2009

Hutong Histories and Building Beijing | August

In August, MovingCities published a trilogy, Hutong Histories, and a quadrilogy, Building Beijing, on the state of affairs in China’s capital. At the one hand a look at the destruction of the area surrounding Gulou Dajie subway station, the notion of punctual preservation and hutong hypes, at the other hand trying to understand how Haussman is haunting Beijing, how the city is becoming a linked hybrid and how to make sense of its skyline. Hutong Histories 1, 2 and 3. Building Beijing 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Urban Panorama Workshop | July

Between July 3 and 5, MovingCities was invited by the Cultural Association +853 (Macau) to coordinate the URBAN PANORAMA workshop as part of the This Is My City (TIMC)-event. In collaboration with architect Nuno Soares, the URBAN PANORAMA explores Macau’s urban landscape by investigating the relation between the cultural/media imaginaries and the concrete conditions of the everyday. In order to do so we conducted a Skyline Architectural Research-project hopping from rooftop to rooftop, scanning Macau’s skyline.

Line 13 Redux Workshop | May

On May 25 and 26, MovingCities was invited by Shannon Bassett, Assistant Professor at School of Architecture and Community Design | University of South Florida, Tampa, to give a short design workshop. After dealing in 2008 in the ‘Line13 Superlinearity‘-workshop with the Northern section of Beijing’s elevated subway line, ‘Line13 Redux‘ focused on the intersection of the Badaling Expressway and Line13 as the locale for research and intervention.

City Move Interdesign workshop | March 22- April 4

MovingCities participated in the City Move Interdesign workshop in Gällivare, Sweden. In a partnership with Icsid, the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) and the community of Gällivare, the workshop dealt with the issue of relocating people and societies. The workshop investigated socially responsible design methods to create new spaces for people and is part of the Icsid Interdesign workshop series.

Crimson NewTown Research | February

After the second world war a large family of New Towns was built all over the globe. The towns were planned from scratch, based on the combined ideologies of the Garden City, CIAM-modernism and the neighbourhood principle. From Western Europe to Asia, from Africa to the former communist countries, the original universal model of the New Town was adapted to local cultures, economics and politics.

Urban China #33 | Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | January

This issue of Urban China Magazine sets out to critique and redefine the idea and practice of ‘mapping’ the creative industries. Foregrounding the experimental process of collaborative constitution, we are interested in the multiple idioms of expression that make creative industries intelligible beyond the blandness of policy discourse.

2008

Jakarta, IAI Awards & Research | October

Bert de Muynck | MovingCities was invited by the Indonesian Institute of Architects (IAI) to be part of the jury for the IAI Awards 2008. In between visiting the entries, two lectures were given and an initial urban research set-up.

Take-Away China, Research | 2008-09

Currently we are setting up a project dealing with the Chinese presence in the Flemish Region, Belgium. This research project will be developed throughout 2008. In the mean time Urban China Magazine published “Take-Away China” in their ChinaTown-issue. Read the full text.

Line 13 Superlinearity Workshop | May

From May 27 and May 31 MovingCities conducted together with Adrian Blackwell (Assistant Professor at Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design | University of Toronto) a design workshop in Beijing. Together with Xu Jian (Professor of Art History, Sichuan Polytechnic University), we looked closer, through a series of fieldtrips and programmatic interventions, into the Beijing’s peri-urban condition along the Northern section of Line13.

City/State Workshop | February

The City/State Unit at the Architecture Department of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jeruzalem, Israel) invited MovingCities to hold a one week workshop. Entitled “What can we learn from China?”, the workshop explored the mechanisms driving the development of the Chinese city and projected and adapted these to the Israeli urban context. February, 2008.

2007

Urban(s)Talking, 2007 – …

In 2004 hutong tours for visitors to China contributed four million yuan (€400,000) to the nation’s coffers. This will double in the coming years. The new urban explorers no longer hang out in hutongs, however. Their latest hot spot is Line 13, a 40.85-km-long light-rail line that connects the northeast and northwest corners of the second ring road and kisses the sixth ring road in the north. I suggested to the Olympic Committee that the marathon be organized beneath this line. I never got a reply. Well, forget about the hutongs and the pedi-cabs. Line 13 is the place to be. It lets passengers view over an hour of urban development for less than 3 yuan (€0.30).
read full version of A Letter from Beijing (Bert de Muynck, Mark Magazine #09) or visit our MovingCities Interviews-section

Transdisciplinary Research on Creative Industries in Beijing (CIB), Mobile Research Laboratory | May – July

This project brings international and Chinese academics together with urban research organisations, artists, curators, media producers and policy-makers in order to undertake transdisciplinary research on Beijing’s creative industries. Through collaborative practices of self-organization, one of the primary aims is to create a ‘counter-mapping’ of creative industries in Beijing.

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