Building China’s future

A University of Hawaii architecture symposium will focus on designing in the Asia-Pacific region

Instead of holding its Symposium on Asia Pacific Architecture in Honolulu as usual, the University of Hawaii School of Architecture will be holding it in the vibrant city of Shanghai for the first time.

"Architecturally it's a very exciting city," said the school's dean, W.H. Raymond Yeh. It's also the first time the school is collaborating with another university -- the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai -- to put on the conference, scheduled for Thursday to Saturday.

The school's mission is to prepare students to meet the needs of Hawaii and the Asia-Pacific region. Its symposium draws participants from around the world, with the goal of creating a network to promote Asia-Pacific architecture as a regional architectural approach and making Hawaii the center of that dialogue.

So why Shanghai? It just so happens the theme of the sixth international Symposium on Asia Pacific Architecture is "Asian Mega-Projects," and Shanghai is where much of the action is taking place.

"It's been said that 75 percent of the building cranes in the world are in China and most of them are in Shanghai," said Yeh. "Even if you reduce that to 50 percent, that's quite a number of building cranes and activities centralized in China and in the Shanghai region."

Nearly 20 UH architecture students will get a chance to present their papers and projects in an international setting. Several faculty members are going, too. They'll hear firsthand from developers, international planners and architects currently involved with huge projects such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics and an even bigger project being planned in Shanghai: the 2010 World Expo. It's expected to transform Shanghai, as expos have done in the past in places such as Chicago, New York, Seattle and Vancouver.

UH-Manoa Chancellor Peter Englert will be speaking at the conference, and UH Interim President David McClain also will be on hand. Gov. Linda Lingle, who will lead a trade mission to China and Korea this week, also is scheduled to speak at the event. Hawaii architecture, planning and design companies will be there, too, showcasing their resort and tourism development talents.

Sustainability, environmental, transit and infrastructure concerns, communicating a local identity and historic preservation are some of topics that will be discussed.

Yeh anticipates a lively debate on the future of Asia-Pacific cities, especially since the building boom is happening so fast in China and there's so much money at stake.

"In the hurry to get these things built, there's very little concern about the historic and cultural aspect of the area and disruption," Yeh explained. In its push to modernize, China has been criticized for bulldozing many historic districts for new developments. These days, Yeh thinks China is trying to improve its approach to preservation. He also notes that the primary interest among many students who come from China to study at UH is preservation.

Meanwhile, the world's second-tallest building is already under construction in Shanghai. But why do cities need to build such tall buildings, especially in the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy?

Even Yeh admits that when the World Trade Center towers were felled by the terrorist attack in September 2001, many architects and planners thought that would be the end of tall buildings. Instead, the pace of building tall has reached unprecedented levels.

"Tall buildings are a symbol of progress. That's just human desire -- to show that we can build the tallest, biggest building," Yeh said. "A lot of national pride is riding on that. Politicians would love to say the biggest building ... was built under their watch."

Yeh doesn't object to putting up tall buildings as long as they're well planned and designed. He's more concerned about balancing building with consideration of human values and the social, economic and environmental effects.

"Ultimately, those buildings are for people," he said, "and it has to serve people well and over time, not just for immediate impact."

The symposium will focus on world problems that affect not only China, but also places like Waikiki. So in what way can Hawaii contribute its expertise to China? Yeh thinks Hawaii architects are more environmentally conscientious and could contribute cultural sensitivity in design and preserving the environment.

Ed Porter, UH-Manoa liaison for international affairs, said ever since Yeh took the helm in 1993, he's helped raise the school's international profile in the Asia-Pacific region and has gotten a lot of mileage out of creating a new doctoral program.

UH began handing out nonprofessional B.A. degrees in architecture (a four-year program) in the '60s, followed by professional Master of Architecture degrees in the early '70s. In 1980 the School of Architecture was established as a separate school and started offering a professional five-year Bachelor of Architecture degree. In 1999 the school launched its new doctoral program, the only accredited professional architecture doctoral degree program in the United States, which takes seven years to complete. Other doctoral programs focus on research rather than architectural practice.

Students at the school are required to live abroad for one academic year in a unique program called the Praticum Studio, in which they are mentored by the principals and CEOs of international firms to prepare for global leadership roles in the profession.

About 250 students are enrolled in the School of Architecture, which is known for its diversity. Fifteen percent of those students come from abroad. That's a much higher percentage of international students compared with the overall average of international students attending UH-Manoa, which is nearly 8 percent.

But since Sept. 11, 2001, the school and many other institutions nationwide have been affected by visa restrictions.

"People can't come here as easily anymore, so they choose to go to Canada, Australia and Europe," said Yeh, noting the number of students from Asian and especially Muslim countries has declined.

Some Muslim students might not go to the symposium in Shanghai because there's no guarantee they can get back into the United States.

In holding the symposium in Shanghai, Yeh will be returning to the city of his birth. Yeh was only 7 years old when he and his family left everything behind, escaping to Bangkok in 1949, just before the communist revolution.

Once China opened up, Yeh began visiting Shanghai in the '80s. "The country had not changed; it was isolated. Under Mao, up through the Cultural Revolution, it was against all Western values, frozen in time," recalled Yeh.

Originally a fishing village near the mouth of the Yangtze River, Shanghai grew into the most thriving city in China due to several factors: a foreign presence and its location on the coast of the East China Sea, with the rich hinterland of the Yangtze River Delta behind it.

In the early 1800s the British found opium was the only thing they could sell in China, and many Chinese became addicted. Following the Opium Wars, Shanghai became one of the original five treaty ports open to foreign jurisdiction and extraterritoriality. (Consuls of various countries could apply their own laws on foreign lands.)

The British, Americans, French, Germans, Italians and Japanese all maintained a colonial presence in Shanghai. In its heyday, in the 1920s and '30s, Shanghai was called the Paris of the East.

"That's where all the fashion and the newest things in the world happened," says Yeh.

More than 20 million people now live in Shanghai (according to China Daily, China's English-language newspaper), the biggest and most populated city in China. And, like New York, it's the country's financial and trade center. Economically, Shanghai is also the fastest-growing city in China.

Today, as its skyscrapers continue to reach toward the sky, "Shanghai is now trying to reclaim its role as a world city," said Yeh.

Next year, the School of Architecture plans to hold its symposium back in Hawaii. In the future, Yeh is considering holding the symposium during alternating years in other places, such as Seoul, Bangkok or Singapore.

‘Serendipitous encounter’ The symbol for the Sixth International Symposium on Asia Pacific Architecture is the Chinese character for the word "yuan," which, loosely translated, means "serendipitous encounter." Almost daily, people experience encounters of "chance" meetings which sometimes lead to fortuitous circumstances. To Western eyes, such encounters may appear to be totally unplanned or a matter of good luck. In the East, however, such occurrences might be regarded as destiny, or part of a larger, universal order that is beyond the understanding of most human beings. Organizers hope the symposium will be filled with numerous serendipitous encounters that will enhance understanding of the architecture and cultures of both the East and the West.

Englert stresses need for
early math, science studies

The UH chancellor is going to China
to talk about architecture

University of Hawaii-Manoa Chancellor Peter Englert is looking forward to going to Shanghai this week to speak at the Sixth International Symposium on Asia Pacific Architecture. By being there, he hopes to help make the program, developed by the UH School of Architecture, a success. He said he believes UH is playing a leading role by cosponsoring the event with a major school of architecture in Shanghai, China.

"I feel with the growing economic strength, the actual interesting things in architecture are going to happen in the Asia-Pacific environment. I'd like our students and students from other countries to be engaged in that development," said Englert.

Before coming to Hawaii, the research scientist was the pro vice chancellor and dean of science, architecture and design at Victoria University in New Zealand.

Englert said the symposium can help create stronger connections among all the schools that teach architecture in the Asia-Pacific region. He also will participate in events related to the governor's trade mission to China, happening at the same time.

Englert said UH already has a well-established reputation in the Asia-Pacific region, based on its strength in the sciences, as well as ethnic studies.

He strongly supports the controversial proposal by the U.S. Navy to establish a University Affiliated Research Center at UH. Besides bringing in additional funding, Englert says it will help keep UH on the cutting edge in areas it already excels in, such as astronomy and optics, earth and ocean sciences, marine sciences, information technology and engineering.

Born in Germany, Englert was trained as a nuclear chemist. He's been involved with Mars exploration missions for nearly 20 years. Most recently, he was a flight investigator for NASA's Mars Odyssey Mission. And his enthusiasm for scientific research is effusive.

"It's this excitement of discovery, the unknown, that I feel is one of my major drivers, to still being engaged in that type of research," he said.

But these days Englert's plate is pretty full as an administrator. One of his biggest concerns is that American universities are not educating enough students at the graduate level in science, technology, engineering and math. To him, it's become a national crisis. Englert also points out that students who would normally attend U.S. universities now have more options and are choosing schools in Europe and Asia, where the quality of education has improved. He said the United States needs to greatly improve its math and science education at the primary and secondary school levels.

Englert said improvements in those areas are critical to sustain our standard of living and position in the global economy.

"If you develop a workforce that's highly trained and technically competent, certain industries will migrate to that talent pool," Englert explained. "One of the best-known examples is the migration of software development from Silicon Valley to India."

During his China trip, Englert plans to visit Nanjing University for the second time, where he's a concurrent professor of chemistry. He'll also stop by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and visit with colleagues at the Institute for High Energy Physics, one of the premiere research institutions in China.

When asked about the implications of China sending its first astronaut into space in 2003, Englert called it "an enormous technological achievement." He added, "It gives us an understanding of how strong China's science and technology establishment, universities and research centers have become.

So what can Hawaii do to further develop its connections with China?

Englert responded by saying, "What we should be more intensely doing is to have our scientists and our students be able to move back and forth, to become partners in scientific and technological endeavors under the framework and auspices of internationalization and mutual understanding."