Vital Architecture

With Vital Architecture, Atelier Li Xinggang presents selected projects from China that create spaces in which nature and the built environment merge into a living whole. Architecture is understood here as an interplay of space, environment, history, and experience—an attitude between idealism and reality in which the built environment mediates and connects. Five spatial strategies form the basis of the concept of a “Vital City,” in which buildings are not isolated but engage in a poetic dialogue with their surroundings.

A multi-layered scenography of models, sketches, images, and films brings the architectural process to life – from research to design to use. The exhibition shows how spatial knowledge is translated into concrete, contemporary architectural ideas, thus contributing to a vital built environment.

Vital Architecture – Between Idealism and Reality provides insight into a practice that consistently addresses the conditions of building in a changing environment. Architecture is not understood as an autonomous object, but as a mediating instance between nature and artifact, past and present, individual perception and collective reality.

The exhibition at Aedes divides the projects into five spatial strategies: introverted gardens in the city, symbiosis of new and old on “ruins,” buildings in context-poor environments, cluster-like accommodations based on structural units, and architecture in interaction with the landscape. Despite different scales, these works share a common goal: to develop architecture as a living system that balances environment, structure, and human experience.

The presentation follows this integrative approach. Sketches, models, photographs, films, and spatial installations are arranged in layers, offering different approaches to the projects. The wooden boxes used to display the models are made from reused transport packaging and refer to the studio's working process, in which research, design, construction, and use are understood as a coherent cycle. At the center is the idea of a “total milieu”—architecture that is experienced physically and mentally.

Opening: February 6, 2026, 4:30 p.m.

Speakers: Yung Ho Chang, Ulrike Eberhardt, Eduard Kögel, Benedetta Tagliabue, Wilfried Wang, Li Xiangning, Li Xinggang