Wang Shu Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Wang Shu (born 1963) is a Chinese architect and educator who, with his wife Lu Wenyu, founded Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou in 1997. Reusing salvaged tiles and bricks from demolished villages and drawing on traditional craft and landscape painting, his buildings, such as the Xiangshan campus of the China Academy of Art and the Ningbo Museum, offered an alternative to China’s rapid urbanisation. He became the first Chinese citizen to receive the Pritzker Prize, in 2012.

Urumqi, Nanjing and Hangzhou

Wang Shu was born in Urumqi, Xinjiang, in 1963. He studied architecture at the Nanjing Institute of Technology (now Southeast University) and later received a doctorate from Tongji University in Shanghai. In the early 1990s he spent years working alongside craftsmen on renovation projects before founding Amateur Architecture Studio with Lu Wenyu in 1997.

Wapan and the Xiangshan campus

At the Xiangshan campus of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou (2004-2007), he used more than two million salvaged tiles and bricks. The Ningbo Museum (2008) is clad in wapan, a traditional technique of walls built from mixed recycled tiles and bricks, and in concrete cast in bamboo formwork. The Tengtou Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010 developed the same ideas.

Teaching and recognition

Wang Shu has long led the School of Architecture at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. He received the Pritzker Prize in 2012; Lu Wenyu, his partner in the studio, was not included in the award, a decision that drew criticism.