Cao Zhen

    caozhen0806@126.com

    TO mark the 10th anniversary of the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), an international contemporary art event held in Shenzhen and Hong Kong every other year, a retrospective event, UABB@Venice, will be held from Sept. 20 to Oct. 20 at the 14th Venice Biennale in Italy.

    The event will summarize the UABB’s growth over the last 10 years and its contributions to Shenzhen’s development. A selection of exhibits and stories from all five UABBs will be presented through documents, books, installations and documentaries at the exhibition to be held at the China Pavilion and the Finland Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Past curators and exhibitors of the UABB will attend forums on city development at the event.

    “Ten years ago, when the first biennale was launched in the south area of OCT-LOFT, the place was an abandoned area full of old factory buildings and pig-raising farms. The biennale was held in the factories before the area was transformed into a modern art and cultural center,” said Zhang Yuxing at a forum held Sunday in OCT-LOFT.

    Zhang is the director of the urban design department of the Urban Planning, Land and Resources Commission of Shenzhen Municipality, the initiating organization of the biennale. Launched in Shenzhen in 2005, and later joined by adjacent Hong Kong in 2007, the biennale is an influential, professional and interactive exhibition of architecture and art.

    “In 1979, Shenzhen was all green, full of trees, but in 2005, only half of the city was green because industrial zones and office buildings sprung up. The city developed too fast, so we needed to think about the future of the city,” said Huang Weiwen, director of the Shenzhen Public Art Center, at Sunday’s forum.

    Huang said the UABB is not merely an architecture showcase, but also focuses on urbanization in China. The UABB is the only international biennale that sets “urbanism and urbanization” as its theme. Over the last 10 years, the biennale has displayed 770 exhibits and hosted 310 activities, attracting 860,000 visitors from worldwide.

    “The biennale is an open-minded event, focusing on the pioneering issues of urbanism and architecture. Looking back at the five editions, the focal point of exhibits and discussions has been set on urban villages, spontaneous cities, cities of expiration and regeneration, public spaces and urban-rural relationships. On the Hong Kong side, its past four editions presented preeminent works from local and international designers in creative industries, responded to local housing and urbanization issues and discussed cutting-edge ideas about architecture and urban planning,” said Huang.

    UABB@Venice at the 14th Venice Biennale (also called the International Architecture Exhibition or La Biennale di Venezia) continues the friendship between Shenzhen and Venice, which started in 2009. Meanwhile, the partnership between Shenzhen and Finland is the first pairing between a city and a nation in the history of the Venice Biennale, and the two have made breakthroughs in exhibition mechanics and cultural interactions.

    Chinese architect Jiang Jun is the curator of the China Pavilion this year. With the theme “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” a number of established architects, designers and researchers designed the pavilion.

    The theme “Fundamental” for this year’s Venice Biennale and its Central Pavilion exhibition was decided by Rem Koolhaas, curator of the event. In the meantime, all country pavilions have the same theme: “1914-2014: Absorbing Modernity.” This theme emphasizes historical and contemporary architecture, the international spirit and architectural diversity, especially changes in national construction designs over the past 100 years.

    Jiang told the OCT-LOFT forum that the China Pavilion comprehensively shows the components, structures, patterns, and courtyards of 100 years of Chinese architecture. It highlights that under the impact of external modernity, a variety of contradictions exists in the process of Chinese architectural modernization, such as the Chinese cultural understanding of foreign culture.

    The Venice Biennale is one of the world’s most important exhibitions of contemporary art. First held in 1895, the biannual event features pavilions from over 30 countries, displaying some of the nations’ most promising and boundary-pushing artists.