Focusing the Familiar：Yanfei Architects Selected Works 2012-2024

At the twilight of globalization, we unavoidably confront the anxieties that come with economic slowdown and potential decline. Over the past twelve years of practice, we have also observed a re-emergence of discussions within the architectural discipline, that prioritized economical issues.

In fact, Chinese architects have never escaped the orbit of economic necessity. It was marked by a sense of crisis—a fear of collapse—and a lasting trauma from the enduring impact of technology on China since modern times[1]. And the impact of this sense of crisis, profound as it has been, led us to embrace technology unconditionally today, especially in our great leap forward into the posthuman era. When we revisit the history of technology transfer in China under extreme conditions between 1950 and 1970, we see how modern building techniques were scaled up and adapted to the Chinese context, imbued with a unique perspective of economical efficacy. Ultimately, the traits from this technological transfer have seeped into the fabric of urban and rural China, shaping the super-banal landscape we witness today.

In this context, we require a new lens to examine the efficacy derived from economic challenges. Compared to the Western concept of “Amnistie pour l'existant (Amnesty for existing)”, advocated by Haus-Rucker[2], Roger T. Ames's interpretation of the Chinese classic, the Doctrine of the Mean, which is captured in the phrase “focusing the familiar affairs of the day”[3], offers a more vibrant alternative. It liberates itself from the burden of inscription, focusing instead on the immanence of transformations——paying attention to the present, deriving insights from generic situations, then leading to more dynamic and topological thinking and transforming the patterns of everyday living into practices.

This thinking about “focusing the familiar” informs the two polarities of our practices— embracing as much indeterminacy as possible while seeking an inner coherence. Sometimes, they also transform into each other, much like yin and yang, empty and full, motion and stillness. We may refer to them simply as embracing “contingency” and tending towards “consistency”.

On the one hand, the opportunities of informality (not to say the utter irregularity) of situations throw up a multitude of contingencies, dissolving the perception of China as a singular monopoly into a rich internal context. These contingencies have also catalyzed our patchwork of research and social snapshots, leading to a down-to-earth grasp of efficacy anchored in a low-tech, cost-effective, and make-do approaches. This economical approach is weak enough to yield to external contingencies, yet strong enough not to yield entirely all at once. On the other hand, the focus on economic efficacy within an established system of architectural production has been consistent, yet its trajectory has also undergone disjunctive leap-forward iterations. Within a relatively few decades, a variety of building standards emerged and created a layered and pluralistic situation. The framework is not a question of continuity of tradition but rather an issue of how economic efficiency can be recognized as a driver of projects. This yields a spectrum from the barest form to excess, and providing varying degrees of affordance to cope with the delayed specification of architectural program.

In the end, in terms of the 12 years of architectural practice that we review under the name of Yanfei Architects, economic efficacy may be the pivotal point that resists the crude portrayal of China as the other that marked the entry of contemporary Chinese architecture into international visibility. The resonance it triggers comes not only from the traumatic impacts of technological advancements but also from a new possibility for attuning the poetic to our quotidian life, thereby allowing Chinese architects and architects from elsewheres to be architectural contemporaries.

——SHUI Yanfei