The 2019 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Shenzhen) is officially open!
The exhibition consists of two sections, namely “Eyes of the City” and “ Ascending City”, which explores the evolving relationship between urban space and technological innovation from different perspectives. The exhibition is at the Futian High-Speed Railway Station and Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning. Selected by the UABB organizing committees as the main venue for the “ Eyes of the City” section, the Futian High-Speed Railway station might seem at first like a challenging location for a Biennale exhibition. It represents one of China’s leading mobility hubs and it is part of one of the world’s most extensive underground spaces. The exhibition reacts to this unusual setting by pursuing a design strategy that aims to attract an audience not necessarily accustomed – or even interested – in visiting a Biennale about urbanism and architecture. By mimicking the flamboyant visual language of duty-free shops ( developed by the Dutch graphic designer Mieke Gerrotzem), the exhibition aims to expose station users to the ambiguity of “Eyes of the City” scenarios. The station becomes a space where visitors cannot escapes the exhibited works – and where functions and experienced get hybridized.
The theme of the year is looking at the most radical development in the evolution of the Internet of Things. The curator believes that one of the fundamental duties of architects and designers today is to grapple with this momentous shift, and engage citizens in the process. Such is the aim of the “Eyes of the City “ exhibition. The exhibition seeks to create experiences that will encourage people to get involved in understanding the ways in which new technologies will shape cities in years to come, and form an opinion about them.
Nicole and I are always interested exploring different representation and technology to analysis spaces for assisting the project. Therefore, in this exhibition, we would like to share our how cities have evolved through the extended eyes of remote sensing technologies. The drawing contains a series of territorial satellite analysis, we wanted to use this through the processed eyes of satellite imageries, the public can studies cities on a different scale and juxtapose their own urban experiences in on the ground level.
The exhibition opened on 21st December until early March! Please drop by! Let’s have a quick tour of our work and some selected exhibitors, shall we?
1. Sensing Cities by Elaine Tsui and Nicole Zhang
The exhibited materials contain a series of territorial satellite analysis, depicting three decades of realized urban expansion of the Pearl River Delta: from the open up in the 1980s to 2018. The urban growth is a combination of planned constructions are market-led developments. Ten zoomed in areas are selected for their exceptional scale of land transformation during this period: Qianhai, for instance, has been turned from mixed-use coastland into full urban usage with extensive reclamation activities. As explained, satellite imageries would be a tool for the public to study cities on a different scale and juxtapose their own urban experienced in on the ground level.
While the analysis provides effective data on actual ground happenings, our team also invited cross disciplinary for round table discussions. The scheduled discussions includes “On City Sensing: Plan, Detect, Analyze, Plan Again”, which looks at how sensing technologies can be linked into existing current planning and feedback systems. “On Design Technologies: Remote Sensing and Data Processing” round table discussion invites practitioners to demonstrate how they use this remote sensing as a tool. We will also run a marathon sharing session “On Shifting Relationship: Urban Dwellers and Built Environment”, in which citizens from different backgrounds would share their own city stories and tales. Last but not least, through the discussions “On Urban Strategy: Comparing Past and Future” and “ On collaboration: Integrating City Clusters within Pearl River Delta”, architects and planners would present recent completed projects in PRD as well as referencing other cities comparing the past, present and looking into future strategies.
2. Nomadic Wood (looking) by Philip F.Yuan
The curved laminated timber installation is very difficult to miss. It is composed of spirally staggered and curved wooden components. Each component functions as a twisted “ digital periscope”. Both ends of the wooden component are installed with a screen and a camera. Through one of 5e screens, the visitor is able to see the scene of the exhibition space captured by the camera at the other end. Meanwhile, the visitor and her surroundings will also be recorded by a camera and transmitted to another screen to be viewed by other visitors.
3. Urban Witness: The transformation of Shekou Fishing Port by Intact Studio, Ai Deng, Li Lipeng
The project captures the transformation of Shekou fishing port using two types of space sensing technologies.a) Multiple Aerial photos using drones and b) LiDAR 3D scanning. With instrumenting advanced space sensing technologies, the team digitised the physical space. Combined with interviews, illustrations to give a richer setting for a discussion in the future.
4. City and the sky above by MVRDV and Airbus
The proposal is looking at urban transportation in order to help cities coping with massive population growth. The proposed new mobility system, includes critical pieces such as electric and autonomous air vehicle, on demand air services, Unmanned traffic management solutions and well integrated transportation infrastructure.
5. Instant Lounge by UEOdesign
Instant lounge uses a digital fabrication method to create temporary furniture for inhabitation in public spaces. The system of construction is a cable machine that is anchored into the ceiling. The machine lays a thick rope into various seating, playing and sleeping configuration that respond to demand. Once a seating configuration is no longer needed, the rope is swallowed by the machine and re-composes into a new configuration.
6. Cities for Humanity by Thomas Heatherwick
A film interview with Thomas Heatherwick on the subject of human-centered design and future cities in the digital age, through the discussion of the three projects included project 1“ Google Charleston East in Mountain View, Californian” designed by Heatherwick Studio with BIG, project 2 “ 1000 trees” in China and project 3 “ New bus for London”, Heatherwick addresses some of the criticism that has been levied against the concept of the data-led cities more broadly.
7. Photoshop City by Secretary
I personally think this is quite a meditating and fun installation to watch. “ Photoshop City” is an installation by the Stockholm-based architecture office Secretary, which uses Adobe Photoshop to explore the capacities and the potentials for visualization as a tool and object of design research. The work is made up of two sets of videos – Housework (2017) and Spacework (2019). Each video documents a photograph of an existing urban setting being manipulated in order to reveal the unbuilt ideals.
8. Image in Place by Chen Hui, Liu Qiao, Zhong Kai
One of my favourite projects! A must visit! The project location situated in Chongqing Hualongqiao area. Using photogrammetry technology to reconstruct the model of this region, and inviting experts from different areas to provide professional information, the exhibitors have fused UAV aerial pictures and photogrammetry reconstruction 3D scenes with programming dynamic graphics to generate animation of AR, which combines the special topography with the city status of Chongqing in different historical periods to form a series of dynamic, millennial and in-depth digital analysis. Through the AR technology, people have an “eye” for a thorough observation of the city. When the UAV takes this “eyes” high into the sky and flies freely, people can transcend their physical smallness and gain a macro perspective that they can control.
9. Living Shenzhen by Warehouse of Architecture and Research (WAR), Paolo Santi
The project questions the the management of shenzhen, particularly with regard to the urban planning policies of the urban villages. It aims to provide an innovative tool for the urbanscape planning, a method that uses local observation in order to conceive the authentic identity of a place for the benefit of its community. It tried to overlay multiple personal perspectives on the planning process to ensure a fitted, well-thought urban environment. The main component of this team’s proposal is using the advanced existing technology of eye tracking. The document video shows the multiple participants shared their daily use of the city and its architecture through wearing a pair of smart-glasses that a pair of smart-glasses that allowed record and capture the user’s vision.
10. Curatorial Practices in An urban Community – A case of ZhongKang Road
“Urban curation” takes place in public space, where its inherent contradictory is self evident. In the context of spatial politics, these conflicts are far beyond the scope of everyday. In such a project, the curators and designers are experiencing an unprecedented extension in their identities – from the specific design of urban space to the selection and coordination of art works, to the negotiation of stakeholders, project implementation, financial management and so on. Each step is facing new challenges. The exhibition content is centered on the discussion of curatorial practices of Zhongkang Road. Situated in Meilin, Zhongkang Road is on the north extension of the central axis in Futian District.
A series of amazing academic seminars were held during the opening week. It was almost like back in school! I also took some snapshots.
Many public events will be held throughout the exhibition period, to involve a wide range of visitors. Please keep an eye on the ” Eyes of the City” by following the official WeChat account and or subscribe my blog so you will be receiving info time to time. I will also be at the exhibition space most of the weekend! Let me know if you are dropping by.
In today’s blog post I wanna share my experience on kick-off site/construction meeting since I…
Seeded in the late 1990s, and further conceptualized in the late 2000s, M+ is one…
In light of the latest developments of the novel coronavirus, all the upcoming round table…
Contemporary technologies are products of human demands. They are not external elements independent of societies.…
Two years ago, i wrote a blog post " Becoming an Architect - My RIBA…
Half a year ago, I participated in a few videos with Design Trust in Hong Kong and…