Time Out Heroes Beijing - Architects & Connoisseurs

To celebrate 40 years of Time Out worldwide, we invited 40 of our heroes to a party.We gave our architectural and connoisseur heroes champagne, told them to be themselves and sat back as they did their thing. This is what happened.

While foreign architects seem to have invaded Beijing (see Ole Scheeren, page right), Beijinger Ma Yansong is standing up for the Chinese side of things.

In 2004, the award-winning architect founded MAD, an ultra-progressive and decidedly cool design firm which has won a number of international contracts including the Absolute Tower in Mississauga, Canada, a tall spiraling building dubbed ‘Marilyn Monroe’ by locals; and THE WORLD, a hotel in Dubai which occupies its own island.

ICON magazine voted him one of the world’s 20 most influential young architects.

Ma’s hero: In Chinese, the word hero sounds tragic

Towering talent
Ole Scheeren

Designing the iconic CCTV Towers has helped turn Beijing-based architect Ole Scheeren into an international superstar with a film star girlfriend (Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung). But what makes the super cool 37-year-old one of our heroes is that he has done more than just about to put Beijing on the world architecture map.

While most international architects stay at home after their designs have been accepted (including the other foreign architects who designed Beijing’s new super-structures), German-born Scheeren moved to Beijing to oversee every aspect of the CCTV Towers’ development, and had it written into the contracts that the project would involve collaboration between Western and Chinese architects.

‘I wanted to be part of Beijing; to see how the city was changing and react to it,’ says Scheeren, a senior partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). ‘We wanted to make sure that this was a Beijing project, and that everything was conducive to local conditions and collaboration.’

Scheeren has subsequently made the city home, and OMA has become  one of the very few Beijing-based architects to take on projects abroad (Ma Yansong’s MAD is another, see page left), including two huge housing projects in Singapore as well as others in Thailand and beyond. ‘I wanted to declare Beijing as an inspirational base for architecture,’ he says.

Scheeren’s hero: I’ve never believed in heroes – I never had posters on my wall.

Hero/ Olympic Grinch
Ai Weiwei

At the moment it seems like Ai Weiwei’s reputation as a hugely influential artist, architect and commentator is being superseded by his reputation as the Beijing equivalent of the Grinch: a misery guts who sits in Caochangdi and complains about everything.

His latest and most high-profile targets have been the artists involved in the Olympics, especially artistic director Zhang Yimou.

‘People ask me, “Why are you such an asshole? Why are you always saying bad things about China?” But I’m just being honest. I complain because I think things can be better, and because I want ordinary people to be happier."

Angry or not, Ai is a hero of Chinese art. A founding member of the avant garde ‘Stars’ movement in 1978, he has been at the forefront of the scene for 30 years, including curating the legendary ‘Fuck Off’ exhibition in Shanghai in 2000. And although he loves his courtyard home in Caochangdi, his writing and public profile have been crucial in spreading the gospel of Chinese art internationally. 

Ai’s hero: ‘Anybody who is honest.’

Art revolutionary
Fan Dian 

Fan Dian has in many ways changed the way that China looks at art. After becoming director of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in December 2005, the museum has moved away from its strong focus on traditional art forms such as shan shui painting and displayed some of the city’s most exciting contemporary art.

That the government’s showpiece art museum is now prepared to take risks and show exciting new artists is largely down to
Fan’s vision, and can only mean good things forChinese art.

Fan’s hero: It changes all the time.    

Avant guardian
Jerome Sans
 
Jerome Sans is the man who has helped turn the non-profit Ullens Center for Contemporary Art into the most exciting art space in Beijing after becoming director of the centre in March. A famously outspoken and controversial author and critic, he co-founded and directed the hugely influential Palais de Tokyo in Paris. That a man of his calibre has come to Beijing at all speaks volumes about the Chinese art scene.

Sans’ hero: Everyone’s my hero. When I think of heroes, I think of the    David Bowie track: we can all be heroes, just for one day.

International man of history
HS Liu

As former chief photographer for the Associated Press and magazines such as Time, there is barely a president or country that Liu has not shot. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of the fall of the Soviet Union, but is equally well-known for his penetrating photographs of China, particularly in the 1980s. 

He recently edited Taschen’s China: Portraits of a Country, which covers almost 60 years of Chinese history through photography.

Liu’s hero: John Needham, a Cambridge science guru who came to China in the 1940s and wrote 24 volumes of Science and Civilization of China. He played a huge part in influencing how the West thought about China. He also claimed to have travelled 30,000 miles on foot across China (the Long March was 8,000 miles).

Accidental hero
Brian Wallis