fact, China is a great place for a designer exactly because of this: the craftsmen and manufacturers are near and it’s possible to work with them closely.

KMT: Basically, you can just make a drawing and take it to the product-makers yourself. In Japan and Singapore, we usually use catalogues for picking up construction material for our projects while in China we can work in close collaboration with the makers themselves.

You’ve also taught at the Shenzhen University’s architecture department as guest studio masters.

KMT: Yes, last year, we carried out a design studio called Shenzhen Super Stir with our students who were encouraged to give modern architecture a proper stir through a series of exercises. We asked them to rethink the idea of “clarity” – a common architectural notion that has been inherited from the early European modernists. The idea was to ask if an estrangement from clarity or definition could inspire us to new thinking about privacy, communality and boundaries – and ultimately to new kind of architecture.

What did the students think about the stirring?

KMT: The students seemed resistant at first, they wanted to make new things. In China, traditionally, students are taught to create form – and if the project doesn’t involve creating new form then the results are not considered new. We wanted to make the students see the value in designing new experiences, too.

SS: We also wanted them to experiment how cities might become interesting and more functional through the “misuse” of space. In the end, the students came up with great ideas for an old industrial block where spaces with different functions, such as education or trade, overlapped encouraging sharing and interaction.

Like you’ve discussed in your writing, in the West, people are also obsessed with new forms.

KMT: Yes, according to François Jullien, a French Sinologist (The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting), this has to do with the foundations of Western, in other words Greek, thinking where something conceptual or abstract always has to be manifested as something else – a presence of “this” means the existence of “that”. In traditional non-Greek thinking, such as the Chinese, there is no obsession with presence. Whether something is present or not is never asked, because it’s not part of the question. Presence and non-presence, form and formlessness, good and bad, past and present, big and small, you and me, and here and there all exist in the same dynamic continuum. According to the non-Greek logic, we shouldn’t even ask questions about form or non-form – it’s not about one or the other but they come from the same pre-differentiated source.

“In traditional Chinese thinking, presence and non-presence, form and formlessness, good and bad, past and present, big and small, you and me, and here and there all exist in the same dynamic continuum.”

How do you see the current mindset of creative professionals in China?

KMT: When we first came to China, there was understandably no layers – no historical thinking or understanding behind architecture and design. The work and discussions were either stuck in Chinese traditions or random references picked from the Western world – and these ideas carried no meaning, they were not progressive. But then things started to change rapidly.

SS: In the last ten years, big money entered China and there was a lot of development, a lot of big projects. But at the same time, more subtle cultural things developed, too. Chinese people started opening cafés with unique local character. Before, people always referred to foreign examples, but the younger generation has gained confidence – they look at their own culture, society and roots and take ideas from them to the modern context.

KMT: I think that many Chinese creative people feel like they don’t need to live in the West anymore. They’re making meaningful things in their own context and recognising their own environment as authentic. This is great because, in the end, people want real things. The fact that people are starting to be their own selves in China is a good starting point for newness.

Kok-Meng and Satoko's office is a partially roofless space built in the 1930s for residential use.

We agree, and it is interesting to see how many contrasting ways of living and working seem to co-exist, for instance, in Shanghai. It’s not so settled yet.

SS: Yes, many people live in a modern way familiar from Western contexts while many neighbourhoods also hold on to the old spirit of sharing and porosity.

KMT: We’re attentive to the behaviour of people in Shanghai – how they behave in different environments, at different times and with different types of people. Things are in a fuzzy and seemingly contradictory state. For example, Shanghainese interact with their family, colleagues, and shopkeepers in a very natural way, but at the same time they formalise their homes into abstract symbols of social status and taste. Our young clients don’t cook, but they still want a designer kitchen. They will move out in three years time, yet they worry about radiation from the marble. We need to understand this phenomenon in order to work with it.

Could you name some other things that interest or inspire you about China at the moment?

SS: Well, we’re interested in traditional Chinese landscape painting: how the use of ink on paper, a single simple medium, can create a world of many things based on gradations of tonalities, densities, dryness and wetness, becoming present and fading away, hazy and distinct, here and there, this and that. In the paintings, we can sense an atmosphere of an all encompassing world before things became differentiated.