If architectural firms can be aircraft carriers, then the American firm RTKL Architecture Design (hereinafter RTKL) certainly qualifies. Founded in 1946, RTKL has a 60-year history to date. Starting from a two-person practice, it now has more than 1,000 outstanding professional designers worldwide, and RTKL has become a leading architectural design firm globally. Wang Huaichang, RTKL's design director, is one of these more than 1,000 outstanding professional designers. Regarding cities and design, Wang Huaichang has his own ideas.
Q: What do you think are the key elements of creating an urban complex?
A: Actually, it is hard to find exactly the same kind of urban complex abroad as in China, because the birth and development of any building type follows the same requirements as a city's development. For example, Los Angeles in the U.S. is an automobile-dependent city, where the floor area ratio of individual plots is very low, and commercial projects often exist mainly along both sides of highways. Therefore, the main type of commercial project we do in the U.S. is suburban mixed-use commercial development. In addition, before entering China, several of our most successful commercial projects were in Japan, Indonesia, and Malaysia; in these markets, the complex type started earlier than in China. The first element of creating an urban complex in China is being able to provide the soil for a commercial complex to emerge and be born—for example, there must be transportation advantages such as subways, which are essential supporting elements a city must provide. The second is the city's consumption level.
Q: Currently, second- and third-tier cities in China are blindly building urban complexes. What requirements do you think must be met to build a commercial complex in such places?
A: Because China's economic development model is still policy-led, this is also our current development trend. Some developers have acquired so much land that they need to meet government requirements, but they lack the independent capacity to support the development of this commercial complex. When capital must be recovered quickly, the development cycle and phasing strategy become problems, and this affects the design of the entire urban complex, including the selection of commercial formats, office standards, and even whether to build a hotel. Therefore, the development of an urban complex must meet several conditions: first, the city's consumption level; second, the city's population must reach at least the million level; third, from the developer's perspective, there must be sufficient financial support. Often the developer's capital problem can be solved, but the talent problem is harder to solve. In addition, if a developer's main business is residential and then it takes on a commercial complex, there will be many problems. The greatest difficulty of a commercial complex is not how to build it or how much cost must be invested, but how to keep operating it—that is very difficult. To summarize the external factors of a commercial complex: first, under external conditions, the city's development level must keep up; second, government policies must provide corresponding guidance; third, the developer must have sufficient capital reserves and talent reserves; fourth, there must be support for the project management team's operational reserves.
Q: There is a relatively large gap in how respected designers are domestically versus abroad. How do you view this?
A: I think this may be somewhat one-sided. In fact, foreign designers have less freedom, especially in commercial real estate. Commercial real estate is a completely different type. Doing a museum or a cultural theater is a monumental building, and its historical timeliness is particularly strong. But for commercial real estate, commercial attributes are especially important; it must be a money-making organism, and one must have a sense of cost control and think about how to design within a limited budget. Here, if one believes the owner's restrictions are too many and affect the designer's performance, that certainly exists, but how can it be reasonably resolved? I think finding a correct way to resolve it is the real test for an architect.
Owners intervene a lot because of how much they value the project, since every commercial complex project involves a very large investment, and owners also want to participate with their own ideas. This requires good communication and exchange with the owner.
Q: How do you ensure that complexes in second- and third-tier cities integrate with local culture? What aspects need to be considered?
A: We have always said that an urban complex is a mixed-use development. Tibet is certainly not suitable for an urban complex, and neither is Lijiang. That is to say, first you must choose a city suitable for building an urban complex, one with the foundation. Second, there must be a profound cultural accumulation. Our company is also conducting research on future development trends in the commercial sector, and we are exploring the relationship between cities and complexes. An ancient capital like Xi'an has a very deep cultural foundation. For the development of a commercial complex, how to absorb some of the regional spirit into our development actually returns to the concept of a miniature city. The greatest charm of an urban complex is that once you walk inside, it can satisfy most of your needs—shopping, dining, entertainment, and so on. But because the current form of commercial development in China is mostly mixed-use, the cultural context of ancient capitals or Beijing's old hutongs is contrary to complex development. The contradiction is reflected in scale, lifestyle, and time lag. I think a smarter approach is to maintain respect for and distance from history and tradition. The large volume of a complex will destroy traditional cultural context. The meaning of a complex is to enhance the city's comprehensive service functions, and this meaning cannot be built on the destruction of memory.
Q: What is the future trend of commercial complexes?
A: What is the trend of commercial complexes? Developers of commercial real estate have more say. Based on cases and projects we have done, there should be the following trends.
First, the factor determining commercial development is changes in citizens' consumption habits, which adapt to the needs of productive forces. You can see that current commercial complexes have more and more entertainment facilities. Everyone says there are many online stores now, but urban complexes are still quite resilient. So one trend we mention is lifestyle-supporting services. To be a city's comprehensive supporting provider, we provide whatever is needed. In fact, complex culture is a supporting provider and supplier for citizens' lifestyle services. In the past, we said buying clothes and breakfast could be done along the street; now I can also shop, eat, and watch movies in a miniature city. It is clear that the trend toward lifestyle-supporting services is becoming more and more obvious.
Second, I think the trend toward communitization is becoming more and more obvious. In the future, there may be fewer and fewer true flagship-level complexes, and enough have already been built. But there will be more of what we call lightweight commercial types—by lightweight, I may mean community-level commerce. Because the government now encourages urbanization, this new type of community commerce will inevitably be a future trend.
Third is boutique commercial. This boutique means small and refined; the scale may not be particularly large, but the boutique trend is quite obvious. For example, brands can be segmented by commercial characteristics, and consumers can also be segmented. For the same complex, what we need to provide is boutique store service and customized space. Small does not mean small scale, but rather a segmented customer base—refined and precise. This trend may be more suitable for first-tier cities, while suburbs or second- and third-tier cities should be small but complete: appropriate scale but comprehensive, since the population they serve is fixed.