Ray Chen + Partners Architects

RAY CHEN ARCHITECT, FOUNDER Ray Chen, the founder of Ray Chen International and Ray Chen + Partners Architects, has led and influenced the minimalist movement in Taiwan for the last two decades with great success and his distinctive designing style has brought him much acclaim both locally and internationally. Ray Chen believes in the principle of subtraction, and has a talent in dealing with plain materials, and simple elegant elevations; by using light and shadow to create the gradation of bright and darkness, his spaces are rich without being monotonous or dull. His stylish simplicity portrays a rich imagery that embodies Ray Chen’s thoughts and sentiments about the world and people. Ray Chen was chosen by the Japanese Media Asahi Graph as one of the five most influential architects in the Greater China Region in 1994. His cultural taste has accurately captured the hearts of book lovers in Taiwan. In 2004, the Eslite Bookstore Kaoshiung won the “Design for Asia Award”, hence collaborated to establish the Eslite image. In 2007, he was chosen as one of the foremost 20 international architects for the “NEXT GENE 20” Ao-Di Grand Land architecture international project, and won the gold prize of “Spatial Native Language ArchiDesign Award 2008”. An exhibition design project, “Si Shu Xi”, was awarded the “Design for Asia Grand Award” by the Hong Kong Design Centre in 2009. Several of his most well-known public space projects are San Hsi T’ang Tea Room of National Palace Museum, the lobby of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the teaching, administrative building and the new library of Shih Chien University, the new library of Shantou University in Guangdong province China, Palais de Chine Hotel in Taipei and Eslite Causeway Bay Store in Hong Kong. The latest astonished projects which finished in 2014 were Boeing 777 Cabin design and the VIP lounge renovation for China Airline. POWEN HSIAO ARCHITECT, CO-FOUNDER Powen Hsiao received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and completed his Masters of Architecture at Columbia University, GSAPP, New York. Prior to co-founding the firm with Ray Chen, he was an Associate Principal at Artech Architects where he was responsible for a number of international architecture competitions and overseen the designs of several key institutional projects such as Shih Chien University Gym and Library and Dharma Drum University . Powen Hsiao is a Registered Architect in Taiwan and an Assistant Professor at National Chiao Tung University, Graduate Institute of Architecture. He has taught at a number of institutions including Shih Chien University and Ming Chuan University for Graduation Thesis Design.