China has become the world's greatest laboratory for architecture, dotted with mamoth, shining landmark buildings. Few, however, look congruous with their surroundings. Pritzker Winner Wang Shu offers an alternative view. He blends China's quest for novel and eye-catching architectures with a respect for traditional aesthetics.

Strolling around the Xiangshan Campus is like walking inside a scrolling landscape. The architecture, rather than being out of place, blends in naturally with the environment.

"People thought I just think about the relationship between modern architecture and Chinese tradition. In fact, it's also about the future and human being... I don't think the shining, huge landmark building are the right direction for future Chinese cities," Wang said.

Wang's design for the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou sprawls over 64,000 square meters. It's a simpler, but bolder approach to modernism, in contrast to the glass and steel structures filling the campus, and elsewhere in China.

The Hangzhou-based architect was the first Chinese to win the Pritzker Prize in 2012, considered the Nobel Prize of architecture.

"When I made the design, I tried to incorporate cultural diversity and differences of localities, and also maintain the traditional craft aspects of architecture. I will continue to do so in the future," Wang said.

Wang stresses the art and craft of drawing, and working by hand. The design of Xiangshan Campus used seven million old tiles and bricks. They were salvaged from demolished homes, and carry a distinctive cultural identity.

"It's not rubbish. It means history, time, experience comes from life. Many people have touched this," Wang Shu said.

His "Amateur Architecture Studio" is concerned with such things as memory, location, craft and indentity, or the connection people feel with the buildings around them.

By calling it "amateur", his firm invites a rethink of the prevalent and standardized practice.

"The ugly modern building are all produced by the professional system. They have forgotten history, common people's feeling about lives. So I think I can become an amateur, that means I have the freedom, I don't care about money, just have an interest to design, handdrawing, handmaking. This means amateur," Wang said.

In China where traditional structures are flattened to make way for the construction boom, Wang's pursuit of traditional elements and focus on the environment have made his work a unique phenomenon. His insistence on the protection of architectural heritage sends a clear message: Respect, don't erase the past.

(CNTV.cn May 8, 2013)