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Construction Engineering and Interior Design Foresee Brilliant Future

The architectural design and decoration industry began in China as a discrete industry only 20 years ago. It has developed so quickly that it now yields hundreds of million in yuan of output value annually.

Having never been much-subjected to the controls of the former planned economy or government, the business grew in response to its market; strong earnings and profits were a result. But with tighter government regulation of the property market, profits have declined to about 10 percent.

But how should the Chinese construction and design industry develop in the future? How healthy is Beijing's property market, and how should what kind of rules government urban development should the Beijing Municipal Government adopt?

To gain some insight into these questions and others, Business Beijing turned to He Ning. He is a graduate of Capital Normal University who immigrated to Canada for several years but who is now working as president of the Beijing Honggao Construction and Decoration Design Engineering and Corporation Limited, a construction and design industry leader with an annual output value of 500 million yuan (US$60.9million).

How do you appraise on China's interior design market?

China's interior design has a very promising future. Its annual output value could reach 800 billion yuan–1,000 billion yuan (US$97.44 billion–US$121.8 billion) in 2005. At the same time, this field is in deformity to a certain degree. It lacks high-quality human resources, which results from there being very few graduates in this professional major, but many from related areas. Our interior design market is fully developing within the market economy, which has resulted in some confusing situations were some seek exorbitant profits while others have very little space for profit.

And there are still no enterprises with an annual output value of more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.21billion), which is an unusual phenomenon in such a big industrial field. It is very important to understand the industrialisation of this field, which results from an integrated working process that includes workshop manufacturing, the modular production of structural parts and onsite installations. This has resulted in shortened construction periods, improved quality, more reliable safety as well as more cost-effective solutions.

Some predict that the price of Beijing's property will decrease after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. What do you think about this and how will Beijing's property market develop in the future?

Beijing's property prices will not decline, ever. Beijing is so important as the capital of China and a centre of politics and culture that prices will not fall. We saw some prices fall sharply a few years ago in some cases, but that was not because of the market itself. It was because the design of existing buildings was not good enough to satisfy market demands, but those kinds of cases were few in number.

Compared with prices in other internationally famous cities such as New York, Rome, Paris, Hong Kong, where flats can be sold for as much as US$3,000 per square metre or more, the buildings in Beijing have a very huge space to develop. Prices can rise, especially if construction quality and design can be improved. The only important thing is that the government should make a very good plan for this city and use land reasonably.

What do you think of Beijing’s urban development planning?

The city faces difficult dilemmas in its urban design and development. It wants to protect its historic sites and the artefacts within to preserve a sense of the original flavour of Beijing as a historical capital, but with the development of its economy and technologies, more and more modern skyscrapers are sprouting from its urban landscape, which is a direct threat to existing structures.

When you see the conditions that some Beijingers endure in the city’s old, inconvenient siheyuan and hutong, where several families may share a single water hydrant or use the same public toilets and where there is no cable television, Internet or heating systems…you can't help wondering whether these should be kept as a symbol of the culture or whether they should be replaced by cleaner and more convenient buildings for these people. It seems the Beijing Government can do little more than continue building new housing, especially for the elderly, while at the same time trying to protect these old home places. Of course, this takes time and money.

We can see that Beijing has accepted many works of foreign designers such as in its National Stadium (nicknamed the “bird’s nest”), the SOHO properties and the CCTV Tower.

Has Beijing become an experimental field of them or whether this is good for the other Chinese designers?

Well, the architectural arts are going through an experimental period. People need to make many experiments and find what works best for them. Once the style of a kind of architectural design matures, it means it will soon be out of date. Why can't we have more brains to work for us at this moment, as in the Chinese proverb that says: "Three heads of the shoemakers are much clever than one head of Zhugeliang (Who is thought as one of the smartest persons in China)." We should open our minds and improve ourselves through learning from them.