The work of Vector Architects demonstrates how vast and heterogeneous the architectural landscape is in China, a country that has undergone extensive economic, social and environmental changes in the past 30 years.

The Beijing-based architect Gong Dong, who founded Vector in 2008, has developed a personal approach that absorbs and combines different cultures, respecting the country’s millenary tradition without making it a doctrine.

Born in Beijing in 1972, Gong Dong graduated from Tsinghua University. He then studied in Germany and the United States, where he worked with two great masters, Richard Meier and Steven Holl.

Vector Architects materialises in architectural experiences the different issues encountered in a given urban context: the programme, the morphology of the site and its essence. Its projects are often located in unique urban and natural landscapes, places that the Chinese architect observes, discovers and tries to capture in their spirit.

In different contexts and ways, this can be seen in four of his most representative projects.

A community centre (2015) in Chongqing merges with the hilly site, fluidly combining interiors and open space both natural and artificial; a library (2015) on a solitary beach in Nandaihe offers shelter from the chaos of the metropolis and interacts with the ocean thanks to a facade that changes according to weather conditions; and a house in Beijiao, renovated in 2017, connects two sea views with different characters in one environment; the Alila Yangshuo resort (2017), a disused sugar mill in China’s mountainous Yangshuo county transformed into a resort hotel featuring a group of gabled masonry structures designed to complement the existing industrial architecture. The element these projects have in common is concrete.