Interview with Mr. Stephen Yas,
Director of China office/Design Director, bKL Architecture, LLC
With over 40 years of strong design oriented and stabile leadership experience in the industry, Mr. Stephen Yas is an architectural leader with passion who both inspires clients and also mentors team members, an accomplished architect with extensive international experience who bridges East and West on large complex mixed-use retail architecture, urban design and hospitality projects. Endeavoring to find the spirit and soul in every project, he believes that architecture and urban design are about place, context and an emotional response to physical space.
Stephen’s body of work includes prestigious mixed-use developments, commercial, hospitality, high-rise and corporate headquarters, among other sectors. He has been involved with many prestigious national and international award-winning projects, and has received recognition from the American Institute of Architects, HUD, Oxford University and Ohio University. He has been a lecturer at many architectural schools, and is a much sought-after public speaker and frequent contributor to architectural publications.
When did you come to China? What was your impression at that time? After so many years, what changes do you think have taken place in China?
I first came to China in 2004 and traveled back and forth from the USA for eight years bringing work back to my firm in Chicago. In 2012, I moved to Shanghai to live and work. In the early days, there was an abundance of work. Most clients had no experience in real estate development, and most local architects who did the construction drawings should not have. It required a lot of mentoring and assistance from international architects. In more recent years, with education abroad in the UK, USA and Australia, the improvement of local architects is significant. China’s architectural education has changed as well. In the past, students were only taught construction techniques of how to put a building together technically. Now design is taught in the leading architectural schools in China. And most clients are more professional now. The less experienced clients have left the business. In many larger cities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, the government is more involved with experienced professionals.
You’ve mentioned to find the spirit and soul in every project, that architecture and urban design are about place, context and an emotional response to physical space. Why you think this is important?
Buildings should not fall from the sky and land in an unexpected context. They should be site-specific and grow out of the ground. The buildings are not about architecture, they are a vessel to hold, nurture and uplift the inhabitants therein. Each building or grouping of buildings should be a modern interpretation of a contextual China story that the user can relate to. The buildings are “stageset walls” to form enclosures for community gathering spaces from an urban design perspective.
Our goal is not only to make the project beautiful and practical, but also to ensure that more and more people will be attracted to the project after it is launched, so as to further improve the community and area where the project is located and make it full of vitality. A good project can really achieve popularity from scratch, which requires understanding the purpose of the project and pick up the spiritual parts it wants to convey from the beginning, that is, the transmission of emotions and feelings.
How do you make a design creative and unique? How do you combine artistry with practicality?
Architecture is art and science combined. Form follows function and then is raised to a higher plateau of art. Function can be creative and innovative, and explore new ways of doing things never dreamed of. I am reminded of a quote from Robert Kennedy: “Some people see things as they are and say why, I see things as they should be and say why not.”
Speaking of practicality, this must be taken into account. As a Jew, I am quite pragmatic. For each project, I will accurately consider the project income of the owner, and not only focus on making it good-looking, but also it is practical and easy to use. If it is a commercial project, it is necessary to attract investment. There are many ways to attract investment, for example, I will consider using an energy-saving sustainable design to reduce the operating costs of merchants. As long as the merchants are satisfied with how things are, the owner of the project party will see a return on their investment. Therefore, practicality is a very important factor that must be considered comprehensively.
Please share with us the two most interesting projects you have designed related to environmental protection and sustainability. What are their highlights?
The first project is the Kaiyuan Senbo Holiday resort in Deqing (near Morganshan). It is an 1,800 mu health and wellness family resort with 450 villas in an ecological natural setting of water and mountains in a valley. There are six special villas actually on the mountains, and there is also a denser village with two 200-room hotels, plus retail, restaurants, an indoor water park and a conference center. No cars are allowed on site. You leave your car in the parking lot and there are electric shuttle trams throughout the site for transportation. There are also historic nature trails throughout the resort. It opened in December 2019 and has experienced almost 100% occupancy since.
The second project is the UBTECH Robotics Headquarters, Shenzhen. It is a 212-meter high tower that creates a health and wellness sustainable workplace environment for the geniuses of UBTECH. The China story we use at the heart of the building’s design is the Eight Immortals of 3,000 years ago (Liaoxin) . There are eight skygardens on the exterior within the perimeter megaframe steel structure, each one landscaped and themed in honor of one of the immortals. There is a terra cotta louver skin over the entire tower with sun sensors which moves during the day to keep the glass and skygardens in shade. The building is now under construction and will be completed in the spring of 2023.
Have you noticed that there are more and more wellness resorts being developed around the world? From your point of view, what kind of “regional experience and local sense” and “experience economy or say economic return”, and “wellness and sustainable” are essential to be included in the design process of these projects?
Society today is in general more aware of health and wellness. People are exercising more. It has become an industry in itself so its extension into the area of resorts and spas is natural. There are local spa treatments that can come from the local region. In China, due to Covid and the regulations regarding entry to and exit from China since 2020, the hospitality industry has expanded quite well all over the country, at least until the recent lockdowns.
Since 2020, due to China’s entry-exit restrictions, people have no way to travel abroad, which has resulted in the local hotel industry doing very good business nationwide. But at the same time, we can also see that there is a gap between local Chinese health resorts and foreign resorts of the same level in terms of hardware and operations. I feel that once the door is opened, a large number of Chinese guests will travel abroad, because the current level of many domestic resorts is certainly unable to retain Chinese guests. I have heard from many Chinese guests that the cost vs performance ratio in Thailand and Japan is much better, and includes even more choices for wellness projects, including delicious food.
So, how to make Chinese local hotels and resorts more competitive? That is, what should we do in the design and planning right from the beginning? The key concepts are “Sense of region”, “Wellness and sustainability” and “Economic return capability”. To put it simply, the project must have attractive local characteristics and cannot be stereotypical. The concept of health and sustainability needs to be thoroughly discussed with the owner and the operator at the initial stage of design, so that it can be implemented into the daily operations as much as possible. About the capability of an economic return, that is for sure what every investor is looking for, and it is also an most important point we should consider in the design scheme. It is always a must. Individuality and creativity for a experienced designer should be expressed within that context.
Health and wellness focused resorts will be built near major cities in China and around the world for years to come. I was working on one luxury resort near Nanjing that even has a branch clinic from a major local hospital as well as a tea plantation. It is a positive trend.
How do you keep fit and stay healthy during your busy schedule?
I go to the gym 3-4 times a week. Workout and swimming, martial arts, sports, hiking across the city to explore new areas. Doing adventure trips that set me on workout goals, like the Gobi Desert Elite Challenge (108 km in 4 days) last year or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro (5,900 meters) a few years ago. I am a healthy man and full of energy.
