Zhang Ke

Zhang Ke is a Chinese architect who founded ZAO / Zhang Ke Architecture Office (标准营造, standardarchitecture) in Beijing in 2001. Born in 1970, he studied architecture at Tsinghua University and took a Master of Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1998, then built a practice that treats planning, architecture, landscape and product design as one investigation.

His work ranges from the Novartis campus building in Shanghai to courtyard and hutong transformations in central Beijing and buildings set into the Tibetan landscape, always rooted in local history and construction. Recognition includes the Alvar Aalto Medal in 2017, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 and the International Award Architecture in Stone in 2011, while a furniture collaboration with CAMERICH begun in 2011 produced the ZK Series.