Venue: Shenzhen Civic Square, Exhibition Space #7
Time: 10:00 am-12:00 pm, Jan. 23rd, 2010

Venue: Space E6, 2F, E6 Building, OCT LOFT, Nanshan District, Shenzhen
Time: 2:00 pm-4:00 pm, Jan 23rd, 2010

Organizer: URBANUS (Liu Xiaodu, Meng Yan), Li Shiqiao
Moderator: Li Shiqiao
Guests: Esther Lorenz, Ryan Bishop, John Phillips, Scott Lash and Andrew Benjamin

This panel discussion is organized by one of the SZHKB participants, URBANUS. Knowledge as Infrastructure is also the name of their participant project which gathers renowned architects and scholars to discuss the fundamental relationship between knowledge and the city through several conceptions of knowledge – its traditional methods of production and dissemination – which have become problematic for the contemporary city. Perhaps the most prominent symptom of the problematic relationship between knowledge and the city is the appearance of “university cities”. University cities are grounded in a classification of knowledge which has not been fundamentally questioned since the formulation of the 18th-century encyclopedia; they perpetuate, like its earlier form of the campus university, the notion of isolated “knowledge cities” which drastically separate intellect and labour; they provide opportunities for the privatization of knowledge which has been a distinct feature in the Chinese tradition of knowledge production. An alternatively conceived infrastructure of knowledge provides a chance to reformulate knowledge and the city, as well as relieves a tremendous pressure for education at all levels in Shenzhen. The symposium will engage with cultural, social, and philosophical implications of contemporary issues such as information, infrastructure, and urbanism in their specific manifestations in Shenzhen, and in their broadest intellectual formulation.

Founded in 1999, Under the leadership of partners LIU Xiaodu, MENG Yan and WANG Hui, URBANUS is now based in Beijing and Shenzhen, The completed works including Urban Tulou, Dafen Art Museum, OCT Loft Renovation, Tangshan Urban Planning Museum, OCT Art & Design Gallery, Maritime Museum of Art ,Tower of China Merchants Maritime & Logistics Ltd, Shenzhen Planning Building, Metro Tower etc. URBANUS has been exhibited internationally in prestigious shows and presented in prestigious newspapers and magazines, including New York Times. It was featured as one of the ten global “Design Vanguards” by Architectural Record in December, 2005, and has been awarded with many prestigious architecture prizes.

Moderator

Li Shiqiao is Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He studied architecture at Tsinghua University, AA and Birkbeck College. His research has been published in prestigious journals, and his books include Architecture and Modernization (Beijing, 2009) and Power and Virtue (London and New York, 2007). He practiced architecture in Hong Kong, and taught at AA and National University of Singapore.

Guests

Esther Lorenz is an Austrian Architect. She was educated at TU Graz and TU Delft, and obtained her concession for chartered practice in Austria. She has been working internationally in the areas of Architecture and Urban Design prior to coming to Hong Kong to join The Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Architecture. She has exhibited at the 2008 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale, and at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, 2008.

John W P Phillips is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at The National University of Singapore. He is the author of Contested Knowledge: A Guide To Critical Theory (London, 2000). He writes on philosophy, literature, critical theory, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, urbanism and military technology. He is editor, with Ryan Bishop and Wei-Wei Yeo, of Postcolonial Urbanism (New York, 2003) and Beyond Description (London, 2004). He has just completed a manuscript on Jacques Derrida and is currently researching a project on biotechnology and political philosophy.

Scott Lash is Director of Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London; he is also a Project Leader of Goldsmiths Media Research Programme. His recent books include Critique of Information (London, 2002), Recognition and Difference: Politics, Identity, Multiculture (London, 2002), and Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things (Cambridge, 2005).

Andrew Benjamin is Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics in the Centre. An internationally recognised authority on contemporary French and German critical theory, he has been Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York and Visiting Critic at the Architectural Association in London. His recent books include: Philosophy’s Literature (2001) and Disclosing Spaces: On Painting (2004).