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It’s the newest dreamscape in a country clotted with them. When it opens in two years on Beijing’s east side, Chaoyang Park Plaza, a ring of glass towers molded like mountains in a classic Chinese landscape painting and designed by the renowned architect Ma Yansong, will feature apartments, offices and shops.

But in an unusual online ad campaign started in late October, the project’s developer is boasting that it “could be Beijing’s last abnormally shaped landmark building to enter the market in the coming 10 years.” At the site recently, a saleswoman eagerly warned that the government might not permit “this type of artsy shape” any longer.

While the warning might turn out to be just sales hype, it was also a clear attempt to capitalize on President Xi Jinping’s recent call for an end to “weird architecture.” Ever since he issued his admonishment at a high-profile symposium on the arts on Oct. 15, government officials, planners and builders across China have been scrambling to figure out what it means for them.



No official elaboration has emerged on what Mr. Xi might have meant by “weird.” But a report carried on a social media platform under People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, predicted that “in the future it is unlikely that Beijing will have other strangely shaped buildings like the ‘Giant Trousers’ ” — a colloquial reference to the China Central Television headquarters, a hulking, long-limbed edifice designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren.

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There are other examples. As Communist uniformity gave way to a tangle of political and market forces over the past three decades, avant-garde foreign and overseas-trained Chinese architects have burst on the scene, making booming Chinese megacities staging points, critics argue, for radical visions that would be unbuildable elsewhere. Scandals over cost, corruption and safety have hounded the construction of Beijing’s imposing new marvels, including the CCTV building, the National Center for the Performing Arts (also known as the Giant Egg) and the National Stadium built for the 2008 Olympics (the “Bird’s Nest”).

Mr. Xi’s rebuke has reverberated among China’s architects and planners. In interviews, central and local government planners said they have been asked by their superiors to apply stricter design guidelines on project approvals. Criteria in some local competitions for public commissions have been revised. Designers and developers said it has reignited debate over the financial and aesthetic excesses of urban design in China. Many wondered if it would dampen creativity more than it would curb freakish designs.

“General Secretary Xi’s speech is of great significance to our industry,” said Wang Kai, vice president of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design. Since Mr. Xi’s statement, Mr. Wang and other urban planners with state institutions, under the direction of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, have been exploring ways to translate his prescription into concrete measures.

“We’ve been in meetings practically every day,” Mr. Wang said.

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Official statements vary as to what form these new measures might take and when. But some suggest that the government will take overt steps to classify and preempt “weird” buildings.

In late November, the state-run Legal Daily quoted an official with the Housing Ministry as saying that it was establishing standards to identify “weird architecture” that should be rejected. Beijing Deputy Mayor Chen Gang said the city would apply more detailed urban planning requirements to prevent “weird architecture” and “implement necessary rules on the size, style, color, form, shape and materials of buildings,” newspapers reported.

Yang Shichao, deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Academy of Building Research, said the ministry is seeking to establish general standards. A building will not be deemed “weird,” Mr. Yang said, “if it does not consume excessive materials, if it suits the local climate, if it fits the local culture and if it provides the necessary functions.”

Mr. Wang said that, based on discussions he has attended, the ministry probably will not define weirdness based solely on a building’s shape, color or materials. Instead, planners are focused more on controlling costs and constructing “green and low-carbon” buildings. But local governments also will set broad style guidelines for architects and adopt stricter procedures for approving public projects, he added.

The Housing Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Many “shocking and weird buildings” around China have been the vanity projects of officials out to advance their own careers, with insufficient regard for the costs, Mr. Wang said.

“Why does everyone have objections to certain buildings in Beijing?” he asked. “Because it’s public funds, ordinary people’s money being spent.”

Since taking power, Mr. Xi has waged a far-reaching campaign against official corruption and extravagance, and targeting strange architecture appears in line with that. His appeal has won mixed reviews from architects and developers, however.

Wang Shu, the architect who in 2012 became the first Chinese to win the Pritzker Prize, said that Mr. Xi was addressing a real problem. “The greatest quantity of strange buildings in the world has converged on China,” he said.

But turning a leader’s remark into regulations could be equally problematic and not conducive to producing fine architecture, Mr. Wang added. “No more weird buildings doesn’t mean we should have dull buildings,” he said.

Unlike Chaoyang Park Plaza’s promoters, most developers have, understandably, tried to avoid the “weird” label.

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The chairman of SOHO China, Pan Shiyi, whose firm is nearly synonymous with eccentric designs, including two recent developments in Beijing by the Pritzker winner Zaha Hadid, declared that Mr. Xi was referring to “those ugly buildings” built by others, not his own, beautiful ones.

But others say Mr. Xi’s comment has already instilled a new conservatism among officials and competitors for commissions.

Gong Jianxin, director of the Kunshan Institute for Architecture and Color Studies in the eastern province of Jiangsu, said that while bidding recently on a project to build a trade center in Shenzhen, his team agreed that they should not pursue “peculiar-looking” designs.

As for Chaoyang Park Plaza, whose developers celebrated it as possibly the last stand of architectural weirdness in Beijing, it sold more than 1 billion renminbi (about $163 million) worth of space on a single day in November, a sales agent said. She said she could not measure how much the ad had helped.