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Charles Phu

Taiwanese Architect Designs Europe's Highest Building

Taiwanese Architect Designs Europe's Highest Building

Source:CW

Taiwan-born architect Charles Phu has masterminded the stunning design of the controversial Okhta Center in historic St. Petersburg. He applies his creative genius to not just architecture, but also set designs for operas and ballets.

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Taiwanese Architect Designs Europe's Highest Building

By Yueh-lin Ma
From CommonWealth Magazine (vol. 490 )

When Phu was put in charge of the design of Okhta Center, he did not expect the project to become so controversial.

In September 2009 the weather was wet and cold as usual at this time of the year in St. Petersburg, the former Russian Empire's longtime capital. But then a piece of news exploded like a guided missile, heating up the atmosphere among cultural heritage and architectural experts around the globe.

The Russian government had just approved the construction of the 403-meter-high Okhta Center, the highest skyscraper in Europe, which is to house the new headquarters for the state-controlled gas giant Gazprom and a business center. First place in the international competition went to the London office of international architecture firm RMJM, where Phu worked as chief architectural designer at the time.

The design centers on a pentagonal glass-and-steel skyscraper with a corkscrewing profile that tapers to a point. Not only does the twisting glass structure echo the spires of the historic city's Russian orthodox churches, but its double-layered skin also features innovative energy-saving technology. The new landmark will change color in the course of the day as the sunlight hits the coiling glass facade at different angles.

But the Okhta Center would be almost three times higher than Peter and Paul Cathedral with its 122-meter-high bell tower and spire – one of the most well-known symbols of the city's baroque center. Critics argue that modern skyscrapers would severely spoil the city's low skyline and historic character. UNESCO, which has designated the city's historic center and nearby monuments as World Heritage sites, has warned the skyscraper could endanger the city's status on the World Heritage list.

The controversy over the Okhta Center has been widely reported in the international media, including the New York Times and The Times of London. Even Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin jumped into the fray to explain the government's stance on the hotly debated issue.

In October 2010, Britain's Prince Charles, known for his ardent efforts to protect historical sites, personally wrote several letters to Phu to express his concern over the planned project.

"We have already completed the detailed design of the project. If it is built in the future, it will be the world's greenest highrise building," Phu enthused during an interview at the Eslite flagship store in Taipei's Xinyi District. The bookstore's 6th- floor coffeeshop looks out toward the cloud-shrouded skyscraper Taipei 101.

The next day Phu was scheduled to fly to Xi'an to visit Famen Temple, which according to legend is the only place to house a bone relic of Sakyamuni Buddha. There, his task is to plan a cultural tourism zone.

Russian Touch behind Competition Win

The 41-year-old Phu graduated from the civil engineering department at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan. Then he went to the United States for graduate studies, earning a master's degree in architecture from the University of Texas at Austin and pursuing further study at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. For the following dozen years, Phu worked as an architectural designer in various well-known architecture firms in the United States and Britain.

In Taiwan, Charles Phu is hardly a household name. But in the global architecture scene, he has shot to fame, due to the controversy over the Okhta Center.

"I still remember how I listened to English-language short wave broadcasts from the Soviet Union as a junior and senior highschool student. Back then I heard about the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl from these broadcasts within half an hour after the disaster happened," Phu recalls. His curiosity about Russia was probably inspired by his mother, who loved to dance Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky's famous ballet Swan Lake. As a teenager he would not have dreamed that one day he would get an opportunity to design what is currently Russia's most important architecture project.

"Probably it's because our design includes more elements of Russian history and culture," muses Phu in regard to why RMJM won the design competition. Phu's eyes shine brightly as he talks in an unhurried manner about Russian history, how Peter the Great, the founder of St. Petersburg, ended Swedish supremacy in the Baltic region and turned Russia into a modern state.

The tower's design was inspired by the Nyenschantz, a Swedish fortress in the shape of a five-pointed star that once stood on the site of St. Petersburg. While the design has its roots in military history, "the interplay of offense and defense serves as a symbol for exchange," Phu asserts.

"With this as my inspiration, I designed a transparent building composed of five squares, which rotate and twist as they ascend, gradually tapering at the top. The public space is at the center. Visually and mentally, everything has a transparent, interchanging effect," he explains.

So it should not come as a surprise that the RMJM team headed by Phu outdid high-caliber rivals such as Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the creators of the "Bird's Nest" Beijing National Stadium, and Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who designed the "twisted donut" Chinese Central Television Building in Beijing.

In October 2010 Phu left RMJM to found his own business, Office for Architectural Culture (OAC), in London. Phu, who serves as OAC's design director, has since been joined by several big figures in the industry including Roger Whiteman, formerly director of RMJM London, and Oliver Hempel, the former right-hand man of Italian star architect Renzo Piano. The company currently has about a dozen employees and is steadily growing.

Before joining RMJM, Phu worked as senior architectural designer at Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merril LLP (SOM), which built the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the tallest building in the world. Architectural design projects headed by Phu include the China World Trade Center (CWTC) III, the CWTC Auditorium/Conference Center, and the Shangri-La Summit Wing Hotel in Beijing. He also led the design projects for phase two of Kolkata International Airport in India and the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Beijing, and helped draw up the master plan for Beijing Financial Street.

Setting the Stage for Mozart

Aside from these high-profile commercial design projects, Phu devotes much of his time to designing opera and ballet sets. He has worked at some of Europe's premier opera houses, including the English National Opera, the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, and the Paris Opera, designing sets, lighting and costumes and realizing creative concepts.

He cooperated with the English National Opera for a new production of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. "Don Giovanni has the deepest artistic conception of all operas. Although it is a comedy, it's filled with social class interaction and conflict," Phu points out.  For Phu, involvement in the two worlds of business and the performing arts is very important to finding balance in life.

His love for the arts comes from his family background. Neither of Phu's parents were professional artists, but his mother was a ballet dancer in her youth and his father sang the baritone part in a choir. Phu loved to draw since childhood. While his three sisters all studied musical instruments, Phu quit studying the piano after a few lessons. But he is, nonetheless, a big fan of classical music, and opera in particular.

This is the reason he has led a number of design projects at performing arts venues in such wide-ranging locales as Russia, Switzerland, China and Lebanon.

Towering skyscrapers have a direct, macro effect on the observer. Such structures can change a city and an era. For their part, opera houses and the performances taking place inside them can stir the human heart in a subtle way.

"I hope to create great designs, because that's what's needed to get very good performances and to attract more people to the arts," says Phu. No matter where he is, Phu hopes that his works will be able to contribute to local culture. This is the driving force behind every creative project he tackles.

Translated from the Chinese by Susanne Ganz


Charles Phu

Born: 1971
Education: Bachelor's degree in civil engineering from National Cheng Kung University, master's degree in architecture from the University of Texas at Austin
Current position: Founder/design director, Office for Architectural Culture (OAC), London

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