Just a few kilometers from the city of Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province in southern China, the new urban center of Huaxi is being developed in an area of striking natural beauty. Yansong Ma, head of the Beijing-based studio MAD, invited ten architecture firms to design the buildings that will make up this urban core, based on a master plan developed by Tongji University in Shanghai. BIG and Julian de Smedt from Copenhagen, Emergent and Atelier Manferdini from Los Angeles, Serie from London/Bombay, Michel Rojkind from Mexico City, Hou Liang from Shanghai, Mass Studies from Seoul, Sou Fujimoto from Tokyo, and Diéguez Fridman from Buenos Aires were selected to design residential, office, and commercial buildings that will be developed either vertically or horizontally.

The residential building with hotel services is based on a study of the province’s topography and the rice terraces that stretch across the region. We were interested in the terraces for several reasons: geometrically, they are the formally complex result of an extremely simple rule—connecting all points at the same elevation. Conceptually, they contain natural elements, but are the result of a construction operation; they are simultaneously nature and artifact.El edificio de viviendas con servicios de hotel, parte del estudio de la topografía de la provincia y de las terrazas para cultivo de arroz que se extienden por toda la región. Las terrazas nos interesaron por varios motivos: geométricamente son el resultado formalmente complejo de una regla de extrema simplicidad: unir todos los puntos que estén a igual altura. Conceptualmente contienen elementos naturales, pero son producto de una operación de construcción, son simultáneamente naturaleza y artificio.