Beijing Line 13 | Northern Section

Line 13 Redux workshop | Beijing, May 25-26, 2009

On May 25 and 26, 2009, 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 last years’ ‘Line13 Superlinearity‘-workshop with the Northern section of Beijing’s elevated subway line, ‘Line13 Redux‘ focussed on the intersection of the Badaling Expressway and Line13 as the locale for research and intervention.

Line 13 Redux fieldtrip | Beijing, May 25, 2009

On Monday May 25, Line13 Redux kicked off with a fieldtrip on Line13. Departing from the Dongzhimen subway station we moved to the first stop on the Northern section of this subway line, the Beiyuan subway station. From here we walked along dusty roads, large construction sites and a large canal to the Lishuiqiao subway station. Half a year after our previous walk in this area – see ‘Looping Line13‘ (December 2008) – it wasn’t difficult to understand in which direction this area is currently developing: it seems that in-between the Beiyuan and Lishuiqiao subway station one of Beijing’s largest residential housing development is currently under construction.

For an extensive documentation of the present state of this area, check the images on Line13 Redux | Fieldtrip (Beiyuan-Lishuiqiao).

Line 13 Superlinearity fieldtrip | Beijing, May 27, 2008

Throughout the past years MovingCities developed a couple of self-initiated investigations around Beijing’s Line13 and has been fortunate to develop some of its findings further by giving the aforementioned workshops. Our interest can be summed up as follows:

Line13 is the mobility spine that makes Beijing move. It is an elevated subway line cutting through large parts of the modern city. With Beijing’s attempts to spread its urban growth into a polycentric model, Line13 re-organizes this ambition; connecting nodes of polycentric development. Surrounding the line are zones where economical, sociological and cultural tensions co-exist.

Street market panorama (source: Carlos Gil/USF - click to enlarge)

From Lishuiqiao we took Line13 to the most Western stop on the Northern section, Longze subway station. Here the subway line intersects with the Badaling Expressway, a 70 kilometer highway connecting Beijing with the Great Wall. Since its construction in 1996 (finished in 2001), the Badaling Expressway has acted as an important attractor for urban development in the North-Western part of Beijing. Around the Longze subway station, where the expressway meets the subway line, four distinct and programmatically autonomous areas can be discerned; a semi-legal and self-built migrant village, an area called ‘car city’, a low-rise residential area and a high-rise upscale residential area.

For an extensive documentation of the present state of this area, check the images on Line13 Redux | Fieldtrip (Longze).

Line 13 Redux fieldtrip | Beijing, May 25, 2009

In the afternoon we headed to the Crossboundaries studio where the workshop took off. In an upcoming post we will provide background and the outcome of this short and intense Line13 Redux-workshop. Stay tuned.

For now, have a look at our project pages:

• Line 13 Redux | Workshop Program
• Line 13 Redux | Workshop Field Trip (part 1): Beiyuan-Lishuiqiao
• Line 13 Redux | Workshop Field Trip (part 2): Longze
• Line 13 Redux | Studio

Pictures by movingcities.org

http://movingcities.org/

Line13 Redux | workshop field trip

Lisbon | April 22, 2009

More pictures resulting from circumstantial movements through Lisbon, while ascending and descending the hills and overlooking the city. A continuation of “7 Hills“-project which was presented and developed, in pre-MovingCities times, for the UIA2005 Congress in Istanbul:

Bert de Muynck | MovingCities presented the “7 Hills“-project as a visual interpretation of cities built on the apocalyptic topography of seven hills. These cities are Brussels, Rome, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Istanbul and Amman. All equal in topography, all resembling and differing from the other. “7 Hills” is a mythical-critical interpretation of the image of these cities, broadens, resurrects and focuses on the accidental encounter between apocalypse, hill and metropolis. Also a “7 Hills Paper” was presented during the congress:

Cities with seven hills all are visual combinations of mental, physical and mythical images of the environment. An urban environment that deals with heights, overviews, landmarks, axis’s, monumental, stairs, sometimes monumental groups and forms, all leading to a processes from one environment into the other. Today, these cities, Amman, Brussels, Edinburgh, Istanbul, Lisbon and Rome, are without doubt all characterized by kinesthetic sensations. Whether it is by foot, car, public transport or bicycle, the sensations of dropping, turning, climbing and twisting is celebrated till the point of urban energy. Hills can mean a point in a journey; different hills give different visual extensions and overlaps to the shape of the site. A constellation that from one hill could seems to align, turns into a circular setting from another hill. One these hills, whether it the Haga Sofia in Istanbul, the Justice Palace in Brussels, the Capitol in Rome or the Castles in Lisbon and Edinburgh, a program of dominance gets form.

For now, some snapshots while enjoying Lisbon’s kinesthetic sensations.

Lisbon | April 22, 2009

Pictures by movingcities.org

http://movingcities.org/

Lisbon snapshots | part II

[bracket] | [architecture, landscape, urbanism, environment, digital culture]

The outcome of the ‘LINE 13 SUPERLINEARITY‘ workshop, in collaboration with Adrian Blackwell (Beijing, May 2008) was selected for the first issue of [bracket] publication.

[bracket] is a collaboration of Archinect and InfraNet Lab, and is composed of a collection of diverse editors and an open-source contributing membership.
[bracket] is an annual publication documenting issues overlooked yet central to our cultural milieu that have evolved out of the new disciplinary territory at the intersection of architecture, landscape, urbanism and, now, the internet. (…)
[bracket] is a publishing platform for ideas charting the complex overlap of the sphere of architecture and online social spheres. Seeking new voices and talent, [bracket] is structured around an open call for entries. The series will look at thematics in our age of globalization that are shaping the built environment in radically significant and yet unexpected ways.
Supported by the Graham Foundation.

In total, 39 Projects were selected by the jury – which consisted of Michael Speaks (Dean of the College of Design and Professor of Architecture at the University of Kentucky); Nathalie de Vries (principal architect/founder of MVRDV); Mason White (co-founder of Lateral Office); Fritz Haeg (Fritz Haeg Studio, Sundown Schoolhouse); Charles Waldheim (Associate Dean and Director of the Landscape Architecture program of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto). Publication Date: Winter 2009.

Superlinear Garden Hub | Joseph Yau | Line13 Superlinearity Workshop

[bracket] ISSUE #1: ON FARMING

Once merely understood in terms of agriculture, today information, energy, labour, and landscape, among others, can be farmed. Farming harnesses the efficiency of collectivity and community. Whether cultivating land, harvesting resources, extracting energy or delegating labor, farming reveals the interdependencies of our globalized world. Simultaneously, farming represents the local gesture, the productive landscape, and the alternative economy. The processes of farming are mutable, parametric, and efficient. From terraforming to foodsheds to crowdsourcing, farming often involves the management of the natural mediated by the technologic. Farming, beyond its most common agricultural understanding is the modification of infrastructure, urbanisms, architectures, and landscapes toward a privileging of production.

—

LINE 13 SUPERLINEARITY project page

End of May 2008 movingcities was invited by Adrian Blackwell, Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design | University of Toronto to give a design workshop in Beijing. Through a series of fieldtrips and programmatic interventions, we looked closer into the Beijing’s peri-urban condition along the Northern section of Line13.

Students participating on this workshop: Gary Chien, Maya Desai, Holly Jordan, Hayley Imerman, Safora Khoylou, Esmond Lee, Timothy Lee, Antoine Morris, Mariangela Piccione, Matthew Spremulli, Sando Thordarson, Sandy Wong, Joseph Yau.

[bracket] | LINE13 - SUPERLINEARITY

http://movingcities.org/

[bracket] ON FARMING | publication

UC#33 Creative China | on the book shelves

UC#33 Creative China | cover

Urban China#33 is out! The special ‘Creative China: Counter-Mapping the Creative Industries’ issue was guest-edited by Mónica Carriço, Bert de Muynck and Ned Rossiter; and designed by Hendrik-Jan Grievink.

The magazine is in Chinese (with select texts published in English). An overview, including all texts in English, is available at our project website: OrgNets.net. Also visit the Urban China#33-page on MovingCities for a summary of the content and background to this issue.

It may be possible to request copies throughout China and abroad, though the issue has sold rapidly and is in limited supply. For detailed information on how to order this issue, see UC#33 OrgNets ordering page.

Counter-Mapping Creative Industries | UC#33 network of contributors

Recent news from Urban China Magazine include the establishment of a mirror version of their website, iURBANCHINA, and an upcoming exhibition, called “Urban China: Informal Cities” (February-March 2009), at the New Museum (New York):

Urban China: Informal Cities is a multifaceted exploration of the groundbreaking and influential magazine Urban China. The exhibition brings together a retrospective of the publication with a space transformed into a physical manifestation of its pages.

LINKS

• Urban China #33 | MovingCities summaryUC#33 out on the news stands
• How Foreign Architects became International Architects: A Case Study of China’s Creative Construction Agenda | by Bert de Muynck
• Urban China Magazine
• OrgNets
• Transdisciplinary Research on Creative Industries in Beijing (2007)
• Archinect: Urban China, Crisis, and the Bootlegging of a Magazine (June 2009)

http://movingcities.org/

Urban China #33 | Creative China

UC#33 | Creative China

During the past month MovingCities, Ned Rossiter and the Urban China team compiled, edited, discussed, translated and re-edited content and graphics for the 33rd issue of Urban China Magazine.

Entitled “Creative China – Counter-Mapping the Creative Industries”, this guest-edited publication is based on preliminary research during May-July 2007, when Ned Rossiter, Bert de Muynck and Mónica Carriço, coordinated the ‘Transdisciplinary Research on Creative Industries in Beijing – Mobile Research Laboratory’ (orgnets.net).

Production got underway in early 2008, and Hendrik-Jan Grievink was invited on board to provide a critical grammar of design.

UC#33 will be available from mid-December 2008 on, and will be partly bi-lingual CN/EN for international readership.

2007年5－6月，奈德·罗斯特、伯德孟与莫妮卡·卡瑞苏协作组织了“北京地区创意产业跨学科研究－移动研究实验室”（详见www.orgnets.net） 。本期的客座编辑工作从2008年年初启动，并邀请亨德里克－扬·格里芬克为此设计一套独特视觉语言。

Organised Networks | Beijing

bei-CI | Mobile Research Laboratory | May-July 2007

The “Urban China: Counter-Mapping Creative Industries Issue” text on orgnets.net gives a full background to the topic:

This issue of Urban China 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. Activist researchers, artists and writers in Europe, Brazil and India have been particularly inventive in combining collaborative techniques of production with social-political critique via media of communication. We see this work as part of the prehistory and global dialogue around how to create new spaces and transdisciplinary knowledges able to negotiate the complexities and politics that attend the economization of culture.

In bringing the idea of counter-mapping to the creative industries in Beijing, the question and problematic of translation is quickly established. Understood as a social practice rather than search for linguistic equivalence, translation registers the conflictual dynamics of the encounter between different knowledge and social systems. Rather than adopting a defeatist logic, we instead see the conflictual processes of translation as constitutive of new social assemblages and knowledge systems.

- – -
More than 30 contributors have each in their own way visualized and written about their experience, research, work and vision on what the Creative Industries still mean today in China and outside. Contributors include Shveta Sarda, Soenke Zehle, Michael Keane, Luka Frelih, Hao Dong+Binke Lenhardt/crossboundaries, Alex Pasternack, Elaine Wing-ah Ho/HomeShop, Xuefei Ren.
Overall, the magazine tries to grasp the interlocking layers of creativity, ecology, organized networks, real-estate speculation, cultural heritage, the music industry and many more.

Import/Export

Once the Urban China Magazine is out, movingcities/orgnets will publish the writings online. As for now the introduction text to the “Import Cultures & Export Innovations in Architecture and Urban design”-chapter:

An important and often overlooked aspect of today’s architecture is the concept of mediation. With an enormous range of possibilities for image making and the ubiquitous demand on architects to ‘make a difference’, it seems as though the work of mediatiation has been sidelined. Mediation gathers knowledge and experience through a process of transformation and adaptation. The culture of construction has became a commodity where one size fits all. This self-inflicted architectural amnesia among professionals has many surprising results –great buildings are erected and designed in absence of any cultural legitimation, providing architects a plethora of possibilities. This global euphoria with neo-internationalism has frequently been controversial for local inhabitants, producing a dynamic tension in which local creativity precipitates on a global scale.

UC#33 Creative China | Design

Fake for Real Memory Game | design by Hendrik-Jan Grievink

Hendrik-Jan Grievink, the guest-designer of this issue, was also the graphic-mind behind the MyCreativity-newspaper, a free accidental publication dedicated to the anonymous creative worker result of conference with the same name that took place in Amsterdam in 2006. More recently he designed the “Fake for Real Memory Game” and soon after got sued by Louis Vuitton over its graphical style:

The Fake for Real Memory Game – consisting of 60 cards that playfully visualize the classical theme of fake and real in our society – has temporarily been taken offline due to legal issues with a luxury leather luggage brand Louis Vuitton. (…) Although the Fake for Real memory game is not a handbag, suitcase or anywhere near the product range of Louis Vuitton and the FFR memory game is immediately recognizable as an artistic and educational take on the fake industry, lawyers of Louis Vuitton nevertheless found it necessary accuse the creators of the FFR game of copyright infringement.

- – -
More updates about the Urban China magazine will follow. In the mean time,
Be Creative! Get Payed!

movingcities.org on architecture, China & the creative industries

Creative China, Cutting and Pasting? | published in MyCreativity-newspaper | 2006
The Rise and Fall of Beijing’s Creative Business District | published in CRE-China | 2007
Interview With Jiang Jun, Editor-in-Chief of Urban China Magazine | MovingCities | 2008

http://movingcities.org/

Urban China Magazine | project intro

Beijing Line13

Between May 27 and May 31 movingcities is invited by Adrian Blackwell, Assistant Professor at Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design | University of Toronto to give a design workshop in Beijing, hosted by Theatre in Motion’s studio. We will be looking closer, through a series of fieldtrips and programmatic interventions, into the Beijing’s peri-urban condition along the Northern section of Line13.

Line13 superlinearity | from Xierqi till Beiyuan

Line13 Superlinearity

Line13 is the mobility spine that makes Beijing move. It is an elevated subway line cutting through large parts of the modern city. With Beijing’s attempts to spread its urban growth into a polycentric model, Line13 re-organizes this ambition; connecting nodes of polycentric development. Surrounding the line are zones where economical, sociological and cultural tensions co-exist.

Throughout the following week we will develop some content, analyses, fieldtrips, ideas, projects and interventions focusing on the Northern section of this line. We go beyond. Beyond the fifth ringroad. Into a territory where urban research and design can reinvent itself.

We will elaborate more in the coming days, for now, have a look at our Line13 Superlinearity project page.

http://movingcities.org/

Line13 Superlinearity | Workshop

Belgian Architects in China | Embassy of Belgium | April 10, 2008

The Embassy of Belgium in China hosts a lecture organized by Bert de Muynck | movingcities. The lecture will feature two Belgian offices and one Mexican (with a Belgian co-founder) that work within the context of the ORDOS100-project. Lecture in English and starts at 6.30 pm. Please RSVP.

Lecture in English at the Embassy of Belgium on Thursday, April 10 at 6pm.
Welcome/drink: 6pm | Presentations and Q&A: 6.30pm | Reception:8 pm

Introduction by Bert de Muynck | movingcities.org

Presentations by:
Halewijn Lievens & Armand Eeckels | NU Architectuuratelier
Jan De Vylder | Jan De Vylder Architecten
Wonne Ickx | Productora

House with office Linq, Sint-Denijs-Westrem | NU Architectuuratelier

Dansstudio 118, Les Ballets C de la B., Gent | Jan de Vylder Architecten

Casa Chihuahua | PRODUCTORA

Description

For the ORDOS100-project FAKE Design, Ai Wei Wei’s studio in Beijing, has developed the masterplan for the 100 parcels of land in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, for the Client, Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd. and will curate the 100 villas project, while Herzog and de Meuron have selected the 100 architects to participate. The collection of 100 Architects hail from 27 countries around the globe. Amongst these architects there are also several Belgian architects participating. Bert de Muynck, director of movingcities, invited three offices to talk about and present their work in the Belgian Embassy in Beijing. Throughout the past years each office has been developing a body of work that is characterized by a quality and originality in form, plan and detail, with projects ranging from housing till museum design. NU Architectuuratelier is known for its acclaimed project for the Victoria Theaterhuis in Gent, Jan de Vylder designed the cabinet for the renowed post-surreal Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers collection in the SMAK (Gent) and Wonne Ickx is the co-founder of Productora, a Mexico based practice, that designed the exhibition space for the Belgian Artist Francis Alÿs.

Presentations will take up to twenty minutes each.

Location

Embassy of Belgium in Beijing
6, San Li Tun Lu
Beijing 100060
P.R.China
Tel +86 10 6532 1736/6532 1737

RSVP: Due to limited seats, please confirm you presence via mail (meichoy.wong@diplobel.fed.be) or telephone (6532 1736 ext. 318).

Info

Information on this lecture is available in Dutch and French on the website of the Embassy of Belgium

http://movingcities.org/

Belgian Architects in China | lecture

View from railroad | Beijing-Harbin, 2006

What can be learned from China?

During the past decades China became the main attraction for architects and urban planners. As if in fast forward, and seemingly out-of-the-blue, urban environments are planned and build, all depending and feeding extensive cash flows and population migrations. But beyond the analysis of “unprecedented development of the Chinese city”, lays a reality; the city.
How are cities made in China? What can be learned from this? Is it producing models of urban forms, programs or architectures that can be applied globally?
Is it possible that the Chinese condition is so singular that it cannot be reproduced elsewhere?

Throughout the following weeks we will develop some of the background, content and methodologies involved in the workshop, both on the City/State and movingcities websites. We will elaborate ideas, thoughts and analysis that go deeper into the understanding of the development of Chinese cities. As such it will try to understand and present the mechanisms that boost the urban growth in China and debate its relevance for other urban contexts.
This mechanisms will serve as the basis on which the City/State Unit workshop will continue to work and test is relevance, possibilities and adjustments within the context of Israel’s urban development, case-study Tel Aviv.

City/State | movingcities project page includes:

• What can we learn from China?
• The Chinese City

http://movingcities.org/

City/State workshop