Bert de Muynck talks about Chinese architecture. Photo by Mónica Carriço.

On the eve of the Chinese New Year, Snowball Helsinki – Arkkitehtuurivientiä Kiinaan event was held today at Kiasma. The event started with an overview on the field of architecture and urbanism in China by Bert de Muynck. He is the other half of MovingCities, a Shanghai based duo of “shrinks in the urban debate” as Bert and his partner Mónica Carriço like to describe their practice. MovingCities are also the curators of Snowball Shanghai – Event on Finnish Architecture to be organised in Shanghai this March.

To begin with, Bert quoted a Demos report from 2007 saying: “As China continues its explosive growth, so does the market for speculation about its future.” So, let’s speculate. In search of tomorrow’s design agenda in China, Bert presented different viewpoints to architecture and urbanism in the country undergoing massive change. Here’s some of them:

Scale and pace

“The scale and pace of China’s urbanisation promises to continue at an unprecedented rate,” reads McKinsey Global Institute’s 2009 report. “If current trends hold, China’s urban population will expand from 572 million in 2005 to 926 million in 2025 and hit the one billion mark by 2030.” The McKinsey report also projects that China will build almost 40 billion m2 of floor space over the next 20 years, requiring the construction of between 20.000 and 50.000 new skyscrapers.

The Chinese city

China’s urbanisation is and will be fundamentally different from its experience from the past 15 years, and eco cities are the current trend in urban development.

When it comes to design, many cities have a similar construction style. “It is like a thousand cities having the same appearance,” like Qiu Baoxing, the vice minister of construction at PRC has noted. A common feature seems to be that each constructor wants to build the highest, most expensive building – and sometimes “just to have a beautiful thing without considering its function, or how the city will work,” remarks Kongjian Yu, a professor at the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at the Peking University.

Learning by doing

In architectural projects in China, there’s often a conflict of creativity between the client and the architect. The client is the most powerful person who determines how a building looks like and has the power to change design decisions.

In addition to learning the local methods of working, practicing architecture in China requires the understanding of the socio-cultural transformation of the Chinese society. It’s also important to ask oneself the question of how to deal with cultural continuity. Like Bert noted in his presentation, “it’s important to remember that life is more important than accelerating economic growth”.

Case studies

To conclude, Bert presented some case studies of unique solutions for China through the architecture and urban design of practitioners such as Urbanus, Ai Weiwei, Wang Hui, Wang Shu and Xu Tiantian to mention a few.