Architecture Professor's project spotlighted in renowned publication

The work of UH Manoa School of Architecture Professor Pu Miao is featured in the September 2012 issue of Architectural Review.  Miao’s project, the Sichang Park Restaurant, is located in the city of Kunshan, China, and is noted for its mastery of southern Chinese landscape traditions and cultivating a highly social dining experience.

 

“For me, it is a great honor to be published by a world-renowned publication such as Architectural Review,” says Miao.

 

His approach to this particular project is a departure from current Chinese architectural trends toward uniformity. Miao takes advantage of the open park setting, incorporating green elements that flow seamlessly from the garden exterior to the dining interior, emphasizing the sharing of public and private spaces. “So you get to look at tomatoes while you’re eating tomatoes,” says Miao.

 

The building sits in a suburban park planned with vegetable strips, an experiment on urban agriculture. Miao's design continues these vegetable strips into the building, where they become linear green courts separating dining spaces. The juxtaposition of indoor and outdoor spaces is one of the main elements in traditional Chinese architecture. By recalling this feature, still loved by local people, Miao's design tries to place a modern building into its particular cultural context.

 

The Sichang Park Restaurant is part of Miao's academic research on modern architecture in non-Western cultures.  He teaches comprehensive studio, the last design studio in the DArch program, which encompasses the entire design process from schematic design to partial construction documents.

 

Many of his teaching projects are from the Asia Pacific region, embodying the unique vision of the School of Architecture.  A native of Shanghai, Miao received his BS degree from Tongji University, Shanghai, and a Master of Architecture and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.