"Anyway, come here right now." Mr. Yamamoto called the office in Yokohama while he was still at a lecture in Beijing. To everybody's surprise, he mentioned the design contest held back in September 2000 when the initial design of Shinonome Apartments had just concluded.

"The project is called 'Beijing Jianwai SOHO', and it is to consist of a luxury apartment complex in the Central Business District of Beijing, an area which has come to command the highest land prices in the Chinese capital. The plan is for 2500 apartments covering 180,000 square meters, with a total construction area of 620,000 square meters. This was originally an international contest in which both Mr. Isozaki and Gary Chang from Hong Kong were also taking part. I went to Beijing full of anticipation. What I saw was a modern city, so different from my earlier impressions of Beijing as a city where 'all the streets are flooded with bicycles.' The Chinese economy has been maintaining 7 per cent annual growth rates. Maybe the cacophony of car horns is now a more appropriate symbol of the cities' boundless energy.

"The contest allowed for two months to produce a design, beginning with the gathering of information on the circumstances surrounding, regulations governing, and habits of Beijing's residents. Right up until the deadline, we kept improving our design based on the suggestions of the owners. A large amount of design materials were also constantly revised in step according to the feedback we received. Before we submitted our design, the whole office made a final sprint to the finish. On the day of evaluation, many TV reporters and journalists from newspapers and other media came to the site. Since China abolished the residential allocation system, buying a home has become more and more popular. As a result, the building of large-scale residential communities is an event of interest for many ordinary people.

"One hour after all the teams finished their presentations, we found ourselves cheering our own victory."

Overall plan and initial design
"The Chinese proprietors originally intended to submit the first--class plan as their overall plan for evaluation and approval. After all, speed is the most important thing in China these days. After submitting the overall plan, we were also required to 'complete the initial design (the equivalent of basic design in Japan) in three months. Construction would begin two months from now before the blueprint is completed.' At the time I thought they must be kidding, but they were serious. In Japan, similar projects usually require two years preparation before any construction actually begins. More incredible was that the showroom was to be open to the public within only four months.

"Even though we racked our brains and managed to find ways to finish on time, there were still problems with the approval of the overall plan. During the evaluation, the bureau of city planning changed some of the conditions for our design, which could not be handled by simply making minor revisions. The overall plan went through several overhauls before we finally won approval. Altogether we applied five times within the space of one year.

"During that period, the initial design was changed significantly. The original design had basically disappeared by our fifth draft. For the first and second phases of the project, which covered a construction area of only 120,000 square meters, we ended up doing over 500,000 square meters of initial design."

A view of China through the Redstone Company
"The proprietor is a private developer called Redstone. They developed another residential community called 'SOHO NewTown' before they got their hands on 'Jianwai SOHO.' The originality of their design, and the ingenuity of their publicity campaign earned them immediate attention. President Pan and Vice-President Zhang have spent six years developing Redstone into a company that now employs 220 people. Their dramatic experiences have been reported by the media as a realization of the 'Chinese dream.'

China is experiencing a major boom and young people are the primary driving force. The Cultural Revolution that lasted to 1976 caused China's levels of knowledge and expertise to fall ten years behind the rest of the world. Therefore, people under 45 years old have become the main force of China's development. Redstone's husband-and-wife presidents are around 35 years old and all the owners of private enterprises in China I have met are, by and large, around this age. What they have in common is full-fledged vigor. No matter what they do, you can sense their courage and perseverance. They are loud in speech and decisive in action. They also often use 'mei wenti' (no problem) to finish their sentences. They do not get discouraged when something goes wrong. Under their influence, even I sensed some sort of composure myself.

"While their pet phrase 'mei wenti' literally means 'no problem,' the actual meaning is slightly different. To me, it actually means 'there is no problem right now, so let us do it first and see what happens.' This is simply the spirit of optimism, which however good, sometimes does not work. Nevertheless, they still possess this 'go-getter' spirit. I think this has something to do with a lack of systematic organization in Chinese society. However, this situation works best for people with great skills of observation. It seems that brilliant private business owners take advantage of this less-than-perfect situation and build this 'no problem' spirit. In my opinion, compared with highly organized and stable societies, a chaotic situation is, in some cases, actually more likely to yield better results."

Architecture out of Nothing

"Even though we have developed some residential community projects in both Beijing and Shinonome, we feel that there have been too many revision requirements on 'safety' for the projects in Shinonome. We certainly cannot make simplistic comparisons between the two because the conditions in the two places are so different. However, it's easy to feel limited when working in those areas where we already have a lot of experience.

"The Chinese market economy is still a relatively new phenomenon. Therefore, in many ways, China is building its experiences using models taken from all over the world. China is adopting the latest technology and the most efficient approach to establish a new structure and society as fast as it can.

"In the field of architecture, construction materials (mostly for joint ventures) and architects are imported in large numbers. At present, Redstone has sixteen teams of architects involved in their various projects. Of the sixteen teams, fourteen are centered around foreign architects, mainly Asian. As a single country, Japan has the largest number of architects involved. They are presently in seven of the teams."

Beijing Now
"We have been stationed in Beijing since this January, when the shop drawing design began.

"Currently Beijing is developing quickly and vigorously. The Olympics Games, which will be held in Beijing in 2008, have further sped up the pace of the city's construction. Skyscrapers are mushrooming up everywhere. It feels like Japan's golden era of development and the bubble economy have now got a start in Beijing!

"In order to complete the project and start moving in by July 1 next year, the shop drawing design has gone into high-gear. We are spending every single exciting and intense day with energetic Chinese. We are one-hundred percent engaged in our work at any given construction site and we have 'no problem' either!"