Shenzhen. This biennial at the Contemporary Art Terminal (OCT) in Shenzhen was curated by the internationally recognised Chinese architect Yung Ho Chang1 with the motto »Open City, Open Door! Strategies for building and inhabiting the city«. It is the first large exhibition on urbanism and architecture in China,2 and has its roots in an initiative of the city administration of Shenzhen, which supports it both in an organisational and financial regard. It is no coincidence that a project like this one is carried out in Shenzhen, because Shenzhen is one of the largest special economic zones in communist China and has triggered a rapid economic and population growth in the entire Pearl River Delta. This development was documented as early as 2001 in a publication put out by Rem Koolhaas together with doctorate students at the Harvard Design school in the familiar hip Koolhaas style. 3
The biennale curated by Yung Ho Chang happily takes a different tack. Chang structures the numerous exhibits in different »zones« like »University Town«, »Outer City«, »Urban Village«, »Inner City« and »Film City«, thus referring to what he sees as the crucial elements that go to make up and define Chinese – and not only Chinese - cities today. The appellative call »Open Door!« could certainly be seen here in an ambiguous light: as a demand for a political, democratic opening. As is very understandable in view of the prevailing political situation in China, however, the architectural production and urbanism here do not provide any ideas aimed at changing prevailing societal structures – an endeavour that Western town planners have also long since given up. What is propagated instead is an analytical, sensitive or even reconstructive approach to city development and architectural tasks. By taking this approach, Chang takes up a position that definitely conflicts with official Chinese urban politics, which, as is the case here as well, waver between urbanist ambition and the reality of capital investment.

Against this background, the biennial presents a subtle counterpoint with its curatorial concept. In the process, it becomes clear that architects and town planners have mastered and can apply the whole canon of modern and contemporary formal languages.4 Apart from the discursive dominance of these canons, this also certainly has to do with the fact that more than a few of the participants have studied and worked at Western universities. Alongside this analogy, however, there are certainly differences that derive not only from a different architectural and urban history, but also processes of late modernisation that are now becoming noticeable in the cultural sector as well. Here, things are not done by halves, and whole museum cities are being built, such as the Jianchuan Museum Town in Anren. More than 20 Chinese architects are involved – under the supervision of the FCJZ studio - in realising the individual clusters of this concept, oriented according to the scale of old urban structures. In cooperation with numerous other architects and artists, the Jinhua Architecture and Arts Park in Zheijang is also being planned under the leadership of the Beijing architect and artist Ai Weiwei. Because Chinese urban politics barely take any account of already existent structures, the group URBANUS, for example, came up with an concept for the small cities of Gangsha and Fuxing that provides for the greening of roofs and extending existing constructions with added floors.

The research project »The Transformation of Beijing« by the journalist Wang Jun, the architect He Huishan and the photographer and painter Sze Tsaung Leong and »Beijing Research« by Sze Tsung Leong, on the other hand, offer a complex analysis of urban development in Beijing: here, city can really be »read« in the form of books. The presentation of the design process for the Shenzhen Cultural Center – a spectacular glass construction by the Japanese architect Arata Isoyaki that breaks up the building’s volume into polyhedra - is also stimulating. Draft models and drawings are presented in the exhibition in a kind of working situation set up as a condensed archive. Apart from such architectural highlights, it is the unspectacular looking studies that speak for a successful choice of projects at this biennial. Li Juchuan uses a video camera to examine the way high-rise residents feel about life. Taking the example of the suicide of the young Hong Kong actress Pauline Chen, who threw herself out of the 24th floor of her apartment block in Shanghai in 2002, the project recalls a topic that is still taboo in China. The fashion designer Coco Ma also generates a completely different approach to city by including urban patterns, structures and everyday city life in her fashion and presenting the designs in catalogues that are integrated into an almost claustrophobic walk-through sculpture made of cardboard.

This biennial does not provide any complete surprise, nor is it a pure show of achievement. But, because of its successful presentation and mixture of architectural, artistic and urbanist projects, it provides an informative insight into the state of contemporary architectural and urban planning culture in China. This alone is reason enough to pay more attention to biennials of this kind – if they should continue to exist – in these parts as well.

http://www.shenzhenbiennale.cn/

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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