People's Architecture
	BIO Atelier Feichang Jianzhu The name of our practice consists of four Chinese characters and two phrases. The first phrase is Feichang. It may be an adjective or adverb and its meaning varies from very, as in very much, to extraordinary. In Korea and Japan, the definition of the term extends to urgent or emergency. The second phrase is Jianzhu, which means generally architecture as a noun or to construct as a verb. In combination, Feichang Jianzhu is a rather unstable expression and can be read contradictorily as abnormal architecture or very architectural, among other possible interpretations. When Lijia Lu, my partner, and I conceived the name in 1994 after practicing in China for a little more than a year, we decided on this name more for its linguistic intricacy than its implications about the kind of architecture we would want to pursue since there were not yet clear directions for our practice. However, now the oxymoron does seem to somewhat reflect our position: The buildings and designs we have done often take on the most basic architectural issues, such as space, material, perception, or context, and because of that, with perhaps the relative quietness the approach achieves as a byproduct, the resulting product may stand out amongst the typical high-decibel boom-town architecture in new Chinese cities: it turns out extraordinary for being ordinary.