The upcoming Bi-City Biennale (Shenzhen), starting in December, will take place mainly in an ‘urban village’. It provides a unique opportunity to explore diverse visions and strategies of urban growth facing the challenge of excessive urban expansion and uniformisation of social life. The question of how to invent different but relevant ideas and approaches for the future evolution of our urban life becomes urgent. It is time to go beyond the top-down model of development and learn from the bottom-up creative initiatives of the people who inhabit this transitional reality — especially those in the ‘Global South’ — and their strategies of resistance and invention. The traditional focus on the centre has to shift towards the periphery and beyond to the regional exchange process, in order to include informal and new developments.
SCHEDULE
Welcome
Hans-Jürgen Commerell, Director, ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, Berlin
CHEN Ping, Cultural Councillor of the Chinese Embassy in Germany, Berlin
Introduction
Eduard Kögel, Programme Curator, ANCB, Berlin
Doreen Heng Liu, Principal, NODE Architecture & Urbanism, Shenzhen/Nansha/Hong Kong
LIU Lei, Architect, and Director, Shenzhen Center for Design, Shenzhen
Presentations
HOU Hanru, Artistic Director, MAXXI, National Museum of the 21st Century and Curator, 2017 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, Rome
MENG Yan, Principal Architect and Co-Founder of URBANUS and Curator, 2017 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, Shenzhen
YANG Yong, Co-Curator, 2017 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, and Artist, Founder of Shangqi Art, Shenzhen
Panel Discussion
Nikolaus Hirsch, e-flux Architecture
HOU Hanru, Artistic Director, MAXXI, National Museum of the 21st Century and Curator, 2017 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, Rome
MENG Yan, Principal Architect and Co-Founder of URBANUS and Curator, 2017 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture, Shenzhen
Doreen Heng Liu, Principal, NODE Architecture & Urbanism, Shenzhen/Nansha/Hong Kong
moderated by: Eduard Kögel, Programme Curator, ANCB, Berlin
Rural-Urban Transition: Strategies in Diversity
