The Aalto Medal has been awarded since 1967 to the most prominent representatives of the world architectural sphere. Its first laureate was Alvar Aalto himself, also among the awardees were Utson, Sterling, Ando, Siza … In the 21st century, the laureates are no longer with such loud names, but no less worthy. So, in 2015, the medal was received by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, and this time - also a relatively young architect: Zhang Ke was born in 1970. The medal is awarded by the jury (this time it was headed by Toshiko Mori), the organizers of this award are the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Finnish Association Architects (SAFA), the Architectural Society, the Alvar Aalto Foundation and the City of Helsinki.
Like recent Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu,
beside which he exhibited at the 2016 Venice Biennale, Zhang Ke is interested in context - natural and historical, and materials, including recycled traditional bricks and tiles. He is also worried about the socio-cultural transformations taking place in China: the fragmentation and gentrification of historic cities, the disappearance of old villages and the reduction of agricultural land, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the lack of modern identity in ancient Chinese culture. At the same time, Zhang Ke believes that architecture is not able to solve these problems, but it can positively influence the situation.
Thus, the important projects of the new laureate are the reconstruction of hutongs, traditional Beijing neighborhoods, of which there are less and less: they were located in the central part of the city, and therefore went for demolition. The matter is aggravated by the fact that this historical development is not very comfortable: it is extremely dense and often devoid of running water and sewerage systems. Zhang Ke builds the necessary infrastructure into the hutongs, and one of them - a miniature children's library - he reproduced in the Venetian Arsenal on a 1: 1 scale. Among his works are also structures inscribed in the landscape of Tibet.
Zhang Ke emphasizes that each project requires several months, years or decades of life from the author, architecture as an occupation is a long journey of the mind, at the beginning of which you rarely know where it ends. For the new medal winner Alvar Aalto, in his own words, there is a big difference between architecture for sale and architecture for the human spirit, which he does.
Zhang Ke studied at Harvard University and has been teaching there since 2016, and he also received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Beijing Tsinghua University. Among his awards -
Aga Khan Award 2016.
