On April 18th, Zhuang Ziyu, founder and leading architect of BUZZ Architecture Office, was invited to attend the opening ceremony and dinner of Loro Piana's global premiere exhibition "A Touch of a Century: Loro Piana's Journey Through the Ages" held at the Shanghai Pudong Art Museum. He also participated in a special forum themed "Weaving Time and Space: From Craft Heritage to Cultural Narrative". The forum was hosted by Cici Xiang Yejing, a renowned model and art media personality, with fellow guest Xu Zhiyuan, a writer, publisher, and founder of One-Way Space. 

This exhibition showcases the evolution of Loro Piana's textile craftsmanship over a century and its pursuit of raw material quality. The brand's narrative, which runs through the exhibition and emphasizes meticulous details and technical heritage, actually aligns and connects with the concepts of architecture, industrial design, and art design in many ways. They imply a flowing eternity and a sense of "familiar strangeness", where every inherited detail embodies the power of time. 

In Zhuang Ziyu's view, architecture is a product with "temporal attributes". Architects deal with the duration of a building's existence and the interactive time between architectural space and its users. "Many of Loro Piana's products are very interesting. As I want to elaborate, items they made in the 1990s or a decade ago can still be worn with great elegance today. They transcend the constraints of time, and this philosophy is, in a sense, what we pursue in architecture—because we all create long-lasting products." 

Architecture inherits not only tangible, touchable entities but also a spiritual legacy. "What we want to create is a sense of 'ancient futurism'." This may seem contradictory. Zhuang Ziyu cited BUZZ's project in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, as an example: "Every project we undertake contains a 'surprise'. This surprise stems from a feeling of 'familiar strangeness', as we incorporate many traditional fragments that evoke a sense of familiarity." 

Zhuang Ziyu stated, "When executing a project, I hope to avoid creating a 'discontinuity with the past'. Because what we call history and future are actually narratives constructed based on existing materials. By reinterpreting common things through the perspectives of creators and users, we can give them an entirely new look." The exhibition features numerous documents, manuscripts, and sample books, presenting the inherited narrative of Loro's cashmere craftsmanship woven through time and space over a century, and showcasing historical stories recorded in frames of "archival images" passed down through generations. 

Like industrial manufacturing, in architecture, the construction process and technological evolution often directly determine cultural expressions, final formal orientation, and underlying meanings. During the forum, Zhuang Ziyu noted, "In the architectural design process, whether it is the Chinese dougong (wooden bracket system) or foreign arches, they are actually cultural forms shaped by production techniques, representing the interconnection between materials, construction technology, and culture." 

Loro Piana's heritage, which has evolved to date, now serves Italian local aesthetics through global production and craftsmanship models, integrating globality and locality into its design. Against the backdrop of the current era, it offers us a new vision and inspires more participants in the design field. 

"A very surprising part of the dinner that day was when the brand awarded herders to recognize who produced the finest cashmere. Moreover, only the climatic conditions of Inner Mongolia, China, can support the production of such materials. I believe it carries a strong sense of 'locality', which, combined with the global production chain, creates a dual attribute of being both global and local—just like what we pursue in architectural design," Zhuang added. 

With a century of heritage, the host summarized Loro Piana with four words: "Slow is Fast". Its strict control over details and quality has made it a long-termist and enabled it to achieve long-term benefits. During the forum, Mr. Xu Zhiyuan also mentioned, "Time is composed of countless details. Stories fascinate us because they use numerous details to present a true scene of life at that time." This resonates with the spatial creation goal pursued by the two One-Way Space venues co-created by BUZZ and Mr. Xu Zhiyuan—through an uncertain relationship, they provide users with more room for participation, and then use numerous detailed fragments to recreate a true life scene or restore a story from memory. 

"Everyone is neither a prop nor a symbol. When we pay more attention to details, we can instead create a trend. When we constantly try to catch up with trends, we will mostly be completely swallowed up by them," Xu Zhiyuan said during the forum.