Connecting the thickness of a kind of time with the emotion of the past, the architectural space is not the filling of objects, nor a dull box, but the poetics of human consciousness and spirit, which shelters the daydream and guards the dreammaker, is a kind of secret realm of inward seeking, and the habitat of memory and soul. As we poetically construct architecture, architecture also constructs us spiritually.
Yinji: Young designers are bound to become the backbone of the future design force. How did you get the chance to start your design career? What do you want for your future?
Li Chao: For me, design is like an unconscious answer given by the self to the self. It is something imperceptible. This contingency keeps me from wanting to define the profession of designer. In the future, it is necessary to broaden the path of possibilities beyond design, which is the significance of our creation of east view and west view.
Chen Zhishu: I have always firmly believed that all the choices I have made so far are the marks of the repeated writing of childhood images on my body. Design gives me the opportunity to depict my hometown in my heart and actively pursue the original form of "home". The constant conflict between the future and the past pushes me to really think in the present. "Expectation" is something that is always changing, and I don't want to see it through.
Yinji: How did you meet? What kind of reason or initial intention do we have to establish the east and west together? What does this name mean to you?
We both work in Fuzhou, and a few years ago, we hit it off at first sight by chance. We were both people who didn't like to do it on purpose. Starting a company now feels more like hitting it off at the time. What we consider beautiful often stands in between." Between east "and" West ", between "outside" and "inside", between "being" and "nothing". So the name gives us a vision for the future of corporate design, reminding us to stand between things and constantly examine ourselves, both in design and thinking.
Yinji: I noticed that your works advocate wabi-sabi aesthetics. What qualities of wabi-sabi aesthetics attract you?
Chen Zhishu: I don't think it is a kind of promotion, although the outside world is always using form or style to define the space the most accurately, or the trend is always chasing a certain language or a certain style, but we would like to escape from such a boundary. Because it seemed to me like a crack for designing this job, "wabi-sabi aesthetics" just caught us at random during that time.
Li Chao: Both designers and artists are lucky. We can express our understanding of time and philosophy through techniques different from words. I think the aesthetics of wabi-sabi in design is an inevitable expression of the past Japanese philosophy. Defects, traces of time and empty space constantly give birth to the atmosphere of people's thinking, which makes me feel that my works cater to my thinking.
Yinji: Who are your favorite architects/designers? How has he influenced your design or career?
Chen Zhishu: Baragan and Yohji Yamamoto. The inner impact of Barragan's architecture is real to me, even if I resent being framed in contrasting ways of right and wrong and beautiful and ugly. His "autobiographical" architectural expression disintegrated some of my old ideas about design. The minimalist block structure building is bound to be arrogant, they choose to break away from nature, it must be like Baragan house, high summary of the formal beauty of nature. The idea of painting oneself in an abstract way, or imitating the playful artifice of nature, scares me. Yamamoto's influence on me is more of a kind of "self-interpretation" of identity. No one will deny that design is common, but you can hardly find inner self-resonance among design works.
Li Chao: Le Corbusier and Bossi Sugimoto. Corbusier makes me think that space and architecture are more serious. As an architecture of spiritual system, it must integrate the emotions of The Times. In contrast, Hiroshi Sugimoto blurs the boundary between art and space in his photographic works, which makes me feel that space is more like the product of individual emotions. Both had a profound impact on me at different stages. Doing design over the past few years has been more of an accumulation of experience for me. They are the "ice breakers" that I have been demanding and have refreshed my way of thinking about design.
Yinji: What kind of belief do you have in the path of individual or studio design?
Chen Zhishu: I hope that the studio will be brave enough to capture the "idealism" and "heroism" that are gradually dissipating. It is more important to make the works more thick and readable than to actively get lost in the material needs.
