Please revise, refine and polish the following essay:

Architecture is a profound combination of technology and art. We embrace technology to create artistic value, solve practical social needs, enhance public vitality, and ultimately make it the most important component of social and cultural diversity.

China’s urban development has gone through a period of rapid expansion. In the midst of this busyness, I reflect on what this “prosperity” has brought us. When I return from Beijing to my hometown 1200 kilometers away or travel to distant places, I feel that every city is extremely similar. We call it “a thousand cities with the same face”. If it weren’t for the accents of people around me or the different regional cuisines, I would hardly sense any difference between cities.

During my work, I have been involved in residential planning and design projects in different regions, including projects in major cities along the southeast coast and small towns in northern China. Through the design process, I deeply realize that due to the fundamental market attributes of real estate development (obtaining maximum economic benefits with minimal cost, and constraining design with highly modular conditions), combined with almost identical control conditions (such as planning indicators, sunlight conditions, and form control) among different regions, the spatial forms presented by such projects of major building types in cities are extremely similar. This ultimately makes cities become more and more homogeneous in different regions, scales, and cultural backgrounds, losing their distinctive features and vitality. These project experiences made me realize the importance of maintaining urban diversity, as diversity is the source of urban vitality. In order to maintain urban diversity and enhance urban vitality, whether it be urban administrators, developers, or architects, they should possess interdisciplinary thinking abilities and study cities and architecture from multiple perspectives such as urban planning, design of urban public spaces, and creation of landscape spaces. Therefore, I hope to have more exposure to urban design content in my future studies, and gain a macro perspective to understand architecture, as well as to understand and accumulate knowledge in various professional disciplines.

Furthermore, the rapid development of the construction industry has made us become mere cogs in the assembly line, leaving us with little opportunity and time to deeply ponder the various possibilities of future architecture. Sometimes, we pay too much attention to the external form of buildings, but pay too little attention to the relationship between buildings and the environment, the true experiences of building users, the current and future development of green buildings, and even the impact and role of other disciplines on architecture. This is something I urgently hope to change.

Fortunately, in 2016, I participated in the renovation design of the Intercontinental Holiday Resort at Chongli by Fulong. Before being designated as the hotel where the organizing committee of the 2022 Winter Olympics would stay, the hotel was originally designed and implemented as a three-star hotel. When the design task was assigned, the building structure had already been topped out, which imposed significant restrictions on the renovation plan. The client entrusted us to renovate the hotel according to the Intercontinental standard. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the original structural system, and had extensive discussions and collaborations with colleagues from the mechanical and electrical discipline and equipment manufacturers. Ultimately, we were able to optimize the renovation to ensure excellent spatial effects and architectural experiences. Another aspect of the project that needed breakthrough was the enhancement of the building’s image. Considering the positioning of Chongli Intercontinental Holiday Resort as an international ski resort hotel, after conducting in-depth research on architectural forms of ski resorts around the world, we focused on the Whistler Resort style in Canada and successfully realized it in the building. As for landscape and interior design, we retained a modern Chinese design language. In this way, through the fusion of diverse styles, we created a unique architectural image.

This project made me fully realize that architecture is a highly comprehensive discipline. The final form, space, and experiential effects of any good architecture are inseparable from the support of other interdisciplinary fields and a more diverse design perspective. Therefore, I believe that the master’s program is an excellent opportunity to pause and reflect, to learn advanced design concepts, broaden my horizons and ways of thinking, enrich self-awareness, and allow architecture to better adapt to the diverse needs of future society. At the same time, I also hope to learn more cutting-edge architectural technologies and concepts, such as green energy-saving technologies, in order to integrate architectural design with the environment and climate, and create a more comfortable and climate-adaptive built environment.