Built Different

Fall 2025
By Andrew Bell

When Samantha Garza signed up for her graduate architecture studio this spring, she didn’t expect to find herself walking through a centuries-old village in Eastern China, watching locals dry vegetables in bamboo trays or wash clothes in the river. Nor did she anticipate a dramatic shift in her design philosophy.

“This experience was honestly life-altering,” says Garza, a second-year graduate student at the Rice School of Architecture. “It helped me see architecture more as an art form. It wasn’t just about building — it was about understanding people, culture and space.”

Last spring, Garza and a group of architecture students had the rare opportunity to work under the guidance of two of the most celebrated architects working today: Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, founders of the Hangzhou-based Amateur Architecture Studio. Shu, a 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, and Wenyu, his longtime collaborator, are known for their deeply contextual approach to architecture — a vision that has earned them global acclaim and a recent joint induction into the French Academy of Architecture. As visiting faculty at Rice, they led a semester-long design studio focused on the intersection of tradition and modernity in rural China, culminating in a 10-day immersive trip to Wencun, a historic village outside of Hangzhou.

“Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu’s work is deeply rooted in the material and cultural traditions of place, yet it speaks to global concerns — resilience, reuse and the ethics of construction,” says Igor Marjanović, the William Ward Watkin Dean of the Rice School of Architecture. “These are the same values we cultivate at Rice, where architecture is both a cultural act and a civic responsibility.”
 

Designing for Real People

The studio’s central project was to design a civic workshop space for Wencun, where Shu and Wenyu have spent more than a decade revitalizing aging homes and reimagining the possibilities of rural life. Their vision is one where urban and rural spaces can coexist through sensitive design that respects cultural identity while embracing modern needs.

“Usually, architectural education starts zoomed out — from research to site to building,” says Alex Piña, a second-year graduate student. “But in this studio, we started with materials and details. We chose timber or brick on Day 1. That grounded everything we did.” That inversion of the typical design process was intentional, Wenyu says.
 

It wasn’t just about building — it was about understanding people, culture and space.

“We want the students to know how to close the building — to understand how things are made,” she says. “Start with construction, and then design.” The students’ work was grounded not just in technical knowledge but in cultural exchange. As part of the course, Shu introduced the class to Chinese calligraphy, challenging students to select a character that embodied their design ethos. “It’s not just language — it’s structure, pattern, rhythm,” Shu explains. “The brush is elastic. It teaches a new way of feeling space.”

The students’ journey began in Shanghai before moving on to Hangzhou and finally Wencun. The contrast between sleek skyscrapers and hand-built stone homes was striking, Piña says.

“In the U.S., we often design at a larger scale,” Piña says. “But there, everything is minimized to what’s necessary. It’s about respect — for the land, the materials and the people.”

While touring the village, students saw firsthand the kind of architecture that can’t be understood through photos alone. They touched the local black limestone, wandered through bamboo groves and learned from villagers who build their own homes using salvaged materials.

“I had to relearn how to design,” says Paige Frost, a third-year student in the Master of Architecture program. “It wasn’t about imposing my ideas. It was about adapting. Understanding. Observing how people live.”
 

Respecting Culture Through Innovation

Shu and Wenyu’s model for rural revitalization is structured in three phases: propose a design, renovate, then pass off the plans to local villagers, who ultimately build the project themselves, often modifying it along the way.

“We don’t want everything controlled by us,” Shu says. “We provide the framework. Then they bring it to life.” That humility left a strong impression on the students, Garza says. “It made our designs more real, more grounded. And seeing how locals interacted with public spaces — that shaped everything I did.”

Shu and Wenyu’s pedagogy is rooted in craft — hand drawings, handmade models and deep respect for context. In their words, it’s about finding balance between nature and the artificial.

“They’re very direct in their feedback,” Frost says. “They’ll tell you what works and what doesn’t. But it’s always to push you further.”

The studio culminated in an exhibition of the students’ designs in Wencun, with the goal of inspiring the local community and sparking dialogue.

“We just wanted to let our students design something there,” Wenyu says. “Maybe the locals will take interest. Maybe something will happen.” The openness to possibility at Rice is what attracted Shu and Wenyu to want to work with its architecture students, Shu says. “We came to Rice because it’s one of the few good schools that truly teaches students how to do real architecture.”