line+NEWS

 

On 20 July, following the Cambridge session, Peidong Zhu, Co-Founder and Chief Architect of line+ studio, was invited to attend the UK–China Forum: Integrated Morphology of Future Cities – London, held at UCL, where he delivered a keynote lecture and participated in a panel discussion. The event was jointly organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the UCL Centre for Global Infrastructure Resilience.   

 

 

 

Continuing the RIBA UK–China Forum’s framework for cross-regional exchange, the London session introduced perspectives from urban research, infrastructure resilience, and mixed-use spatial practice. While the Cambridge session focused more closely on architectural practice, local contexts, and spatial relationships, the London discussion further explored the morphology of future cities and architecture’s capacity for long-term adaptation.

The forum was chaired by John Nahar, Regional Director for RIBA London. Dr Wei Shen, Associate Professor at UCL, and John Nahar delivered the opening remarks. UK participants represented architectural practices and academic institutions including RIBA, UCL, Foster + Partners, RSHP, Niall McLaughlin Architects, Space Syntax, Daniel Statham Studio, and Sybarite; Chinese participants represented line+, weico architects, and YANG & Associates Group.

△ John Nahar, Regional Director for RIBA London

   △ Dr Wei Shen, Associate Professor at UCL

In his lecture, Zhu developed two lines of practice—Poetic Continuity and Cyber-Technical Imagination—and extended the idea of a Handcrafted Habitat beyond the scale of an individual building towards that of urban systems. As cities grow denser, programmes become increasingly mixed, and ways of living continue to change, architecture must work in coordination with transport networks, public spaces, development mechanisms, and long-term operations, establishing enduring connections and adaptability across multiple urban relationships.

 

 

In the panel discussion that followed, Zhu was joined by Tim Stonor, Managing Director of Space Syntax, architect and urban planner; Daniel Statham, Founder of Daniel Statham Studio; Darren Snow, Associate Director at Sybarite; Professor Derek Clements-Croome, Professor Emeritus of Architectural Engineering at the University of Reading; and Professor Darren Woolf, Chair of the CIBSE Building Simulation Group.

Responding to the question of how flexibility can avoid becoming a technological display—and how hotels and residential projects can accommodate future changes in programme, users, and patterns of spatial use—Zhu drew on line+’s cross-scale and interdisciplinary experience.

Zhu noted that technology does not in itself constitute the purpose of design. It should be responsive rather than predetermined or imposed. Only when it genuinely serves clients, cities, residents, and users both inside and outside a building—and responds to the practical demands of commercial operation or everyday life—can it move beyond technological spectacle and become a means of improving life and spatial experience.

 

 △ Hangzhou LOFT49 Regeneration

For building types with relatively fixed programmes, such as hotels and residences, flexibility is more likely to emerge within their shared and public spaces. Communal facilities and neighbourhood spaces in residential developments, as well as public areas in hotels, can be transformed through spatial and technological interventions to accommodate different activities, atmospheres, climatic conditions, and times of day.

△ Wuhan Great Yangtze River

Adjustable façades or curtain-wall systems, for example, can open interior spaces towards nature, bringing in sunlight and the external environment. Spatial dimensions and plan configurations can also be adapted to suit different activities. Flexibility is therefore no longer expressed simply through visible formal movement, but through architecture’s continuing capacity to respond to changing scenarios of use.

From Cambridge to London, Zhu’s presentations moved across different building types, scales, and contexts, extending from poetic architectural expression to complex urban systems. For line+, placing architectural approaches developed through China’s urban and rural transformation within a global context is not simply about presenting reflections rooted in local practice during a period of restructuring and transition in the industry. More importantly, it enables methods to be compared across regions, common ground to be identified through difference, and the future relationship between architecture and the city to be explored continuously.