Yan Pan is a Chinese architect and co-founder of SpActrum, an architectural design practice established in London in 2012, with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, and London. SpActrum is recognized for its research-driven methodology, integrating construction, landscape, and temporal continuity into layered architectural narratives that challenge conventional spatial hierarchies.
Built works by SpActrum include the M2 Art Centre in Hangzhou, a multifunctional venue that explores the articulation of space through complex geometries and embedded sequences, and the Stellar Isle project in Shaoxing, part of the Chaichanglong urban regeneration initiative. These projects demonstrate the studio’s ongoing inquiry into how architecture can act as a medium for perception, movement, and cultural continuity. SpActrum’s work has been featured in a range of international architecture publications, underscoring the practice’s commitment to critical engagement with form, site, and sensory experience.
What inspires you?
The diversity and richness of the world, as well as its intricate and complex relationships inspires me.
What inspired you to become an architect?
I am someone who is very interested in the physical world, the material world. At the same time, I feel that I have a keen sense of perception and a love for art. I have found a point of convergence, and that is architecture. Architects have the ability to create a world that can change the surrounding environment to the greatest extent, a world of their own.
How would you describe your design philosophy?
A significant characteristic of contemporary society is the co-governance of multiple superimposed systems. Let’s use a metaphor: If the multiple logics that govern the world are like a stack of plates imprinted with regulatory principles, we smash these superimposed plates with a hammer and then pour in molten metal. Once the metal cools, we remove the plates. The metal, now imprinted with the logic of each layer, is no longer bound by them. It has reached through the gaps to another level. This sculptural metal form is what contemporary architecture should look like. The architect’s duty is to wield that hammer, to discover and create conflicts and fissures between regulatory systems. Thus we are moving towards a “Discrete Architecture.”
Discrete architecture combats a master-servant relationship. In the classic modernist architectural system, space is the ultimate ruler, structure is the skeleton that creates space, subordinate to the needs of space, and HVAC is a servant attached to the structure to meet climatic comfort. Discrete design breaks this master-servant relationship. After countless thought experiments, all subsystems of the building, at a single moment, simultaneously stretch their respective formal potentials. And after their interrelationships have constituted the proper function of the building, a form deeply stripped of its wholeness is presented. This moment is the architecture we pursue.
What architectural issues concern you?
1. Construction as the Origin of Form
Construction is the wellspring of architectural form. Yet today, this process is fragmented by the complex industrial workflows of contemporary building. Architects often prioritize delivering a flawless blueprint, losing touch with the materiality and sensory connections revealed during construction—a constraint of modern architecture. Along this line of inquiry, we have completed projects like Beijing JLW558 Artist House, SpActrum Shanghai Office, and 889 GLO, each exploring how construction can reclaim its role as the core generator of form.
2. Landscape (or Context) as Revelation
We believe that placing the visible manifestations of multiple invisible systems side by side creates a landscape—one that is revelatory. Such landscapes provoke new perspectives on the familiar. This leads to our third recurring concern in urban renewal projects:
3. Temporal Continuity and Authenticity of Site
Renewal inevitably alters some elements while preserving others. We strive to make our interventions part of the site’s continuous transformation—a moment in the flow of time—rather than a disruptive rupture.
4. Form as Provocation
We refuse to reduce architecture to a mere “service.” While problem-solving is one facet of its utility, our work seeks to discover and pose questions. Buildings should offer pauses for thought, for people and cities, rather than just comfortable passage. Architectural form becomes a question mark, an exclamation, or a caesura, awakening new awareness.
What is your favorite project?
There are many buildings I admire, but London’s Tate Modern redefined my understanding of architecture. It revealed a new possibility—one that returns the essence of the building to its users, their purposes, and their actions, while never using that as an excuse to abandon architectural innovation. Instead, it achieves a breathtakingly unique architectural form.
What is your favorite architectural detail?
The architectural detail we understand is not about the detail itself being very beautiful, but about forming a relationship between the detail and the whole, from the tiny tectonics to the overall logic. In this sense, the cantilevered metal edging on the Stellar Isle ramp in the Chaichanglong Historic Area Urban Regeneration (Fairy Li) project is a very good detail. The existence of that detail is to reflect the entire building. We hope that the entire building becomes a walkable, fragmented, and multi-layered overlapping ramp, rather than just a continuous ramp.
So, based on this, we hope that the process of walking is like climbing a mountain and walking in nature. These pieces of ramp are actually pieces of hills. Then the glass should not protrude outside. If the glass protrudes outside, it will look like a building. Therefore, we hope that the glass has a setback from the edge. After the setback, the glass itself needs an installation detail on the outside to cover the fixing of it. So we extended the cover plate outward to make people feel that the glass has been set back. In this way, you will feel that the glass balustrade is just to provide a certain safety defense for people’s walking space, rather than people walking on a building.
Do you have a favorite material?
I believe a “favorite material” is, fundamentally, an appropriate material—one that aligns with contemporary production systems, industrial contexts, and the most accessible supply chains. Any material that logically fulfills these relationships qualifies as a “favorite.” At present, I’m particularly drawn to steel and timber structures.
What is your process for starting a new project?
At the outset of a project, we initiate an exercise we call “Inventorying the Playground.” This involves systematically listing all the project’s constraints, whether visualized through diagrams or itemized as a checklist. Upon this foundation, we’ve already mentally prepared something crucial: our value system. This framework informs our judgments about countless aspects of the project.
The “Inventorying the Playground” process clarifies both the requirements and latent possibilities within a given project. From there, we develop an architectural narrative—guided by our values and worldview—to synthesize and optimize responses to everything mapped in this “playground.” This is how our design process begins.
Regarding this worldview and value system, we’re currently compiling a book—a visual anthology of our observations, both of the world at large and of specific project sites. The book is slated for release later this year, and we’d be delighted to share it with Architecture Lab.
How do you fuel your creativity?
I believe the fuel for this kind of creativity stems from a passion for architecture, keen observation, and insightful understanding of societal production. For instance, when I first returned to China—often dubbed the “world’s factory”—I visited numerous workshops across the country to study various production techniques. Ultimately, I’ve found that curiosity about the external world and a genuine love for architecture are the two most essential drivers.
What inspired M2 Training Centre?
The M2 Training Center is inherently a polyvalent space—open to multiple interpretations and adaptable to diverse uses by different individuals. Its core inspiration lies in crafting a pure geometric form, one that simultaneously invites layered readings from its users.
Drawing inspiration from the layered terrain of the local mountain tea plantations and the meandering, multi-purpose walking trails, it was conceived a space that recalls memories of conversations and interactions along rural field ridges.
How did materiality shape the M2 Training Centre?
Regarding materiality, through discussions with the client, we agreed on using a material that recedes into the background—one that remains unobtrusive rather than drawing attention to itself. The material serves as a backdrop, ensuring people remain the focal point of the space. Our design intentionally prepares this subdued background, avoiding any overly eye-catching elements. That’s why we chose concrete.
To minimize the amount of poured concrete to reduce its carbon footprint, these shells incorporate a supporting structure internally, with only the surface layer (8–10 cm) cast in situ.
Reflecting on your career, which project presented the greatest challenges?
I believe the great challenges primarily come from two directions, not from any specific project.
In each project, we consciously avoid following a set routine. Instead, we seek new points of exploration, constantly pushing the boundaries of our knowledge rather than relying solely on what we already know. This mindset makes every project a significant challenge for us.
The other major challenge stems from the long-term nature and inherent uncertainty of architectural projects. Unlike interior design projects, which tend to be more predictable, architectural endeavors are far more fluid and open-ended.
Where do you see the future of global architecture heading?
This is an extremely broad topic, and it seems architecture has once again entered a period of great uncertainty.
Today, we still do not know what new possibilities the rapid leaps in technology, including AI, robotics, virtual reality, future energy solutions, biotechnology, and environmental technology, will bring. One major challenge posed by AI is that thinkers are no longer limited to architects, even human beings alone.
Architects can rely on their wisdom to tackle other challenges, navigating the present to carve out a better, more era-appropriate path for humanity’s built environment. However, once AI enters the equation, thinkers will no longer be exclusively human. What we should do next remains an open question.
That said, if creators and thinkers are no longer just humans, I hope AI can at least fundamentally understand human needs, analyze them, and engage in genuine innovation, rather than endlessly remixing and rehashing the creations of human architects. To make this possible, we must share our architectural thinking on the internet, allowing future AI architects to grasp the true reasoning and motivations behind it all.
This is why we have launched a V-log project—to analyze projects we admire, showcase our own work, and articulate the logic behind design.
What advice would you give to young architects?
As always, like every generation of young architects, do not idolize the architects who came before you. Instead, carefully observe the conditions you encounter, face the world as it truly is, and trust in yourselves.
