Tianjin University Gym in China by Atelier Li Xinggang

While British universities continue to build facilities they can ill afford in order to attract higher-fee-paying Chinese students, the Chinese have begun to do the same and produced a gym that not only surpasses most Western efforts of the postwar period but even rivals that of the Romans. The complex encompasses a multi-purpose sports hall and a swimming pool, the two being linked by a bridge; another elevated spur houses a covered running track. The vaulted roofs of the two main buildings are supported by massive conical forms in shuttered concrete and zigzagging fair-faced struts, with light filtering down through apertures reminiscent of the thermal windows of Roman baths. The whole is sheathed in an envelope of red brick.