Wang Shu, architect, Ningbo History Museum, 2003-2008, Ningbo, China (Photo credit: Zhu Chenzhou)

The 2012 Pritzker-Prize-winner Wang Shu will be the first architect featured in the “The Architect’s Studio” exhibition series at Denmark’s MoMA from 9 February to 30 April 2017.

Wang Shu

Wang Shu works with his wife Lu Wenyu at the Amateur Architecture Studio based in Hangzhou, China. He was the first Chinese citizen to receive the Pritzker Prize in 2012, commended for his “architecture that is timeless, deeply rooted in its context and yet universal.”

Shu is known notably for his work on the Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art and the Ningbo Historic Museum, which both make use of reused materials, showing Shu’s commitment to restoration, tradition and functionality in preference to the concrete urban sprawl that exists throughout China.

The Amateur Architecture Studio will collaborate with the museum on the creation of the exhibition, which will include the firm’s installation “At the Parallel Scene” from the 2016 Venice Biennale.

Wang Shu, Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, 2012 (Photo credit: Zhu Chenzhou)

“The Architect’s Studio”

The exhibitions in “The Architect’s Studio” follow on from a previous series that was held from 1998 through 2005 which looked at the contributions of so-called “starchitects” such as Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel.

The aim of the series is to provide a narrative of architecture over time, and how it responds to challenges and evolution, in particular with regards to sustainable and socially aware practices. After Wang Shu, the architects Alejandro Aravena from Chile (winner of the 2016 Pritzker Prize) and Tatiana Bilbao from Mexico will be featured at the exhibition.