O Washington Post publicou ontem um extenso artigo acerca do crescimento chinês espelhado na sua arquitectura . Imperdível.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061902989.html
Towering Ambition
Of All China's Stories, None May Be More Telling Than The Ones Architects Are Creating in Concrete and Steel
Towering Ambition
Of All China's Stories, None May Be More Telling Than The Ones Architects Are Creating in Concrete and Steel
A few months ago, one of China's most outspoken and admired architects was asked to name the stupidest thing he's heard someone say about Chinese architecture. Speaking at a Columbia University conference, Qingyun Ma offered up a question rather than a statement: "What is Chinese architecture?"
He hates it when people ask that.
But how can you not ask it? Half of the construction in the world today is happening in China. Driven by a booming economy and a huge population migration to the country's cities, making new buildings is a round-the-clock, frantic, awe-inspiring national obsession. It is happening at such a rapid rate that young Chinese architects, even ones still finishing architecture degrees, have burgeoning portfolios of built projects -- while their counterparts in the West may spend the first two decades of their careers mulling the philosophical niceties of what it means to dwell. And given that Ma isn't just a prominent Chinese architect, but also dean of the architecture school at the University of Southern California, the question has a certain urgency. Whether they know it or not, young architects in China may already be learning to make Chinese architecture -- whatever that turns out to be.
Ma's exasperation, however, is understandable. Asking "What is Chinese architecture?" is a bit like asking "What is Western art?" There's too much to be considered. Western architects have flocked to China, where they can build projects on a scale that would be impossible almost anywhere else today. With the Olympics focusing world attention on Beijing, China can boast two new world-class athletic facilities and one soon-to-be-completed office tower that have set the standard for powerful, daring, jaw-dropping architecture -- all designed by blue-chip foreign firms. But it's not clear that what they're producing is Chinese architecture.
But how can you not ask it? Half of the construction in the world today is happening in China. Driven by a booming economy and a huge population migration to the country's cities, making new buildings is a round-the-clock, frantic, awe-inspiring national obsession. It is happening at such a rapid rate that young Chinese architects, even ones still finishing architecture degrees, have burgeoning portfolios of built projects -- while their counterparts in the West may spend the first two decades of their careers mulling the philosophical niceties of what it means to dwell. And given that Ma isn't just a prominent Chinese architect, but also dean of the architecture school at the University of Southern California, the question has a certain urgency. Whether they know it or not, young architects in China may already be learning to make Chinese architecture -- whatever that turns out to be.
Ma's exasperation, however, is understandable. Asking "What is Chinese architecture?" is a bit like asking "What is Western art?" There's too much to be considered. Western architects have flocked to China, where they can build projects on a scale that would be impossible almost anywhere else today. With the Olympics focusing world attention on Beijing, China can boast two new world-class athletic facilities and one soon-to-be-completed office tower that have set the standard for powerful, daring, jaw-dropping architecture -- all designed by blue-chip foreign firms. But it's not clear that what they're producing is Chinese architecture.
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