New rich trade gray flats for trendy
homes By Antoaneta
Bezlova
BEIJING - As China's parliament meets to
amend the communist country's constitution and protect
private property rights, China's new rich are abandoning
proletarian apartments in communal blocks and moving
into trendy duplex apartments and suburban villas. They
are pursuing the very capitalist antitheses of the drab,
uniform and crowded quarters once extolled by the
ideologes of egalitarianism - beautiful and distinctive
single-family homes.
With banks ready to offer
70 percent low-interest credit on new housing
developments across big Chinese cities, the
unprecedented housing boom is propelling the country's
record-breaking economic growth and making China an El
Dorado for architects. Soon, Beijing - the showcase of
this construction boom in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic
Games - will display architectural works by some of the
world's best-known architects, including Zaha Hadid, Rem
Koolhaas, Riken Yamamoto and others.
Meanwhile,
since anything foreign has cachet, Chinese architects
are filling the cities with residential developments
with flashy names like Palm Springs, Upper East Side,
Chateau Regalia, and Merlin Champagne Town. Many of
these projects feature walled compounds with 24-hour
guards, offering luxurious club houses, golf courses,
swimming pools, tennis courts and mansions with double
garages and tiny rooms for the new class of live-in
domestic workers.
"People are coming in off the
streets to buy apartments at Jianwai Soho complex and
just offering us suitcases full of cash. It's crazy,"
says Antonio Ochao-Piccardo, chief architect of a new
high-rise development in downtown Beijing undertaken by
one of the country's most successful residential
developers, Soho China Limited.
Jianwai Soho is
all avant-garde minimalist with floor-to-ceiling
luminous glass walls, and the average flat goes for
US$300,000. The complex, with its narrow winding lanes
and grass-lined walkways, is modelled on Beijing's old
hutongs but defies the city's traditional north-south
axis of house orientation by positioning all buildings
30 degrees east and flooding them with light.
"More than 90 percent of our buyers are
Chinese," says Zhang Xin, chief executive of Soho China.
"About half of them come from places outside Beijing.
Now that so many can afford it, they all want to secure
a home in the capital."
Zhang Xin, who studied
economics at Cambridge University in Britain, won a
special prize, the Silver Lion, for her role as a
"patron of architecture" at the 2002 architectural
Biennale in Venice. Soho, China's most daring
architectural project, is a collection of holiday homes,
all individually designed by 12 leading Asian architects
and located just a stone's throw from the Great Wall.
Named the "Commune by the Great Wall," its staff
are dressed in Maoist-style uniforms with badges that
evoke the fervor of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
Architecturally, developers have chosen an impressive
combination of ultramodern design and Zen-style blending
with surrounding nature - a definite catch for
trend-conscious property buyers.
China's new
rich are asked to put down a minimum of US$500,000
dollars for a weekend retreat like Ochao-Piccardo's
eye-catching brick red Cantilever House, which looks out
over a valley. Inside are spacious light-filled
interiors and the roof contains a garden, Jacuzzi and
barbecue area.
While the Commune by the Great
Wall, and the whole concept of a holiday home, is still
testing the appeal of rustic retreats for China's new
rich, Soho China's developments downtown are already
being cited as a story of ultimate commercial success.
Indeed, Soho China's arrival on the mainland's
property market seven years ago was nothing less than
revolutionary. For the first time in China, where
socialist-era dwellings once were handed over to
residents as concrete shells, savvy property developers
offered ready-to-move-in flats with equipped kitchens,
painted walls and bathroom fixtures.
Now, a
score of developers across Beijing are trying to
replicate the recipe of success pioneered by Soho China.
Merlin Champagne Town, a suburban development by the
Merlin China Development Group, tries to blend sleek
minimalist designs with suburban comforts by offering
smart duplex apartments with private gardens and rooftop
balconies.
"Not everybody can afford to buy a
suburban villa," says Liu Li, a property consultant at
Merlin Town, "but many want to have the space and
scenery of the suburbs. We try to cater to exactly this
type of customers."
The housing boom is helped
by a revolution in modern design and ironically, by
nostalgia for the serenity of lost nature. True, the
opening of the Swedish home furnishings giant Ikea store
in Beijing seven years ago attracted vast crowds, and
Ikea still ranks as one of the biggest influences on
popular taste.
Yet according to Rebecca Xsu,
owner of the Cottage, an interior design shop, the
latest trend in Beijing is a desire to get back to
nature and one's roots.
"There are too many
concrete blocks around, too much steel and concrete, so
people are looking for an escape. In the past, they all
lived very close to nature and the earth - look at our
courtyard houses," she explains. "Courtyards had earthen
floors and were open to the sky, so both designers and
developers want to reflect that."
(Inter Press
Service)
Mar 11, 2004
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