Cao Zhen

    Caozhen0806@126.com

    URBAN villages, part of Shenzhen’s migration identity, storing the city’s history and making Shenzhen more diverse, are considered the venues of the 2017 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (UABB), it was announced at the closing ceremony of the 2015 biennale in Shekou on Sunday.

    “This is a creative idea,” said Yang Hong, a member of the standing committee of the CPC Shenzhen Municipal Committee, also the director of the UABB organizing committee.

    “We plan to hold the 2017 biennale in urban villages in Shenzhen. Urban villages are deeply stuck in the soil of the city, like living time capsules that store the histories and memories of Shenzheners. There are decades-old and even centuries-old buildings that are surrounded by modern skyscrapers. If the 2015 biennale in the flour factory can be regarded as a symbol of industrial relics, urban villages are a unique phenomenon that formed part of Shenzhen’s reform and urbanization efforts,” said Yang at the closing ceremony at Dacheng Flour Factory, the main venue of the 2015 UABB.

    American anthropologist Mary Ann O’Donnell, who has been in Shenzhen for 20 years and has lengthy experience with Shenzhen’s urban village research, told the Shenzhen Daily, “The decision to hold the next biennial in an urban village is a wonderful opportunity for the city to explore the possibilities this urban typology affords. In fact, urban villages are diverse, adaptable, and allow many different people — from young to old, from the countryside and neighboring cities — to pursue their own personal Shenzhen dream, which of course starts with an arrival village! Urban villages are also incubators for low-capital start-ups. Shenzhen really needs such spaces to become a major creative city.”

    As Asia’s most prestigious architecture, design and urban planning event, this year’s biennale featured 160 artworks from 25 countries and regions to explore the topic “Re-living the City.” Curated by Aaron Betsky, Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner and Doreen Liu, the biennale tried to show ways in which architects, designers and urban planners can work with people to make the city more useful and sustainable.

    At the closing ceremony, the organizing committee award went to “Floating Fields” by Thomas Chung from the School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As its name suggests, “Floating Fields” is simply vegetables planted on a pond near the flour factory. Premised on a vision for “Re-Living the City,” the work aspires to an alternative, organic living based on reinvigorating post-industrial architecture and public space with a productive edible landscape.

    The organizing committee praised the work of reviving the roots of the polyculture ecology that once defined the unique territorial landform of the Pearl River Delta. A self-sustaining ecology is developed to demonstrate a virtuous cycle of hybrid urban-agricultural environment that can also become at once a productive and leisure public space for the enjoyment of all.

    German artist Martin Rein-Cano’s “Cacophony Collage” was one of the most “played” works by visitors since it was a huge board installed with 2,464 identical small music boxes. Visitors could play Western classical music as well as Chinese folk songs by twisting the springs themselves, provoking a collective and continually evolving melody.

    “Cacophony Collage” reflected Shenzhen’s large migrant population, urban cultural collage nature and development at an unparalleled speed. The work, together with “Cartographies of Planetary Urbanization” and “Radical Temporalities: The Landscape of Ephemeral Urbanism” projects, won the UABB’s academic committee award for their solid research and critical points on urban issues and planning.

    The installation “Symbiotic Village” by Hood Design, which stunned most visitors for its unique combination of scaffolds and round fish tanks, won the public award together with the installation “City of Wind” and the project “Social City.”

    Launched in Shenzhen in 2005, and later held in Hong Kong in 2007, the biennale bills itself as an influential, professional and interactive exhibition of architecture and art. This year, a string of innovative maker activities, academic lectures, artistic workshops and educational talks were held at the event’s Shenzhen part, attracting a total of 250,000 visitors during the past few months.

    Curators and exhibitors showed their keen observations and profound understanding of Shenzhen and Pearl River Delta. At the closing ceremony, curator Klumpner said, “We explored Shenzhen and the PRD due to the biennale and we have become a part of this place. 250,000 visitors may not be a big number in China but in Europe, it’s a huge population.” Curator Liu said, “The biennale is not only an exhibition, but also a presentation of a city’s creative spirit.”

    “I hope this biennale showed that Shenzhen is an amazing city and we can see its achievements in manufacturing and urbanization. We should be aware that what our ancestors left for us is significant and we should cherish what we have now. The biennale formed a good tradition of re-using old buildings and we should re-use materials, rethink them and enjoy their beauty,” said curator Betsky.