Chinese architect Lu Wenyu co-founded Amateur Architecture Studio with her husband, Wang Shu—the first Chinese citizen to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize—in 2007. The duo focuses on craft-based and traditional architecture practices, and frequently works with recycled materials. Continually challenging the “professional and soulless architecture” practiced in China, their best-known projects include the Ningbo History Museum, the Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum, and the Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.

“We want to create architecture that is better suited for ordinary people. To design for human scale and use. And use more natural materials. Build with natural materials so it looks as if the building grew out from the land, not that you suddenly put a building there. Then as time passes by, the building looks even more beautiful than when it was first built,” said the duo in an interview with CNN.