In recent years, architects seem to have become "capable of anything," and crossover has become a popular trend within architectural circles. Many architects have displayed their all-encompassing works in numerous exhibitions—tables and chairs, CD racks, lighting fixtures, leather bags, porcelain, jewelry, clothing, and even board and card games designed purely for architects' own amusement. Many social media outlets have also attempted, through interpretation, to tell society at large that the era of all-design in which architects cross the boundaries between architecture and non-architecture has arrived. At the same time, the renewed collision between architecture and culture is also continuing to heat up through crossover. So how should this phenomenon be interpreted? Are the effects it brings to society good or bad? Architects have their own views.

　　Cao Xiaoxin: Architects Must Maintain Imagination About Life

　　In fact, architects engaging in non-architectural design has a long history. In China, in 2011 the famous Italian design brand Alessi organized Zhang Yonghe, Ma Qingyun, Ma Yansong, and other Chinese architects to design the "Stop Prohibition City" series of products. From their self-explanatory articles, one can see that architects do not merely treat the design of these objects as an extension of architectural design, but that it also reflects a certain critical attitude they maintain toward life.

　　It is indeed hard to imagine: when architects construct designs for space, if they do not think about the forms of the objects most directly related to that space, and do not reimagine everyday life, how many footholds and how much motivation would architects still have for innovation? Just as when thinking about a tea room space, if one turns a blind eye to the forms of tea utensils and people's states of use, then how much value the tea room space itself will still have must become a question that is pressed.

　　In fact, many architects fall in love with non-architectural design, or perhaps there is a deeper and less easily noticed reason. The first point can be understood as psychological compensation for the sense of frustration in the design process. Architects often feel frustration in realizing their intentions. Even masters, even if their buildings can win awards and receive praise in society, still need to pay enormous persuasion costs when facing clients in order to realize their own ideas.

　　In my view, a crossover in ways of thinking is the true crossover. Product design for architects is like soil for farmers, allowing architects to reconnect with the ground from a state of restlessness and mirage. Because if even architects themselves cannot immerse themselves in vivid, tangible real life, and in long-term drafting and empty talk forget that trace of emotional sensibility, allowing theory and unrealistic values to dominate design, then sooner or later the word "architect," once so admired, will become empty and hypocritical. The precondition for architects' existence is to maintain imagination about life.

　　Jiang Yujie: Architecture Must Emphasize Cultural Identity

　　When talking about cultural architecture, many people think of museums, exhibition halls, and other cultural buildings in the narrow sense. In fact, regardless of the purpose of a building, it has been inseparable from culture since the beginning of creation. What is cultural architecture? Is architecture a manifestation of culture, a container of culture, or something that exists as part of culture? Is it too narrow to distinguish cultural architecture by function? I tend to view the relationship among architecture, space, and culture in a broader way. I think culture is the identification of a specific group of people at a specific time with a certain spiritual and life value, with a background relationship to a particular temporal, spatial, and geographical environment. Architecture presents the technology, needs, politics, class, aesthetics, and identity of an era, and has a special relationship with local conditions and geography. From this perspective, architecture itself is part of culture, and architectural phenomena are one corner of cultural phenomena.

　　Culture does not have a question of who it belongs to, only a question of identification; it has connection and meaning for those who identify with it or do not. The same is true of cultural architecture. If a building or place can lead people to think about its existence or environment or to form an emotional connection with it, then this building produces meaning for that subject. Interestingly, this meaning and identification change over time, and the roles and definitions that buildings and places play in the city also change with the temporal and spatial background. Through this change we can see the evolution of values and political-economic backgrounds. The belonging of cultural architecture is itself a question of cultural identity and recognition, something that people of the same era and environment must think about and challenge together. Only by creating more identification can a more pluralistic and inclusive cultural society be created.

　　From the perspective of cultural architecture in a broad sense, cities around the world can always be read for many traces of history, and one can see the accumulation and dialogue, even conflict, of cultures in the course of civilization. Architecture, relatively speaking, as an important individual unit, is understood and read as a collective in the urban text. In China and some rapidly developing regions around the world, new cities and plans take shape under policy guidance and commercial demand. The meaning carried by cultural architecture in the narrow sense sometimes exceeds its substantive function, and architecture often devolves into a discussion of form and meaning, losing the possibility of deeper exploration of urban space and the future environment.