Zaha Hadid Architects’ Yidan Center in Shenzhen Tops Out as a New Global Hub for Education

Construction of Zaha Hadid Architects' Yidan Center in Shenzhen, China, has reached full height. The new landmark will serve as the headquarters of the Chen Yidan Foundation and the Yidan Prize, organizations dedicated to promoting lifelong learning and innovation in education. The center will host facilities for academic research, cultural events, and exhibitions, supporting the foundation's mission to advance global education. Located adjacent to the Qianhai Museum, the Yidan Center helps define a new cultural quarter in China's third-most-populous city.

Few commissions allow architects to focus on non-human users, and fewer still involve horses. While domestic pets like cats and dogs are common muses, the particular needs of horses present a unique challenge when designing stables. Since the horses, who are the stable's primary inhabitants, cannot articulate their needs, design relies on the rigorous requirements dictated by human caretakers, requiring a balance between streamlined human operations and maximized horse comfort and safety. Architects often seem to address this through three core principles: Equine Comfort & Well-being, Contextual Materiality, and Operational Efficiency. Thus, the resulting layouts are characterized by rigorous zoning that clearly separates the programs into residential (stalls), service (tack, storage, wash, feed), and training spaces (arenas, walkers). The designs also address visual well-being: Horses are social animals, so they strategically position stables to promote sightlines between animals and to the exterior, often employing louvered or open-frame systems. Furthermore, lighting is kept diffuse using materials such as translucent panels to prevent sharp, stress-inducing shadows in arenas. Similarly, circulation paths are designed for the safe, efficient movement of both people and animals.

The Doshi Retreat on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein is a contemplative sanctuary conceived and designed collaboratively by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Balkrishna Doshi, his granddaughter Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, and her husband Sönke Hoof. Drawing inspiration from Indian spirituality and the meditative qualities of sound and silence, the retreat offers a sensory journey through space, light, and resonance and a place for solitude, reflection, and transformation.

We planned a sauna facility in Kasama City, known since the Edo period as a center for Kasama ware and ceramics. The site is surrounded by a complex mix of environments: scattered ceramics schools, art museums, and golf facilities, yet also densely lined with residential homes. As a facility intended for use without clothing, the site could be read as being in a four-sided siege situation, enclosed by buildings and open fields.