Crowdfunding & Architectural Practice

A Testing Ground for Homestay-Hotel in China

Abstract

Young architectural practices are short of building opportunities, with limited knowledges of the production chain and access to potential investors among the relevant monetary aspects that deprive them from the practice of architecture as “the act of construction” (Bernstein, 2014: 19). Mobile Internet platforms, however, may provide new frames to reimagine responsibilities and risks of the profession. Wee Studio experimented architectural crowdfunding in China as a financial model that questions the need for a conventional client, supporting instead architectural projects by means of individual investments in small amounts of money. Crowdfunding initiatives spread rapidly among Chinese social network users, thanks to the WeChat platform – whose power in multiplying the popularity of the idea and easiness of online payment made the Treehouse project possible. Design and construction of a pair of wooden huts that complement a homestay-hotel in Miyun (Beijing) were completed between November 2015 and September 2016.