Introduction Judith A. Torres
Interview Heidrun Milan and Judith A. Torres Images 汉荷设计 (maison h)
“You have to work ten times harder just to prove to somebody you are not their definition of you.”
Han Zhang, a Chinese immigrant to Australia at the age of nine, fought to keep her place among her new classmates and peers. Her parents had drilled into her: “Keep quiet, keep your head down, work hard, stay out of trouble.”
She obeyed them.
She finished her degrees in Corporate Finance from Monash University, and bachelor’s and master’s in Architecture from the University of Melbourne. Throughout her studies, she interned at architecture firms because she couldn’t get enough of the complex process of solving problems and designing spaces. Then, she worked for a developer “to see the financial side of things” and “how buildings happen, cities happen.”
But despite all the hard work, she found that if she stuck to her parents’ dictum and stayed quiet and kept her head down, being “an ethnic person, certain things are just not going to happen.” She wouldn’t be a major player in the game, and she wouldn’t be able to change the world.
“So I left.”
Zhang went back to the city of her birth, Beijing. For a while, she was a project designer, then took on more and more business development for two firms she worked for and found she was very good at that. Being bi-lingual and understanding Western culture gave her a leg-up at work.
Still, it was a struggle getting colleagues, clients, and bosses to listen. “We are not a society where people are valued for their outspokenness, expression of ideas, and opinions—especially not a female, and at my age.” For years, she says, she felt unsure and timid because she dealt with people a lot more established and older than her.
She still works ten times harder than most people. She is the country manager and executive editor of ArchDaily China, founding partner at 汉荷设计/maison h, and teaches at Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture and the Beijing Institute for Fashion Technology.
Her partner, Martijn de Geus, says, “She is the key to making creative ideas a reality” at the firm (which they refuse to call an architecture firm).
De Geus, who Heidrun Milan and I interviewed ahead of Zhang, explains the name of their company: “We have a Chinese name, and it is 汉荷设计 (hàn hé shè jì ). 汉 (Hàn) means Chinese. It is also the name of my wife, 涵 (Hán). 荷 (Hé) stands for 荷兰 (Hé lán), which means Dutch or the Netherlands. It also stands for my Chinese name, 和马町 (Hé mǎ tīng). 设计 (Shè jì ) means design and theory. So our name means “Chinese Dutch Han Martijn Design Theory” company. I did not come up with that myself. My professor helped me find that name. There’s no direct translation, so we use a kind of meaningless international name, maison h. We thought it would be nice, House of Han. But otherwise, it’s meaningless.”
Zhang likes the ambiguity of their company name. “We don’t want to be defined by our name.” Probably because most of her life, people who had no idea who she was and what she was capable of were defining her and boxing her in.
During the interview, Zhang talked about the impetus behind her desire to change the world. She and De Geus have that as their shared agenda, but their approach comes from polar opposites. He from a position of certitude tempered by a willingness to learn from others, and she from quietly absorbing everything around her and learning to speak up.
I can’t find one word that encapsulates Zhang’s ethos. She wants to change the world, but when she talks of designing for people and animals or how she and her partner make decisions, she uses the word “natural” a lot. Natural behavior, natural selves, natural element; and also, words like “innate,” “inherent,” and “intrinsic.” It doesn’t seem she wants to change the world into something new so much as wants it to be true. Maybe because her true self had been repressed for so long. Maybe because she feels the world has turned unnatural and untrue. She’s on to something.
But she and De Geus will be the first to say that they must first embody the change they want for them to change the world. De Geus says Zhang taught him that.
Well, change she has. “I have changed into a person who is not so afraid… and am now sure of what I have done.”
(Read about Han Zhang’s editorial direction for ArchDaily China and Martijn de Geus’ perspective on 汉荷设计/maison h’s core values of empathy and inclusivity in separate articles also in Kanto.com.ph.)
Judith Torres: Did you have a design philosophy before you started working with Martijn? What was it?
Han Zhang: My design philosophy was always to create places for people in a way that would be natural, in every sense of the word. It was not just a matter of simply inserting nature literally into projects. But I was always searching to create spaces where people would feel naturally themselves and feel holistically comfortable. I wanted to use my knowledge of people and how they behave to shape spaces to encourage people to interact more, spaces that would inspire people.
I did not have a clear vision of what this kind of architecture would look like. But being a very observant person, I always observed the world around me and saw things that puzzled me, which troubled me.
I come from two very different worlds.
I’m Chinese, but I had the shock of arriving in Australia when I was nine and seeing this boundless natural beauty. I was mesmerized by it! So much pristine natural beauty and a mild climate, but everyone in Australia chose to live in these enclosed boxes. Why did people spend all their time in the park next door and not enjoy this natural environment within their own homes? I didn’t understand it. And I’m this kind of person when I see things that don’t make sense, I have to make sense of it. How can people live more naturally? Why will you live in these confined boxes when the beauty of nature is right outside our doorsteps? I questioned people about it and never got a satisfactory answer.
So I guess my mission at first was how to rectify these things.
And then, I was coming back to China every year; I saw things that didn’t make sense, such as seeing the very harsh urban environment and the lack of desire people had to change it. I grew up in one of these typical communist five-story apartment buildings. And it really shocked me to see that nothing much had changed. Even the newer residential buildings were just modernized versions of the old ones. And these alienating spaces informed how people were and what they became. I saw psychologically, in behavioral patterns, how people were because of these confined environments they were living in. So detached from nature and also just terrible interior qualities, which restricted, in a way, people’s minds and informed the way they went about the days of their lives. It, in a way, made people neurotic.
This struck me. Why are we still doing this?
The fact is most people here are so detached from nature, they’re afraid of it. Most people from the northern regions of China, because our winters are so harsh, would probably never choose to spend time in nature. Nature’s very dangerous. It’s okay to walk in a park, but they would not spend time in a park. This was so bizarre to me.
Heidrun Milan: How did you try rectifying this?
This takes us to when I met Martijn. When I met him, I had all these frustrations, things I wanted to rectify in the world. I wasn’t sure how I wanted that to change. We talked about these things endlessly. We started to experiment with simple things with space. For example, opening up the idea in people’s minds that space does not need to be enclosed by four walls. Simply removing parts of walls and making partitions movable so people could have views of elsewhere. I very quickly saw that small gestures could make such a big impact on the behavior of people.
Milan: Can you give an example?
We did an office for one of the leading gaming companies in China. The gaming industry is a creative industry. Yet their office was in the old Microsoft building, which, to be honest, was just miserable. The workers sit in an open-plan office, and managers sit in enclosed offices—it was not a place that would encourage creativity in any way. When we talked to the management team, they also realized that it was a problem.
“We need people to talk more, interact more, but we don’t know what to do.”
We did small gestures, created small, maze-like islands where people could talk and have synergy with each other, where, no matter where you sit, you always had a view of something. You would feel not out in the open but would feel some shelter, so you would feel safe, work on your laptop, or take a phone call for a bit. We also created very open meeting know areas. At first, this was shocking to them, difficult for management to accept, but we ended up making all the meeting areas open. So it became a very open space in which people could interact or hideaway. I know this sounds like many newer offices you see these days in magazines and ArchDaily, but this was really something then for a Chinese company. This was before we saw Tencent make fabulous offices.
The change in people’s behavior was incredible. One day we went in to have a look at the building site, which at the time was 95% finished. Some employees were getting their first look at the space. At one of these little islands we created, an open meeting room slash resting place slash discussion area, we could see how people were so naturally dispersed. People in their own little clusters where they would stand together and talk openly. And we created sets of furniture at different scales. So people would very naturally put themselves into positions they were comfortable in. And you could see the conversations were so much more lively and natural.
One of the managers we had been interacting with walked in, and she said, “Wow! What a difference this makes!”
And this was without a tour instructing employees how to use the place. They just naturally did it.
So this is at the core of our design philosophy. When we say we design places for people, we design places for animals; when we try to integrate nature into our spaces, it’s much more than the literal meaning of nature.
We want to create a natural environment in every sense of the word. We want people to rediscover what it’s like to feel natural in a space, what it’s like to have natural human interactions again. And spaces to have natural interactions with nature.
Milan: Is this the Happy Elements project you’re referring to? Did you do a post-occupancy evaluation and interview the employees?
We didn’t interview them, but we did go back a couple of times for post-occupancy observation to see the changes they made. Because as people use a space, they start making alterations according to what makes them uncomfortable and what they like. There were areas we thought open and inviting, which people did not find, so they created more shelter around them; they blocked themselves off.
This was very valuable for us. When designers present ideas, you fight for these ideas because you believe they will change everything. Go back post-occupancy and see how people really use the space and understand why to improve the design.
Meanwhile, we became good friends with the CEO and designed his new house, an amazing project. He got a piece of land in the center of Beijing, which is unheard of here. He would give us feedback on how much people enjoyed it and what people didn’t like.
One important thing that can validate your project’s success is whether people look after and treasure the space you’ve created for them. Often in offices with a high-volume of workers and activity, things start looking run-down quickly. People start dumping things. Maybe they don’t like a particular area or don’t appreciate it. But within this office, we found things still in pristine condition after almost four years. That speaks for itself.
Milan: Let’s talk about your roles in the firm. Do you have the final say on financial matters because business is one of your strengths?
It used to be like that. We had divided roles because I don’t have an equal amount of time dedicated because of ArchDaily. But more and more, I feel our roles are intertwining together. As I have gone through years of analyzing architecture, talking to architects, and seeing their projects, I have a more defined vision of what architecture should be and new ideas we should test. In time, we have become much more design partners. Whereas in the beginning, he was defining his thinking and I was exploring, it’s now much more intertwined and dynamic.
Milan: What happens when you disagree on design?
Anyone in a partnership in an architecture or design firm, especially if they are also life partners together, will tell you that this is difficult to figure out and a journey you have to take. I’ve interviewed many architects who’re partners who say they’ve always worked wonderfully together. I can tell you that’s not the case. (We all laugh.)
It’s always next to impossible not to disagree unless you’re identical persons. But for us, disagreements often produce the best results. First of all, it forces you to challenge your opinions. Why do I disagree with this? Why do I think I’m correct?
I might think that this is better, and he might think that that is better; we resolve by giving each other room and trying out each option to see which one is better. And that’s produced some of the best results. It forces us to try things out. And in the journey of trying new things, you may find an even better option.
Milan: So, how do you resolve the disagreement?
Torres: They argue.
It’s true. We argue it out in a much more civil way now than years in the past. The process of arguing it out works it out in your mind. I wouldn’t say we argue nowadays. We discuss it, we discuss each other’s opinions until we arrive at a point where you realize maybe the solution is that! Or, perhaps the solution is not A or B. It’s C. So this is a journey of improvement in our relationship, which has led us to resolve differences this way.
Torres: What about financial decisions? That is your expertise, isn’t it?
Um, I have to say it’s true. I probably make more of the financial decisions because I have more background in that, having run three businesses. But also because we have different skills in working with people. I’m good at gauging where people’s limits are.
In a business you have to run yourself, no one else can accept responsibility for your financial profit or loss. You have to gauge what people’s limits are, and you have to be able to make your work valuable to the client, worth the amount of money that they’re going to pay for it.
I have for years been working with clients, convincing them to pay what I felt ArchDaily was worth. So I have quite some experience in that. So the decision rests with me, but we definitely work on the process of convincing clients together.
Torres: What makes you decide to be financially prudent versus saying yes to a project that doesn’t make much money?
We are very good at deciding to do projects that don’t make much money! (Everyone laughs.) Unfortunate for our bank statement, but good for personal growth.
When Martin and I meet a client and see a site, we always evaluate what we can do with the project first. Can we offer an exciting solution to what the client is after?
We very much believe that if we deliver well on a project, at whatever budget when we make a good space that the client appreciates, that visitors enjoy, this, in the long term, will have more significant gains in our development, creative thinking, and finances as well. Because in the beginning, before anyone knew we existed, we got all of our clients from existing clients. And that was the result of us doing many projects that did not pay well! And their recommendations have led us to where we are today.
So we always evaluate based on these intrinsic values first. And then we think about the financials.
Milan: Martijn says maison h is post-Western. Does that mean maison h is Eastern?
No. We are just who we are. We’re not really a firm or two people or a group you can define by a term. I come from two backgrounds where I don’t quite belong to either, and he also is, in a way, like that. We are both people who decided to move our lives to a different place, dramatically, at an early stage of our lives. So that really shaped who we are. It changed us from people who could be defined to undefined. And we see that as our greatest quality, honestly.
I see practices that my friends or our colleagues work in. You could probably classify them as Western practices. The very definition of being a Western practice limits your architectural output because it defines who you are and your thinking and confines you to a certain process.
Being defined as an “Eastern architect” also limits how people perceive you and the kind of work you should produce. And many Asian architects also spend a lot of time making sure their work is definitive in being not Western, to be more Eastern.
Torres: He’s post-Western, and you’re post-Eastern.
Yes. Which is why our name is kind of strange. To be very honest, the definition of the name doesn’t mean much to us. We don’t want to be defined by our name. There’s been many Western, definitely European, firms in the last two decades that have come out with very strong names, and those names define who they are as a practice.
We didn’t want that for ourselves. We wanted something ambiguous you could not even tell what line of business we’re in.
Milan: Martijn had six years of experience with Gyasi, Dalila, Bongo, and Kishiwa (a family of gorillas), so he understood his “clients” very well. Tell us about the learning curve for this project. How did you attune yourself to the creatures who would be living, playing, growing, and raising their families in Apenheul?
This project was monumental for us. First of all, it was a dream come true. For as long as I had known Martijn, he had always said his dream was to build something for the zoo because it was the place that defined him as a person. It was one of the things that attracted me to him when I met him—that he had this fantastic experience with animals. He genuinely shared my love for animals and my passion for changing people’s attitudes towards animals and nature.
It was one of the projects where he really took the lead, and the most important thing is, from the very beginning, he saw that collaboration was the only way this project could succeed. And when he spoke of the collaboration, he really meant complete collaboration among all parties.
It was a process of understanding what the zoo needed. What was the most important thing? What was the core value they were trying to evoke with this project? Beyond the physical aspects of what they needed for animal keeping, they needed to attract people. Because it had been a long time since the zoo had done anything new. It boiled down that this zoo needed to stand for something in the modern age of zoo-keeping. It needed to redefine what zoo-keeping means for people and the world, which is really a monumental task, like, how do you redefine that?
Martijn had this pure love for this project because this zoo was state-of-the-art and had influenced the way people thought about zoo-keeping. It needed to remind people it was exceptional again.
So now, many of the animals are allowed to roam free among the visitors. It makes people realize what animals mean to us as humans—that they are not just displays, that animals are also alive! Your interactions with the animals would help you understand that.
Torres: Could you share your experience meeting the primates for the first time?
My first time was long before the project. It was the first year I met Martin. It was an experience that also defined me and my life because gorillas are majestic and very big animals. They are just pure magic, and you never know this until you can come face to face with them because we always view them from a distance.
My first time at Apenheul was amazing. They had this entire island where you have a big family of gorillas, which I had never seen before. You usually see just a pair, with a baby maybe. But they had over 20 members in this family, and they were so natural in their interaction with each other.
We stayed a little after closing time because Martijn knew all the zookeepers, and he took us to the back-of-house, which is where the gorillas sleep at night because they don’t like to sleep out in the open at night—they don’t feel safe. This is a highly-designed tunnel system with enclosing cages for the gorillas. There’s no glass, just steel bars between you and the animal. So they are right there. You could touch them if you wanted to, but it’s not recommended.
The first thing that amazed me is the smell.
They have such an intense smell of nature. Do you know what your natural scent is? I bet not. Most humans don’t know their natural odor because we have a lot of artificial things on us. The raw smell of this majestic animal was amazing, like a mixture of earth and grass.
Milan: It’s like a pheromone.
Yeah, so pure and beautiful.
And the way they look at you! They either don’t care that you’re there, or they look at you intensely. And having them look at you intensely is quite an experience, especially when it’s a silver-back male, you know, who is very big and powerful.
This experience of being up close with them stayed with me. You realize these powerful animals are fragile while they are in our world. They don’t have all the things we humans have to control them, to damage them, or to be good to them. They are just them. They had a profound effect on me.
The second time I visited, the zoo had gotten a male gorilla from Taiwan. His name was Bao Bao. He was a trafficked animal from South Africa rescued by a philanthropist from Taiwan. He was 30 at the time and had been caged his whole life, and had never met a female.
But he was from the wild, which in the zoo world is very precious because he had fresh genes. Most animals bred in captivity have a connection with each other, but no one had Bao Bao’s genes, so he was brought to Apenheul in the hopes that he would breed the next generation of gorillas for the world.
When he came, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to interact with another animal. It was difficult to watch. He always sat alone. When they brought him to the back-of-house, he had his own area but still sat in a corner, still not feeling comfortable. Then I spoke Chinese to him, and he came over. Because that’s the only thing he knows. He didn’t know how to interact with other animals but could react to me speaking Chinese to him. That made me very sad.
So all these experiences gave us a lot of motivation to make something different in this place.
Torres: Martijn said there are no mechanisms in Apenheul to protect the animals against abusive humans because people in the Netherlands are kind to animals. That surprised me because that is not the case here and in many other countries. Were you also surprised?
In China, there are many cases of animal cruelty. Here it can be very severe. However, public awareness of animals is growing and getting better year by year. But in the Netherlands, they are very aware of their environment, making them also very aware of animals. They are also much more educated on animal behavior and how they should handle animals. It is also a culture where people aren’t afraid of animals so much. It is true, people are very kind to animals there.
The zoo is very conscious of telling visitors how they should or shouldn’t behave with the monkeys. Because monkeys are clever, they’ll come and take things off you. And I just observe that people are so thoughtful towards them. For example, you cannot enter the zoo with your own bag and cameras. They have to be put into bags that can be locked that the zoo gives you. Monkeys can open zips, so you need to have something that can be locked. And I observe that everybody does it. They don’t have a problem with it. They understand. They do it. If that was a rule here, you’d find 50 percent of the people won’t follow it.
Torres: Would you subscribe to ridding a culture of customs that are cruel to animals?
Yeah, definitely.
First of all, we believe that to change something, you need to change yourself first or do yourself first. We have many animals, and we care for them and make them accessible and a pleasant experience for the people around us. If they can see through us that animals are a source of joy, it will change their perception of animals.
Torres: Have you been able to do that?
I think so. I think so. Yes, all the time. Chinese people are terrified of dogs. It’s a belief that’s been inbuilt in them from a long, long time ago. We all grew up being told, “Don’t go near dogs! A dog will bite you.” All parents say to their children, “A dog will bite you!” So you end up with a generation of people who are afraid of dogs and who will be mean to dogs. Although this is changing, a lot of people have dogs nowadays.
What we do is, every time a friend with a child comes to visit our house, we teach them how to interact with a dog. You cannot just go up to a dog and start putting your hands all over them. Some of them are sensitive. They need to sniff you and know that you are safe, then they will let you touch them. Otherwise, they will bite you. So that’s what we do. We teach our friends’ children how to introduce themselves to a dog and interact with a dog. And you see, over time, they become less scared and, more importantly, their parents become much less fearful.
Torres: Martin has said that every day you support him and remind him to reflect on who he is and what he does, and because of that, he is a different man from ten years ago. Have you changed too? If so, who was Han, who is Han, and who do you hope Han will be?
Ha! That’s a nice question. It’s true, he has changed a lot, in a very good way. That’s what you hope for, right? That you each can change for the better.
I think I have also equally changed a lot. I’m a child of migrants. My parents migrated to Australia when I was nine. And like many children of migrants, especially of Asian descent, we’re always taught not to speak up. Keep quiet, keep out of trouble, keep your head down, work hard, and you will be rewarded. My parents definitely taught me that. I was always a bit of a rebellious child, but nothing crazy because I also believed, okay, I shouldn’t make trouble.
But what I saw in Australia was that that’s not the case. When you keep quiet, keep your head down, and work hard, as an ethnic person, certain things are just not going to happen for you. This may not be the conscious decision of those around you. People aren’t always consciously racist. It’s the subconscious social state. I saw that if I remain as I am and stick to my parent’s values, all my hard work will not get me where I want to go. I was never going to be recognized for who I was. Cause you have to work ten times harder just to prove to somebody, you are not their definition of you.
So I left.
I thought I have to find opportunities for myself. When I came back to China, I found it was equally hard here. Because people saw me as an outsider that threatened them because they perceived me as having something that they didn’t have, and it was unfair. And therefore, opportunities should be kept from me because I had an unfair advantage. It’s the experience of many people when they return to their home countries to work, especially.
For many years, I felt unsure of myself and timid primarily because I dealt with people who were much more established and older than me in my role. It was difficult to find my grounding. We are not a society where people are valued for their outspokenness, expression of ideas, and opinions—especially not a female, and at my age.
So I found it a huge struggle. I worked very hard at proving myself by making ArchDaily very successful here. And through that experience, I have changed into a person who is not so afraid. I now am more outspoken and sure of my opinions, and sure of what I have done.
I have encouraged Martijn to self-reflect; I have been a person who has self-reflected too much in the past (laughs). I’ve become less of that and more confident in the things that I can do.
I was interviewed by Chinese media for Women’s Day, where they interviewed twelve women in architecture. And they asked me, has it been difficult for you, as a female in architecture? And I said yes, but it has made me so much stronger. We don’t have the fragile egos of many of our male counterparts. (Everyone laughs.) It’s just the truth. I know all of them, so I know very well how fragile their egos are. So for me, it’s been rewarding. It’s been difficult, but I will speak for other women when I say we come out stronger, resilient, and understanding.
Torres: And who is the Han you soon will be?
Oh, wow! (Takes a sip of tea.) I wonder what Martijn said to this question? Did you ask him this question?
Torres: No, because he was the one who brought up you helping him change.
Umm. Oh, wow.
Well. I would like to be a happy and true person to set an example for myself and other women and girls that you can be who you are and have success and be true in this tough world.
Happiness is very important! It’s underestimated.
Torres: I agree. Thank you so much!
Milan: Thank you very much!
Debrief
After talking to Han Zhang, Heidrun Milan and I did a debrief to discuss our impressions and the things she said that struck us. The transcript above doesn’t reflect the whole interview. The transcript was so long (over 15,000 words), I cut out the portion on ArchDaily for another piece, and kept Zhang’s comments on one of their projects, Life As It Is, exclusive to our review of the project in Optimistic Critic.
Here are excerpts of the debrief:
Torres: Wow! She talked to us for an hour and a half! Did you notice how often she used the word “natural”? They want to create a natural environment; they want people to feel natural in a space. At the gaming company office, she said people naturally dispersed themselves, were conversing naturally, and at Apenheul, the gorillas naturally interacted with one another… it’s remarkable.
Milan: I did notice. She said she is always searching for ways for people to feel “naturally themselves” and “holistically comfortable.” Han is a designer who has a complete understanding of how to use empathy in her designs. This is evident in their projects. She underscores their agenda on creating places instead of architecture and gaining a deeper understanding of how humans behave and interact with each other and their environment.
What strikes me about her use of the word “natural” is that it equates with the ideal. I haven’t heard other designers aiming for people to feel natural, behave naturally, and interact with each other, with animals, and with nature naturally. Ten years ago, it was always about “letting the outside in.” Then it was “inserting nature” or “surrounding oneself with nature.” So, it’s always about nature being separate from man and reintroducing it via design (except for BUDJI+ROYAL, whose ethos is “Man is nature and nature is man”), unlike Han’s notion of designing to help what is innate to man to come to the fore.
I think it has to do with how design is taught here. Schools here focus on form and aesthetics, although we are also taught about the importance of function and context. To be honest, visual impact is what sells. I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of this. But as I mature with my practice, I begin to understand how Han describes that space needs to feel natural for users to behave naturally. This is reflected in their works, a place that flows naturally without being pretentious or contrived.
What did you think of her response to your question on post-occupancy for Buildings for Animals?
Perceptive! To say that we get more truthful responses from animals by observing their behavior. Before the interview, I thought it would be easier to design for humans because you can always ask what they want and how they envision their living environment. Han is right when she says that sometimes, humans tend to sugarcoat when asked to evaluate a particular space, but animals’ reactions will always be honest. This is a good tip for future design projects involving animals. Of course, there were a lot of inputs from the zookeepers as well as other experts.
And Martijn because of his personal experience and love for the animals. What struck you about the design process?
That design is not exclusive anymore; it has become more inclusive and transdisciplinary. I am happy to see designers working together on a project with other experts of a different field of specialization. We need more collaborations like this because this is where the future of design is heading.
Han and Martijn are consistent in their beliefs, no? I find that remarkable.
What I appreciate about their practice is there is so much introspection. They walk their talk, and you can feel their authenticity. Their deep understanding of the users and how users connect with nature and the built environment shows in their designs.
Oh, you know what else struck me? When she said she and Martijn both upended their lives—he left Holland, she left Australia—and they changed from people who could be defined to people who could not be easily defined.
This is a perfect marriage of East and West. They have experienced working outside their comfort zones and engaging with a culture different from their own. They have embraced the best practices of these cultures and it makes sense that they don’t want to be boxed-in by a label.
Han will find this ditzy, for sure, but my gosh, their story would make a fab K-drama! Haha!
A remake of The Fountainhead? Haha!
Whaat. Last thoughts, Heidrun?
When Han was asked whether she had difficulty being an architect because she was a woman, and said, “We don’t have the fragile egos of our male counterpart!” Haha.
Yeah, that was great.
For a woman in a male-dominated profession and a country known for its patriarchy, Han is blazing trails for the future of women in contemporary Chinese architecture. I’m so happy we got to interview her and Martijn too. •
Heidrun Milan is an interior designer based in Tacloban City, Leyte, Philippines, with a practice that extends to the different parts of the archipelago. His studio expresses “the marriage of high modernism and sustainability inflected with homegrown aesthetics and pride of local craftsmanship and materials.” He is well-regarded for the psycho-social support activities he spearheads while helping disaster-stricken communities in Leyte rebuild their homes. He has won awards from the Philippines Tuklas Innovations Lab, the Design Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Institute of Interior Designers, and the Metrobank Art and Design Excellence competition.
Kanto.com.ph is a proud co-presenter of Anthology Festival 2021. This interview was produced in support of the Festival and its organizers, WTA Architecture and Design.
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