Founded by Zhang Ke in 2001, ZAO / Zhang Ke Architecture Office is a leading new generation design firm engaged in practices of planning, architecture, landscape, and product design. Based on a wide range of realized buildings and landscapes in the past ten years,  the studio has emerged as one of the most critical and innovative protagonists among the new generation of Chinese architects.

ZAO 标准营造
No.1 Jia, Jiuzhou Road, Tongzhou District, Beijing, China Postcode: 101100
Tel: 86-10-62634351

We are hiring: 
Intern, Architect, Project Architect；Experienced Product Designer and Interior Designer；
 Architect；Project Architect；

A former industrial building at the Camerich Campus Beijing is to be transformed into a showroom space. Our concept is to design it as an “inverted Farnsworth”, rather than a conventional exhibition space that pretends to be a home. A house-type space as exhibition is the best showroom for presenting furniture.

AEDES invited ZAO to exhibit the Camerich Workshop Space in Beijing for the ‘Wood’s Up!’ exhibition in Berlin. The exhibition is open to the public from April 6 to May 22, 2024.

The Workshop Space, located on the Camerich Design Campus that ZAO transformed from a former industrial district in the southeast of Beijing into a Design School Campus, is a timber structure intervention committed to adaptive reuse.

Zhang Ke/ ZAO presents co-living in Dangerous Liaisons section of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the La Biennale di Venezia in Arsenale. The exhibition was selected by the curator, Lesley Lokko, as part of The Laboratory of the Future. It is the second time Zhang Ke/ ZAO participates in the core exhibition in Arsenale, following Reporting from the Front, which was curated by Alejandro Aravena in 2016.

The city of Rizhao is located on the sunny coast of the Yellow Sea in the Province of Shandong. The Art Centre provides a cultural centre for the local community as part of a new public infrastructure in a resort with other public buildings and residential districts.

The museum dedicated to the painter Xiao Feng is situated at the foot of the Daci Mountain, a few kilometres to the south of the renowned West Lake in Hangzhou.

The elongated amphitheatre is located near Chengde, the former summer residence of the Qing Emperor situated 130 km northeast of Beijing.

The aim of the Rizhao Community Art Center is to bring art to the local community and provide public space for the area. The project is located in a resort in Rizhao, a city by the coastline of the Yellow Sea in the Shandong province. The project is part of a masterplan for a development project, which includes several public buildings and housing projects.

Zhang Ke (Pechino, 1970) è parte di quella nuova generazione di architetti cinesi che ha trascorso un periodo di formazione e/o di lavoro all’estero – nel suo caso per la laurea magistrale alla Harvard GSD e tre anni di pratica tra Boston e New York – e che lega un interesse per tradizioni costruttive locali ad approcci occidentali alla progettazione. Come molte delle nuove pratiche in Cina, il suo lavoro guarda a scale molto diverse: i progetti sono attenti alle micro-dinamiche dei luoghi e alla vita quotidiana delle persone che li abitano, ma ambiscono anche a rivoluzionare le modalità con cui si concepisce la rigenerazione urbana in Cina.

Xizhi Art village is a regeneration project aiming to rejuvenate the old derelict village in decay, by establishing an art village that combines art and design with the local natural and cultural environment. Xizhi village is located in Beijing municipality, Miyun district, northeast of Beijing, originating from the Ming dynasty.

The new Guangxi Longji Primary School is conceived as a “house” designed for students and teachers, where a series of intimate spaces open to a breathtaking landscape of terraced rice fields. The new building grows out from the existing school and then into the earth, reshaping the site topography as well as embedding itself as part of the slope.

Ce projet est une experimentation visant à explorer les possibilités de créer des logements sociaux de petite taille dans les limites des espaces disponibles. Ce projet de 30㎡ , appelé micro-hutong, offre une alternative, à la préservation et à la valorisation des maisons à cours traditionnelles, siheyuan, dont le problème le plus prégnant est le depart de ses occupants à la recherché de logements aux standards du «confort moderne ».

The new studio of ZAO/standardarchitecture is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful architecture offices in Beijing. It is located in the north of the city on the site of a former warehouse, of which only the plastered, closed street facade remains. For the new walls around the courtyard the architects decided to use fired clay bricks typical for northern China. These bricks exhibit slightly varied gray tones, which create a shimmering effect, and quickly develop a sensually rough surface when exposed to the weather.

Zhang Ke began his architectural practice in Tibet：the abstract simplicity and bright colors of Tibetan architecture have had a profound impact on his architectural approach. His series of projects in Tibet adopts contemporary local masonry and a geometric-inspired appearance to make the buildings seem like land art, deeply embedded in Tibet's unique landscape.

"Bauhaus" was never a word with special meaning for me, until I went to study at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard in 1996. The school was considered to be the American reincarnation of the Bauhaus, because Walter Gropius himself taught therefrom 1938to 1952. It was at GSD that I encountered the Bauhaus legacy and began thinking about Gropius and Mies van der Rohe.

3000年もの歴史をもつ中国の首都、北京。市の中心部の故宮(紫禁城)、天安門広場の周辺には「胡同(フ-トン)」とよばれる細い路地と伝統的な様式の住宅がいまも残っている。

The historical building culture still shapes China's popular national identity today. There is no brochure or advertising material without curved roofs or pagodas. An additional narrative has been added in recent years: the generic skyscraper city, which provides a background for the curved roofs and historical variety of forms without any local reference. However, the city of the people has lost its simple identity-creating frame of reference from the living environment. Not only functionally one-dimensional city quarters, but also aesthetically impoverished concepts complicate identification and thus the sense of responsibility for the neighbourhood. But what does a contemporary environment look like that is accepted and cared for by the population?

The museum for the work of the painter Xiao Feng is located a few kilometres to the south of the famous West Lake, at the foot of Daci Mountain in Hang­zhou. The plan of the building is based on the idea of a central garden, with a strong sense of inwardness reflecting a character that is key to traditional Chinese intellectual gardens. The layout naturally follows the site boundary and forms a linear circulation route through the exhibition spaces. Alongside the winding gallery spaces on the outside edge, a series of projecting rec­tangular rooms face inwards to provide views of the garden and, in some cases, also views towards the mountains at the back. The roof of the building was designed to generate a sense of layering and movement in the land­scape. The organic volume rises gradually at the front to form an entryway to the garden, where the main entrance of the building is hidden behind trees and bamboo groves. Thus the museum becomes a part of the landscape and enhances the feeling of being in nature.

Walking down a Beijing hutong (‘narrow street’) can feel like you’ve stumbled into a big, slightly chaotic, family home. There are always people hanging around, street furniture arranged for conversations, washing hanging out to dry, bikes scattered about.

ZHANG KE & THE ALVAR AALTO MEDAL exhibition at Maison Louis Carré, France
On the occasion of the exhibition Alvar Aalto, architecte et designer at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris (9 March-1 July 2018), Maison Louis Carré organizes an exhibition focusing on the Alvar Aalto Medal and its newest laureate, the Chinese architect Zhang Ke.

Located in Linzhi county, Tibet, where Niyang River and Yaluzangbu River merge, the Niang'ou Terminal sits above a gently sloped bay, with old willows bowing over sand deltas. The bay then gradually turns into a steeper hill. Behind, layers of soft, nameless mountains.

This project further explores a sustainable renewal strategy for the urban fabric in the Baitasi historical area in an extremely subtle way. It aims to transform a 150 sqm courtyard in a shared space for two households with the insertion of a prefabricated service core in the 80 sqm main apartment and an 8 sqm “Mini House” underneath the pitched roof.

Ethics or Aesthetics? 
The Brutalism and Rustic Manners in ZHANG Ke’s Works
Eduard KOEGEL, Translated by SU Hang, Proofread by ZHENG Chao and ZHANG Yifan
ABSTRACT By studying the two design approaches recurred in Zhang Ke’s works, the article considers the dynamics of his architectural expression. In the micro courtyards in Beijing, the architect seeks to unearth the history of the houses while provoking visitors’ speculation. Using found conditions of the site as the context, with a subtle reference to Brutalist material culture, the architect stages a direct conversation between the old and the new, to generate a distinct, sensual and perceptual experience. When surrounded by rural landscape in Tibet, Zhang Ke borrows the rustic manner of local material culture and applies it in his design, again, implicated with a touch of Brutalist sensitivity. With such approach, he aims to revitalize traditional craftsmanship and engage it in a new way, so as to sustain the originality of local practice while finding new application for traditional skills and techniques. In these projects, Zhang Ke’s idea of urban and rural context denotes a contemporary debate of identity. This conversation, creating an equal exchange between craftsmen and the architect, is a productive social encounter that has to transcend the wide gap of economic development between the two regions.

Recent Projects by ZAO/standardarchitecture 
ZHANG Ke, ZHANG Yifan

Decoding” ZHANG Ke 
Seventeen Years Practice of ZAO/standardarchitecture
ZHI Wenjun, HE Run, DAI Chun    
ABSTRACT Taking Chinese contemporary architect Zhang Ke as a sample, in terms of "data analysis", the article tries to unscramble Zhang Ke and his ZAO/standardarchitecture. By applying tools of computer programming and information visualization, the analysis goes beyond the perceptual understanding of architects, which is always based on the works they design or the articles they write. By means of data and text mining, more rational and scientific, the article summarizes the creative ideas of Zhang Ke. It shows projects, publications, exhibitions, speeches and awards of Zhang Ke/ZAO, revealing the impacting factors behind his success at the same time.

Im Oktober 2016 organisierte der Architektur-Lehrstuhl von Prof. Mike Guyer, Mitinhaber des bekannten Architekturbüros Gigon/Guyer in Zürich, eine Seminarreise ¢ür Architekturstudenten der ETH nach China. Die Teilnehmer konnten sich glücklich schätzen, mit der ETH-Architektin Mulan Sun Buschor eine erfahrene und kompetente Reiseleiterin mit gleichem Berufshintergrund zu bekommen. Mit ihrer einhergehenden Kenntnis der aktuellen chinesischen Architekturszene stellte sie ein äusserst spannendes Programm zusammen, das die hohen Erwartungen der angehenden Architekten voll und ganz zu er¢üllen vermochte. Ich erhielt die einmalige Chance, die Gruppe zu begleiten und mir eröfnete sich in einigen der gezeigten Architekturlösungen eine un erwartet neue Sicht au das Thema Denkmalpflege und Transformation in diesem Lande, die ich ohne diese Werkstattbesuche wohl nie so hätte gewinnen können.Im Oktober 2016 organisierte der Architektur-Lehrstuhl von Prof. Mike Guyer, Mitinhaber des bekannten Architekturbüros Gigon/Guyer in Zürich, eine Seminarreise ¢ür Architekturstudenten der ETH nach China. Die Teilnehmer konnten sich glücklich schätzen, mit der ETH-Architektin Mulan Sun Buschor eine erfahrene und kompetente Reiseleiterin mit gleichem Berufshintergrund zu bekommen. Mit ihrer einhergehenden Kenntnis der aktuellen chinesischen Architekturszene stellte sie ein äusserst spannendes Programm zusammen, das die hohen Erwartungen der angehenden Architekten voll und ganz zu er¢üllen vermochte. Ich erhielt die einmalige Chance, die Gruppe zu begleiten und mir eröfnete sich in einigen der gezeigten Architekturlösungen eine un erwartet neue Sicht au das Thema Denkmalpflege und Transformation in diesem Lande, die ich ohne diese Werkstattbesuche wohl nie so hätte gewinnen können.