Opening ceremony, curators' introduction.

Greetings from the  Shenzhen & Hong-Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture! Tuomas and Martta met Bert & Mònica from MovingCities there to plan and discuss the Snowball Architecture seminar in Shanghai next spring.

The biennale’s impressive opening ceremony took place outdoors, complete with a symphony orchestra playing BGM and a newly built futuristic urban skyline as the backdrop. At events like these, the global architecture scene really gets together, and it was nice to bump into other Finns like Anu Leinonen from O.M.A. Beijing as well as Pirjo Haikola who works as a researcher at the Why Factory of TU Delft.

Jun & Tuomas enjoying caramel potato dessert.

Later we had a nice dinner with editor Jun Jiang from Urban China Magazine and the currently HK-based, ex-UIAH student Dylan Kwok with whom we celebrated his winning of the DesignSmart Young Design Talent Award in Hong Kong.

The nearly completed Shenzhen Vanke Real Estate Co. HQ.

At OCT (post-)Industrial Park, we met Yilin Lin and managed to visit the architecture and design office URBANUS and see an exhibition on their first decade of practice. And finally, we drove far east out of town to attend the inauguration of the new Vanke HQ, designed by Steven Holl and Li Hu who were there to open their exhibition Urbanisms: 4 projects in China, before we had to head back to Shanghai and Helsinki.