HCCH was founded by Hao Chen and Chenchen Hu in Shanghai in 2018. The studio observes, understands, and responds to its surroundings with boldness and imagination. By mediating and challenging existing paradigms of type, scale, material, and codes, HCCH seeks to explore and amplify the utmost character of each specific project.

Both Hao and Chenchen studied in Shanghai, Vienna, and Boston. They hold Bachelor’s degrees in Architecture from Tongji University and Master’s degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard GSD.

1. How did your journey into architecture start? Did you always know you wanted to work as an architect?

Hao Chen: When I was in high school, I saw an image of Maison Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas in a magazine. The flying beam, circular door, and elevator plate refreshed my understanding of the possibilities of our physical environment. At that moment, as a teenager, I decided to become an architect to make cool stuff like Rem.

Chenchen Hu: When I was in middle school, I loved tonal drawing, making models, FLASH animations, geography, and playing Age of Empires. Then I thought it might be interesting for me to study something visual and spatial, like architecture.

2. What guides your very first steps in conceiving a building, and how do you translate a client’s vision into architectural form?

We are always fascinated by works that go beyond or reshape our daily experience, telling a different story or offering an alternative perspective. The translation from brief to design is a non-linear, highly integrated process — in other words, reasoned intuition. “Form” is not our only concern.

3D-printed plastic pavilion by the sea, Shanghai © Qingyan Zhu

Twisted Brick Shell © Fangfang Tian

3. How would you describe your design style as an architect?

We are interested in geometry and material, and how these elements could make up something more provocative as a physical space. But we would rather not confine ourselves to a certain style.

We don’t have projects that we are “proud” of, since every project is imperfect. At the moment, we would say the twisted brick shell project is one of our most well-received projects, as it tries to refresh the common tectonics of brick structures.

5. It must be hard to choose from, but what are your favorite architectural works in the world, and could you tell us why?

It’s hard to name a certain architecture as a favorite. We like Herzog & de Meuron and Toyo Ito’s early work. We also like the work of many Spanish and Latin American architects. Buckminster Fuller’s work and architecture without architects are at two opposite poles, but we love both.

6. What is the part of your work as an architect that you enjoy the least?

To compromise with the market, or even commercially, which is almost inevitable nowadays if one works on urban projects.

7. What are your inspirations? Is there a place, a figure, or an activity that always fuels your inspiration or always re-centers you?

We talk to each other.

8. Is there a motto that resonates in all your designs? A mantra that you live by when building?

Honestly no.

9. What do you think the new architectural projects of today need the most? Or asked differently, what is something that the buildings of today lack the most?

Faith and optimism.

10. How do you approach the dialogue between material, structure, and atmosphere in your architecture?

We don’t have a fixed formal language. Each project needs to be site-specific and inherited from the gene of something on the site.

11. What role does context, whether cultural, environmental, or social, play in shaping your design decisions?

Again, it’s an integrated result. If you are honest in your observation and make full use of the qualities you find on site, the result will naturally come along.

12. What would be an advice that you wish someone had told you as you were starting out?

Be bold and stay naive.

13. Finally, what are your 3 favorite pieces from the Philia Collection?

We went through the pages and found so many of the works truly beautiful that making a choice felt difficult. Ideally, we would love to imagine designing a space that could house them all.

Twisting Tower © Qingyan Zhu

Thank you so much Hao Chen and Chenchen Hu,  for this lovely interview!