Venue: Multi-function Hall, 1/F, Shenzhen Civic Center
Time: 14:00-16:00pm, 7 Dec
Moderator: Ou Ning
Guests: Liu xiaodu, Wang shu, Atelier Zhanglei, Zhu xiaofeng, Liu jiakun, Zhang ke, Shen Keyi, Hon Lai-chu, Lu Nei, Ching-yueh Roan, Hu shuwen, Han dong, Zhu wen

Chief Curator Ou Ning chooses nine representative architectures from the buildings that were built up in China during the last decade. Nine famous writers are invited to conduct field surveys of these 9 architectures. According to their experiences and imagination, they write nine fictions telling stories between people and architectures.

Fictions that are written based on architectures, city space or architects are called Architectural Fiction. As an existing literary and film genre, Architectural Fiction has already produced many well-known works, such as Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. It can be considered as a collective attempt at Architectural Fiction that nine Chinese writers of different generations create fictions on nine architectures.

Odyssey: Architecture and Literature is both a publishing project and a tourism project. In addition to reading these fictions and architectures’ information both on books and biennale’s website, audience can also join the tours launched by szhk biennale in which related architects will explain their designs in person. This is a parallel odyssey. Audience will traverse the forest composed of words by the writers, experience different geographical features, and visit the fantastic spaces created by the architects. The odyssey will lead people to the sites of China’s contemporary architecture: an historical moment that is currently happening, some architectural experiments that cannot be defined, and a popular phenomena that needs to be dissected.

Guests

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.
The name of “Urbanus” derives from the Latin word of “urban”, and strongly reflects the office’s design approach: reading architectural program from the viewpoint of the urban environment in general, and the ever changing urban situations in specific.

Hon Lai-chu, born in Hong Kong in 1978, is the author of Quiet Beast, Kite Family, Grey Blossom and A Forest of Pipes. She has won the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature and the Top 10 Chinese Novels World-wide for the year 2008 honored by Asianweek. In Taiwan, she is the winner of the first Prize for the best young writers in long-short stories of the 20th United Daily News Literature Award, the 2008 Open Book Award honored by China Times, etc. Her novel Quiet Beast won the 8th Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature in 2005.

Wang Shu graduated from the Department of Architecture, Nanjing Institute of Technology in 1985. He received his Master degree in the same institute three years later, and founded Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou. He is also the Head of Architecture Department in China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China since 2000. He has been nominated the International Highrise Award 2008 and has won the first Holcim Awards competition for projects and visions in sustainable construction in Pacific-Asia in 2006, the first China Architectural Arts Award in 2004, among others.

Lu Nei, works were published in Harvest magazine twice within half a year. Lu has published two novels: My Youth Gone Wild is a story makes his audience “read with a smile and sorrow”; while Wish You Were Here tells about a youth story in Dai City with lively details.

Atelier Zhanglei is the founder of AZL Architects and also a professor and vice dean at School of Architecture, Nanjing University. He graduated from Southeast University in Nanjing and finished his postgraduate studies at ETH Zurich. In May 2009, Zhang Lei was named by Icon Magazine as one of the 20 architects who are transforming the future and changing the way we work.

Ching-yueh Roanis the head of the Department of Art Creativity and Development, Yuan Ze University as well as director of its Art Administration Institution. He has over 20 publications, which include his best-known literature work Lin Siouzih’s Family as one of the Top Ten Chinese Novels World-wide for the year 2004 honored by Asianweek. He is also known for his architecture reviews of Weak Architecture, In the Name of Architecture and so on.

Liu Jiakun established Jiakun architects in 1999. He has also won the ARCASIA Award for Architecture, the 2003 Chinese Architecture Art Prize, etc. His works were presented in a+u, AV, area, MADE IN CHINA, AR and other publications. He was invited to lecture at MIT, the Royal College of Art in London and many Chinese universities.

Han Dong was admitted by the Department of Philosophy, Shandong University and was sent to work in Xi’an after the graduation. In 1984 he was sent back to Nanjing to teach in college, and quitted the teaching job nine years later to become a full-time writer. Han Dong has been a major player on the modern Chinese literary scene since the 1990s mainly as a novelist, and started to write long stories since 2000. He contributed to the foundation of literal websites Them and Rubber.

Zhang Ke got another Master of Architecture at Harvard University two years later. He is a specialist in architecture, landscape, urban and product design. He founded standardarchitecture in 2001 and its major projects include Urban Backyard in Beijing, Wuyi Primary School Auditorium in Beijing, Wuhan CRland French-Chinese Art Center, Qingcheng Mountain Teahouse in Chengdu, Beijing Dongbianmen Ming Dynasty Relics Park and Yaluntzangpu Boat Terminal in Tibet.

Zhu Wen as a writer and film director, he was honored as one of the most influential contemporary writers in China. His works have been selected in university literature textbooks and translated into English, French, Germany, Italian and other language around the world. Graduating from Southeast University in Nanjing with a degree in Engineering in 1989, he left his job and became a freelance writer in 1994. The English version of his novel I Love Dollars was nominated in the final selection of Kiriyama Prize in 2008.

Sheng Keyi once lived in Shenzhen, Beijing, Shenyang, Guangzhou and other cities and served as a stock company staff, secretary and magazine editor, etc. She started her writing career since 2002 and has completed five full-length novels and several collections of short stories. She was awarded as the most promising new author of the First Chinese Language Literature Prize in 2003.

Hon Lai-chu, is the author of Quiet Beast, Kite Family, Grey Blossom and A Forest of Pipes. She has won the Hong Kong Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature and the Top 10 Chinese Novels World-wide for the year 2008 honored by Asianweek.

Zhu Xiaofeng graduated from Shenzhen University in 1994. He received a Master of Architecture degree in Harvard University in 1999. In 2004, he founded Scenic Architecture Office in Shanghai and was exposed to worldwide architecture media, such as Taschen, Phaidon, Domus, Area, Time+ Architecture, IW Magazine, and Perspective.