Architects honored for building foundations to help society

With projects built in different cities and cultures, he illuminates how architecture, with distinctive types, dimensions and forms, promotes the identities of cities and cultures.

"The single standard of architectural meaning is the common weal of society, and architectural culture should play a dominant role in different cultures," he says.

Professor Zhuang Weimin is the dean of the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University.

He enrolled in Tsinghua's architecture department in 1980 right after the start of China's reform and opening-up. He gained experience in the tide of national construction in the early 1990s, and later obtained a doctorate in engineering in 1992. Another fortunate turn saw Zhuang, as he said in his speech, Design for Social Responsibility, join the International Union of Architects. This allowed him to establish contact and communicate with peers around the globe.

His architectural designs are acclaimed nationally and internationally, including the renovation project of the National Art Museum of China, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Shooting Range Hall, and the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai.

Architectural design should not only focus on improving public functions and services, but also undertake essential social responsibilities at more extensive levels, he says, such as in the aspects of humanity, communities, environmental conservation and regional culture.

At the ceremony, Huang Yan, vice-minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, called on architects to follow five themes. These include green development, accentuating cultural inheritance, and shouldering more social responsibility. She hopes that Chinese architects and their peers from other parts of the world will increasingly work together.

An exhibition themed on China's contemporary architectural design will be held in Berlin in the near future, in which some of China's best upcoming and established architects will also be invited to display their projects.