Feichang Jianzhu, the design atelier behind the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

From the Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV headquarters to Norman Foster’s sprawling airport terminal, there is no shortage of ambitious modern architecture in Beijing.

But what the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art plans to show in its first architecture exhibition includes the drawing, film and other media by Yung Ho Chang, a Chinese architect who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, cites Hitchcock and Duchamp as influences and co-founded Feichang Jianzhu, a design “atelier” whose name can translate, depending on pronunciation, to “unusual architecture” or “very architectural.”

“What is contemporary Chinese culture?” Mr. Chang, 56 years old, asks. “I don’t think anyone really knows. But we like to really figure it out to some extent through our work. It’s not just about production of buildings or design. There is this bigger concern.”

The show’s title, “Material-ism,” is a play on the constructive work his practice does as well as the materialism that he calls “at the same time very familiar for people in China and still very strange.”

It is also a nod to what he considers the importance of craftsmanship in architecture. “We don’t believe architecture is just about image-making,” he says. “It’s a background for activities for life, for events. It doesn’t mean that architecture is not important in its own right, but the quality of it, the art of it, comes from material, construction and craft.”

“He’s almost philosophical about materials,” says Philip Tinari, the Ullens Center’s director. “It’s never about a surface shine for him. It’s about really penetrating down to the objects that make up the environments that we inhabit.”

“Material-ism” consists of six freestanding units exploring themes such as inhabitation and urbanism. The drawings in one, “A Night in the Bicycle Apartment,” show buildings with an omnipresent cyclist, intended to spur thinking about “how buildings are occupied and how people will use the building,” Mr. Chang says. In another module, “Infernal Construct: Make or Break,” the three main characters in the 2002 Hong Kong thriller “Infernal Affairs” appear, courtesy of a montage technique, in FCJZ-designed buildings.

By incorporating other media into the exhibit, he hopes to shed light on the interdisciplinary approach he stresses in his work. “Architecture shows can be hard when it’s just plans and models in a succession of white cube rooms. I think people who are not in the field can lose interest,” Mr. Tinari says. Of the modules, he adds, “I hope that they become a bit like playhouses in the center of this gallery, that they’re kind of fun spaces to inhabit.”