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THE POLYGLOT
Huawei: Duplicating Holiday Destinations Charlie Masters explores the giant tech company's brand new Chinese campus
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uawei has recently been accused of copying Western technological ideas. Now, with its new Dongguan headquarters in southern China, the tech corporation is setting its sights on something even bigger to clone: European architecture. Huawei’s new joint campus, called “Ox-Horn”, is composed of 12 “towns” named and modelled after European cities. These include an area mimicking the design of Granada (a city in the south of Spain), Paris - the architecture of its university, Burgundy (Eastern France), Verona and Bologna (for Italian design), Bruges (Belgium), and Cesky (Czech Republic). Aside from offices, the town also features an ‘Illy’ coffee shop, a FamilyMart convenience store and a gym. A replication of the Freedom Bridge in Budapest can also be found dividing the campus in half. “Ox-Horn” is connected by a tram system fashioned from Swiss design, and trains link it to other Huawei campuses, as well as worker housing - the scheme is sort of like a miniature Eurail. The complex is so large that it takes the tram 22 minutes to ‘visit Europe’. The 9 square kilometre facility can house up to 25,000 employees. The idea of architectural mimicry from around the globe isn’t actually new in China. There are also replicas of Paris, London, and Jackson Hole (Wyoming) scattered across the country that date back to the 1990s, of course by different designers to these Dongguan headquarters. Huawei’s new cam-
The original version of the Faculté de Droit in France, a building 'cloned' by Huawei
pus seems to be a nod to the company’s founder and chief executive, Ren Zhengfei, who is a trained architect. The question is: does this campus act as an incentive for the employers who spend time there to travel to Europe and see the actual designs, or does it replace the need to spend money on flying to the continent as, when at work, they can observe the same thing for free? If you worked in a place that looked like the Berlin Cathedral or the Empire State Building would you want to travel to see the original? Does the (environmental) cost and inconvenience of travel outweigh the enriching outcomes of personally experiencing foreign culture? Perhaps this architectural mimicry might even be the future, given growing concerns about the environmental impact of long haul travel.
“The complex is so large that it takes the tram 22 minutes to 'visit Europe'”
The Huawei Headquarters in Shenzhen
