The Grand Tour · 2026 China Academy of Art (CAA) Graduation Season has come to a successful close. Graduates from 20 academic units responded to the times with art and explored the future through creativity, unfolding a youthful narrative of ideals, journeys, and growth across the city and campus, transforming Hangzhou into an open art venue that gathers intellectual power, creativity, and action.
The China Academy of Art is proud to launch the "Youth Insights" series, which continues to focus on topics such as avant-garde practice, humanities and technology, rural academies, A better China, rooted construction, people-centered, poetic cinema, visual sinology, Eastern design, and overseas insights. The series closely follows how young creators measure the world with their footsteps and respond to the times with their works. Between every departure and arrival, we jointly witness the grand explorations and boundless possibilities of a new generation of artists.
The School of Architecture at the China Academy of Art pursues the academic direction of "reconstructing a contemporary indigenous Chinese architecture," committed to integrating traditional craftsmanship, humanistic reflection, and contemporary art into a cohesive whole, and reviving a holistic approach to local building practices that harmoniously connects nature, city, architecture, garden, and artifact. Led by Professor Wang Shu, the architectural team, with a broad international vision and rooted in traditional Chinese architectural arts, insists on the return of manual craftsmanship. Centered on a hands-on construction experiment curriculum, the school strives to bridge the gap between traditional and modern architectural language and building craftsmanship. With the philosophical depth of the "linguistic turn," it aims to establish an architectural discipline system with distinctive Chinese indigenous characteristics.
Through the Wall
Cai Peiyu
College:
School of Architecture
Supervisor:
Liu Chang
Genre:
Architectural Design
This design is grounded in the study of architectural "openings" and takes "Through the Wall" as its thematic concept, responding to the site relationship between the old city wall of Suzhou's Changmen, the urban block fabric, and the riverfront. The building organizes community center functions through wall-like strips running parallel to the historic wall, incorporating daily sports, residential activities, city wall cultural exhibitions, and community commerce. Through a series of continuous openings, it creates vertically interconnected circulation and sightlines. While the walls demarcate spaces, they simultaneously guide people to move and transition between streets, courtyards, and public areas, revitalizing and reorganizing community life alongside the old city wall.
Supervisor's Remarks
Cai Peiyu's graduation project, Through the Wall, addresses the creation of community public space while also serving as an experimental exploration of architectural spatial boundaries. The design translates earlier research on window openings as spatial loci into a spatial scheme that reshapes the street-like urban fabric, creating a field where multiple spatial typologies organically coexist. The final model is highly expressive, and the drawings are thorough and complete in their presentation. Throughout the academic year, the student has demonstrated outstanding performance, reflecting strong communication skills, independent research capabilities, and proficient design development abilities, all while maintaining a positive and relaxed attitude throughout the course.
Cai Peiyu
Cai Peiyu, born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the Department of Architecture, School of Architecture, China Academy of Art. Through training in spatial place-making, local material understanding, and traditional construction practices, she developed an approach to architecture rooted in local contextual thinking. During her undergraduate studies, she received the Zhejiang Provincial Government Scholarship and the Graduation Creation and Lin Fengmian Creation Award, among other honors. She is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Architectural Conservation at the National University of Singapore, focusing on the heritage renewal of older Asian cities, with systematic studies in adaptive reuse of historic buildings, traditional conservation materials, and practical approaches to neighborhood renewal and regeneration.
