Venue: Multi-function Hall, 1/F, Shenzhen Civic Center
Time: 10:00-12:00 7th Dec
Moderator: Adrian Hornsby
Guests: Urbanus (Wang Hui, Wu Wenyi), MAD (Ma Yansong, Dang Qun), Urban China (Jiang Jun), BAU (James Brearley, Fang Qun), School of Architecture, Tsinghua University (Zhu Wenyi, Alex Camprubi), MVRDV (Winy Maas, Paul Kroese), ZUS (Elma van Boxel, Kristian Koreman ), Rocksteady Design (Brend Koolhaas, Femke Bijlsma, Reinier Suurenbroek), Powerhouse (Nanne de Ru, Charles Bessard), Dynamic City Foundation (Neville Mars, Alain Fouraux, Liu Jiafeng)

● Should we accept urban life as it has evolved in the global centers?
● Are congestion, pollution and monotony the ultimate parameters of the modern metropolis?
● Will technological creep keep us complacent?
● Or, are some bold designers capable of conceiving an alternative future?

PROJECT B.A.R.C. – Beyond Architectural Regulations in China
BARC is an ambitious collaborative design-research project initiated by the Dynamic City Foundation. BARC aims to deliver a holistic planning model for green cities. The project brings together ten teams from Holland and China in a two-tiered compressed study to conceive fundamentally new concepts that look beyond the realm of engineering and design. Phase I is a workshop that maps our ultimate desires for green living in the future. Results will be presented at the forum ‘Green From Scratch’ at the HKSZ Biennale 2009. Phase II is an actual urban proposal presented at the Shanghai World Expo that simulates a longterm development for Caofeidian Eco-city. Ten teams planning on top of each other for five year periods until 2060 will reveal the possibilities of evolutionary green planning.
More information:http://burb.tv/

Organizers

Dynamic City Foundation (Amsterdam, Beijing)

Team: Neville Mars, Alain Fouraux, Kafung Lau
In 2003 Neville Mars founded the Dynamic City Foundation (DCF); having developed several progressive green planning projects in China, DCF is a research and design platform focused on the rapid transformations of China’s urban landscape, working to move beyond common attempts at integrated planning to achieve a holistic model for sustainable design. This model entails a close correlation between the designs at different scales – from block to region – and their development through time. As the conceptual organizers of the project, DCF will lead the urban planning process.

Moderator

Adrian Hornsby is a writer of rare diversity. His pioneering work on non-financial metrics (to be published with OUP, 2010) has been adopted by several UK funds, and is the subject of a major study in Singapore. The book The Chinese Dream, co-authored with Neville Mars and the DCF, is an award-winning 800-page monster-volume anatomizing Chinese urbanization. His essays and features, ranging from tomatoes in the Middle East to girls in night-time cafés, have appeared in numerous publications, including Hunch, The Architectural Review and Urban China, and he speaks regularly on a host of global issues. He has written dozens of short stories and four internationally produced plays. He is currently working on an opera libretto.

Participants

Urbanus (Beijing)

Team: Wang Hui, Wu Wenyi
Under the leadership of partners LIU Xiaodu, MENG Yan and WANG Hui, URBANUS is a think tank providing strategies for urbanism and architecture in the new millennium. One of China’s most prolific and respected architecture firms, Urbanus works in all areas of architectural design. Urbanus’ most noted projects include the Nongke Center in Shenzhen, the planning of TaidaTown in Beijing, and, with OMA, the winning bid for the Shenzhen Crystal Island.

Underline Office & Urban China magazine

Underline Office is a project-oriented group founded by Jiang Jun. Since the beginning of 2005, Underline Office has been fully engaged into the founding and researching for Urban China magazine, and also involved into a series of important exhibitions.
Urban China is authentically the first magazine on urbanism in China. With an integrative framework, Urban China romances the diversified urban context in different typologies of text. It also makes the deep-level problems more accessible by means of amalgamating illustrative diagrams as well. Through the professional analysis and interpretation, Urban China translates the governmental policies from top down as a constructive platform between the government and the people. In 2009, Urban China was exhibited in three museums in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago as the first Chinese magazine being exhibited overseas in travelling solo exhibitions.

ZUS (Rotterdam)

Team: Elma van Boxel, Kristian Koreman
ZUS was founded by Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman in Rotterdam. Trained as landscape architects, the office has been involved with design and research projects ranging from fashion to urban planning. ZUS’s work has a strong been concerned with social sustainability. ZUS’s realized designs and urban plans include Rotterdam’s Westpunt district and the Central Park at the World Expo in Shanghai, as well as a floating city in Holland and an elevated highway infrastructure for Shanghai. Their public research culminated in the publication “Re-public” (2005).

MAD (Beijing)

Team: Yansong Ma, Dang Qun
MAD’s work is, by definition, symbiotic with nature, integrating building with the existing physical and cultural landscape, and designed to be inherently logical to a green urban environment. This approach has propelled MAD to become a defining force in Chinese design. Current projects include the Absolute Towers in Toronto, the Erdos Museum and the Sinosteel International Plaza in Tianjin. MAD recently developed a masterplan for Huaxi District in Guiyang.

Rocksteady Design (Amsterdam)

Team: Barend Koolhaas, Femke Bijlsma, Reinier Suurenbroek
Rocksteady, is an experimental architecture firm that aims to anticipate, which also is a sophisticated Dutch firm with a unique sensibility for flexibility, invite and encourage the unpredictable. In their work partners Barend Koolhaas en Femke Bijlsma look for ways in which the user can actually influence or change space itself. Their proposed sustainable building system Shuffle is a cornerstone for adaptable constructions. The projects, achieved independently in the Netherlands, Japan and for companies such as OMA, all aim to lay bare the most fundamental qualities in architecture and reexamine the quintessence of age-old building typologies.

Powerhouse-Company (Rotterdam, Copenhagen)

Team:Nanne de Ru, Charles Bessard
Young and dynamic Powerhouse has been redefining how to approach design problems at every scale. Nanne de Ru, worked at AMO/OMA Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam as a lead researcher and designer on numerous large scale regional planning projects including: Ruhrgebiet a study for a new identity for the Ruhrvalley in Germany, Eurocore, a study into new forms of urbanity in Europe, Beijing Olympic conference center competition, Beijing preservation strategies. Charles Bessard, worked at Atelier Jean Nouvel on the Denmark Radio Concert hall in Orestad.

MVRDV (Rotterdam, Shanghai)

Team: Winy Maas, Paul Kroese
MVRDV was set up in Rotterdam (Netherlands) in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. Dutch architecture can be signified by a dry and rational approach. MVRDV has spearheaded and perfected this mode of working. Everything from legislation, to typologies and even nature itself is recalculated, reorchestrated and redesigned to fit the needs of an increasingly densely populated and diverse world.

BAU International (Shanghai)

Team: James Brearley, Fang Qun
Strongly interested in the concept of network cities – defined by continuous programming – BAU International is a leading contemporary design company practicing architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture. Originally founded by James and Fang Qun in Australia, based in Shanghai, the firm is a cross-cultural enterprise. BAU has won five Royal Australian Institute of Architects Awards and received first prize in over two dozen invited competitions.

Tsinghua School of Architecture (Beijing)

Team: Dean Zhu Wenyi, Alex Camprubi
Tsinghua School of Architecture is the leading architecture educational institute in China. Under the leadership of Dean Zhu Wenyi, the school has moved strongly in the direction of green design, embracing new design technology, conscious relationships between the architecture and urban planning scales and building extensive relationships with partners in these fields around the world.

Technical Analyses

Tsinghua Institute for Architecture & Technology Studies
Prof. Yehao Song, Prof. Terrence Curry

Video Documentation
Lu Jia, Master’s Graduate in school of Television And Film Art, Communication University of China.
Editor of Documantary-2008 Shenzhen & Hongkong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture.
Excutive producer of Vitamin Space\RMB City Office in Video Art.

Client
Caofeidian Eco City