The architects’ hope for the Chinese dream
January 18th, 2008 | by admin |“China is halfway done,” stated Neville Mars on January 12, at a talk entitled “Beijing, 2001-2050: 3 new books/ 3 views,” co-sponsored by urbane magazine and Boloni Lifestyle Museum. He was joined by two other internationally-recognized architects Ma Yansong and Andre Schmidt. The three architects presented their views of Beijing’s ongoing construction, and highlighted points made in their already-published or up-coming work
The dream: full of hyper-positive feelings
Neville Mars is the author of The Chinese Dream – a society under construction. He first came to Beijing in 2002 and began the Dynamic City Foundation.
At the talk, he focused on China’s goal to build 400 new cities by 2020, and finding solutions to densely populated cities. Mao Zedong once said that “only on a clean sheet of paper can the newest and most beautiful picture be drawn.” Mars argues against the understanding that China “can take a city as ‘tabula rasa’ and build a new one on top.” He is also concerned with the overlap in the rural and urban areas in, and emphasizes a need to “work with the flow” of existing cities before expanding them. He proposes making Beijing more local, as opposed to creating satellite cities around it; building hybrid tower-hutong communities, as opposed to gated high-rise communities; and an elevated, flat escalator that moves people above the city, as a way of “shrinking the urban network.”
Read more at The architects’ hope for the Chinese dream - People’s Daily Online.
