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Seminar Week WS 2005



MADE IN CHINA©

Shanghai / Beijing
Morphological transformation and the production of urban territory
25. Nov.-04. Dec., 2005

Prof. Kees Christiaanse/Prof. Marc Angélil

The past 20 years have been witness to a historically unparalleled process of global urbanization. Nowhere is this more evident than in China, where constructed reality consistently outpaces all growth prognoses, challenging architects to design for a future which can no longer be planned or predicted with any accuracy. The emergence of morphologies which exceed normative understandings of landscape, infrastructure, and built fabric evidences new economies – understood as systems of exchange – operating in the production of urban territory.

The seminar week will explore those economies in terms of accellerated processes of urbanization observable within and around China’s twin symbols of capitalism and communism, Shanghai and Beijing. Marking a territory delineated by hyperdensification, large-scale urban erasure, the widespread introduction of individual mobility, and movement from ideology toward consumption, China is a laboratory of cultural change, from the multiple centers of the megalopolis to peripheral constructions. Extending from pre-communist structures through contemporary buildings and projects, research will focus on developing an understanding of shifts within quantitative and qualitative aspects of urban space, structure, form, and program, and how such shifts suggest new exchange mechanisms operating in the synthesis of cultural identity.







Revision r1.3 - 11 Nov 2005 - 13:57 - AlexanderLehnerer
Parents: WebHome 		Professur Kees Christiaanse, Institut für Staedtebau, Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft

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