In a special two-night series hosted by the Architecture Foundation, six European stars of the 2009 SZHK Bi-city Biennale will be introducing their installations and experiments in London.

On 28th and 29th October 2009, Bjarke Ingels, Arne Quinze, Alexander Sverdlov, Didier Fiuza Faustino, David Chambers and Michael Obrist will present their responses to the theme of City Mobilization in the context of their own work and the cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

This year’s topic, City Mobilization is explored through experimental and temporary projects and an investigation into the relationship between architecture and literature, art, films and politics.

City Mobilization, the third installment of 09 SZHK Bi-city Biennale is curated by Ou Ning and is taking place in Shenzhen and Hong Kong between 6 December 2009 and 23 January 2010 with a film festival, an architecture & literature festival and many more exciting events. The full list of 60 participants will be announced at the end of October.

Tickets are available in advance from the Architecture Foundation: www.architecturefoundation.org.uk

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Wednesday 28 October
City as Playground

For the last 30 years Shenzhen has been an experimental city, transformed from fishing village into a boomtown of 15 million people. ‘City as Playground’ discusses how participating architects and designers are working with the fabric of a city that is unstable, changing and evolving day by day and show how can a temporary installation or experimental project can both contribute and reflect the spirit of an overnight city.

Arne Quinze presenting ‘Shenzhen Sound Field’
Bjarke Ingels presenting ‘My Playground; Shenzhen’
Didier Fiuza Faustino / Bureau des Mésarchitectures presenting ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’

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Thursday 29 October
How to Subvert an Architecture Biennale

For City Mobilization to truly change the way citizens of Shenzhen interact with their environment, architects and artists first have to change the way their city is perceived and experienced. Three projects that will be in Shenzhen demonstrate that what is seen is not always what is there. Ticket includes entry to SZHK Bi-city Biennale party.

feld72 presenting ‘Public Trailer’
Aberrant presenting ‘Gordon Wu: City Franchises’
SVESMI presenting ‘Footsteps of Urbanisation’

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Bureau des Mésarchitectures

Two swings are placed in the familiar frame of an advertising billboard, by Parisian artist Didier Fiuza Faustino. Visitors are invited to climb in and participate in an esoteric experience over, above and within Shenzhen.

www.mesarchitecture.com

BIG

BIG’s response to the Bi-city Biennale’s theme of City Mobilization was to unleash a team of parkour artists across Shenzhen. This film, directed by Kaspar Schröder at the Mountain House in Copenhagen will give an idea of what you will see in China this December.

www.BIG.dk

Arne Quinze

A spectacular landscape of 15m-high wooden shards cover a 100m of Shenzhen leading up to the Lotus Mountain, by Brussels-Designer Arne Quinze.

www.arnequinze.tv

SVESMI

SVESMI have embarked on an ambitious examination of the invisible costs and prices behind the fabric of the city and how they fit uncomfortably or otherwise with our own priorities.

www.svesmi.eu

Aberrant

Gordon Wu City Franchises is an investigation into the truths and profit-making opportunities of live-home working through the eyes of a Hong Kong businessman. The truth is constructed by London-based architects, Aberrant.

www.aberrantarchitecture.com

feld72

The Vienna-based architects will be dispatching a series of tailor-made bicycle trailers for hire across the city. Residents and visitors alike will be able to use loudspeakers, karaoke, punching-bags or mobile gardens for private or public performances.

www.feld72.at

The 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture will take place from 6 December 2009 to 23 January 2010 in Shenzhen, the coastal city in the South China known as the forefront of China’s economic reform, and the neighbouring Hong Kong.

Presented by the Shenzhen Municipal Government and produced by the city’s Planning Bureau and Culture Bureau, the Biennale is currently the only urbanism\architecture-themed international biennale in China. The first two installments—curated by Yung Ho Chang, head of MIT’s Department of Architecture in 2005, and Ma Qingyun, dean of the University of South California School of Architecture in 2007—have focused respectively on the theme of ‘City: Open Door!’ and ‘COER: City of Expiration and Regeneration’. The 2007 exhibition was also extended beyond Shenzhen and was presented innovatively as a ‘Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale’. More than 200 architects, designers, artists and scholars were invited during the two exhibitions.

Ou Ning, the Chinese artist, documentary-maker and curator, is the chief curator for the third instalment of the Bi-city Biennale. Taking ‘City Mobilisation’ as the curatorial point of departure, Ou is aiming at an exhibition that’s more accessible and engaging, while retaining the cutting-edge nature of its predecessors. An international team consisting of four curators, Beatrice Galilee (UK), Kayoko Ota (JP), Pauline Yao (US) and Wei Wei Shannon (CN), will be working together with Ou to ensure the geographical diversity of the exhibition line-up. The main exhibition site is unprecedentedly located at a government square—-Shenzhen Civic Square.

There will be 60 artists and architects from all over the world participating in Shenzhen. Talks and lectures, tours and workshops with all of the participating architects during the opening week promise to offer active platforms for simulative thinking and discourse generating. A Shenzhen-Hong Kong marathon conference is planned to take place on a public train between the two cities. A film festival featuring films related to architecture and urbanism will be held during the course of the opening. The Biennale will also involve a retrospective of Hsia Changshi (master of Lingnan-style architecture) so as to complement the group-exhibition practice familiar to the international biennale circus and to offer in-depth case studies. Finally, as an attempt to stretch the concept of architecture exhibition beyond diagrams and mock-ups, a special ‘Architecture Tour’ programme will be prepared for the audience—who will be invited to register on the Biennale’s website for various architecture-oriented tours designed by travel agencies specifically for the exhibition—so that they can go to different Chinese cities to experience selected architecture projects by local and international architects.

Both the overall theme and spirit of this year’s event is City Mobilization. The Bi-city Biennale is aimed at a grass-roots, participatory audience who will be able to digest, enjoy and engage with their city, their neighbouring city and for many visitors coming to see the Bi-city Biennale, a brand new city.

Final details of participants and announcements of timetables will be out in November.