Counter-mapping creative industries, an article by MovingCities and Ned Rossiter in Urban China magazine #33.

While in the process of determining the agenda and selecting the participants of the upcoming Snowball Architecture Seminar in Shanghai, MovingCities takes a moment for self-reflection. To start with, we selected samples of familiar work related to the Chinese architectural practice.

MovingCities guest-edited, along with dr. Ned Rossiter, an article entitled How Foreign Architects Became International Architects – A Case Study of China’s Creative Construction Agenda for the Urban China magazine’s Creative China issue. The text contrasts the pre-occupation of the international media with the so-called starchitects operating in China according to the agenda of the ORDOS 100 project: bringing an army of largely unknown foreign architects to China.

In the same issue of the Urban China magazine, architects Hao Dong and Binke Lenhardt of Crossboundaries Architects map architectural practice in Beijing in an article listing the various forms of architectural practices within the Chinese market – the state-owned architectural design institutes, the partial or fully privatized firms or enterprises as well as the private firms, architectural offices, ateliers and studios:

“Even though the Chinese practice can be identified according to the four groups discussed above, there is also another obvious way to categorize the architects: age or generation. The age-groups of active Chinese architects consist of people born in the 50s, 60s and 70s. No matter where they currently work, architects more or less carry the mark of their generation in terms of professional education, ideology, political attitude, etc.”

More background to the contemporary Chinese architectural agenda, largely framed by the work of private architectural offices, is provided in the China According to China documentary. Completely filmed by Diego Grass Puga for 0300TV before the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and edited right after its ending, China According to China presents thoughts on the country’s current architectural situation as well as its history by five local architects.

The online documentary presents the work of Ai Weiwei (FAKE design), Jiang Jun (Urban China magazine), Yu Kongjian (Turenscape), Wang Shu (Amateur Architecture Studio) and Ma Qingyun (MADA s.p.a.m.). In the documentary, these architects define the issues that every Chinese architect has to deal with today – all of which may set the parameters of future development for Chinese architecture.

We interviewed Ai Weiwei and Wang Shu, both architects born in the 1950s, for MARK magazine on their work, analysis and visions on operating in the contemporary China.

An interview with Ai Weiwei by Bert de Muynck in MARK magazine #12.

Artist and architect Ai Weiwei explains his ideas in an upfront way in the article I jumped on the wrong train:

“Chinese architects are simply blind or mentally retarded in some way. They don’t realize they’re living at a unique time in history. There is no intellectual discussion, no meaningful practice. I wrote a few articles on how architects should change and be more conscious of what they’re doing, urging them to make work that addresses the current state of affairs – to consider density, speed, scale and unfamiliar building regulations. Only then can a meaningful new architecture be realized.”

An interview with Wang Shu by Bert de Muynck in MARK magazine #19.

Architect, a professor at the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou and the dean of the Architecture Faculty Wang Shu explores the rich legacy of China’s intellectual and architectural history. Taking a seemingly simple approach to architecture that culminates in astonishing creations,  he explains the difficulty of being a Chinese architect in the article Local Hero:

“There are three very difficult stages during the building process. The first is how to convince the government. The second deals with designing working details and with other construction issues. Many architects fail in this stage. They may have a good idea, but more often than not it’s poorly executed. The third stage is the hardest of all. When a building is finished, the Chinese rarely think of it as a work of art. They treat is as a container with many functions that they can change randomly and at will. This is very difficult for me.”