Hao Dong founded the award-winning architecture practice Crossboundaries, together with Binke Lenhardt, 2005 in Beijing. He graduated from architecture in China and the United States. After studying and working in New York for almost 5 years, he returned to China in 2002 and as of today has an overall practice experience of almost 20 years.
His interests center around bridging architecture and education by extending the creative thinking outside the traditional realm of the design practice. Hao is an active public speaker aiming to open dialogues and sharing his creative visions with clients, collaborators, and students through design events, workshops and curation, both within and outside the profession. He is driven by the goal of finding better and more future oriented solutions as well as asking better questions that design should be able to respond to.
Mostly, they need to care about, love and understand human beings. All the stakeholders must share an understanding of the whole picture: humanity is the center and money is secondary. Then they can locate the equilibrium in the spectrum of nature vs. infrastructure and leverage the elements’ synergies.
As designers, we are shapers that inspire people. Regardless of the scale of the project – be it a chair or a city – the sole purpose must be to create a whole organism with a relationship to individuals and society. When the true starting point and goal revolves around this concept, everything else falls into place: the requirements for shelter, preservation of nature and utilization of resources.
In 2005, DONG Hao co-founded Crossboundaries and he is now the Managing Director of its Beijing office. In this interview he reflects on how architects/designers are shapers that inspire people and how important it is to create a whole organism with a relationship to individuals and society.
From Dialogue to Action: Since 2016, CITYMAKERS supported the realization of selected project ideas in the context of liveable city making. Read here about the ‘CITYMAKERS-Future of Living’ incubator team.
Get to know CROSSBOUNDARIES, award-winng architecture studio in Beijing, founded by Binke Lenhardt and Hao Dong, pioneering in the field of architecture for the future of education. For the CITYMAKERS accelerator program the team brought their vision along to not only create physical learning environments: Creating design thinking based learning programs for kids to become better city makers in the future.