Kongjian Yu in IFLA World Congress

LETTERS TO THE LEADERS OF CHINA: KONGJIAN YU AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHINESE CITY

Edited by Terreform

With contributions by Ai Weiwei, Thomas J. Campanella, Zhongjie Lin, Xuefei Ren, Peter G. Rowe, Michael Sorkin, Daniel Sui, Julie Sze, and Kongjian Yu

Kongjian Yu will be presenting Letters to the Leaders of China at the IFLA World Congress 2019 (International Federation of Landscape Architects), Breakout Session 1.6 — Literature Cafe / Wednesday, September 18. Torghjørnet  17:30 - 19:00.

The session will be moderated by Annemarie Lund, Landscape Architect, Editor-in-Chief Emerita LANDSKAB, Denmark

He joins book presenters:

Marc Treib, University of California, Berkeley, United States: Doing Almost Nothing. The Landscapes of Georges Descombes (2018) / Pietro Procinai and the Landscape of Modernism (2017) / Austere Gardens (2016).

Gareth Doherty, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, United States: Paradoxes of Green (2017) / Is Landscape…? (2015)

Martin Prominski / Hille Seggern, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany: Design Research for Urban Landscapes. Theories and Methods (2019).

Bianca Maria Rinaldi / Puay Yok Tan, University of Torino, Italy: Urban Landscapes in High-Density Cities, Parks, Streetscapes, Ecosystems (2019).

Jenny Osuldsen, NMBU/Snøhetta, Norway: Outdoor Voices (Outdoor Matters) (2019).

Anne Katrine Geelmuyden / Marius Fiskevold, Sweco Norge AS, Norway: Arcadia Updated (2018)

Karsten Jørgensen, NMBU, Norway: Teaching Landscape 1 + 2 (2019) / Defining Landscape Democracy (2018)

Kongjian Yu will also be be speaking at IFLA Breakout Session 2.12 Eastern Perspectives —Common Ground in China and Japan:

As rapid urbanisation in Asia alters the landscape, so does our relationship with the landscape change, offering up new opportunities but also dislocation of communities from the land. These effects are exacerbated by climate change and an increased reliance on technology to make our cities liveable.

This session illustrates the importance of landscape architecture in managing change. It explores the importance of people to place and the relationships between communities and natural systems and processes. Faced with the post-industrial transformation of manufacturing it examines how people and communities can transform post-industrial inner city brownfield’s sites to realise new communities and dynamic places.

The session will be moderated by James Hayter, IFLA president. Other speakers include Bin Li, Research Fellow, The Oslo School Of Architecture And Design; Xia Liu, Graduate, Tongji University; Binyi Liu, Professor, Tongji University; Ni Yan, First Author, Beijing Forestry University; Hiroe Yoshida, Principal Architect
3--lab; Yichen Zhu, Tongji University. Programme here.

Deen Sharp in Public Books

Terreform co-director, Deen Sharp, in Public Books, “The World the Gulf has Built.”

Despite the fragility of the alliance, the term “GCC” is often utilized to discuss these six countries together, because of their shared historical geography; cultural and religious mores; governance structures (characterized by authoritarian monarchies and highly personalized rule); large migrant worker population; rapid urbanization; and vast revenues generated from oil and gas. It is all too easy to focus on everything that is exceptional about the GCC—the record-breaking towers and shopping malls, the three-hundred-island real estate archipelago trying to replicate the world. But this reasoning does much to cover up the GCC’s ordinariness, its multiple connections to everyday lives around the world.

How exceptional can a region that produces so much of the energy that powers contemporary capitalism be?

“It’s long past time that observers of the GCC undo their view of the region as exceptional and recognize it as the global power broker it has become.”

From Terreform’s archive: Deen Sharp: Beyond the Square to the Nexus of Urbanization: Violence and Conflict to Making Connections with Julie Mehretu.

Proyecto Helicoide at Seoul Biennale

Celeste Olalquiaga, Director of Proyecto Helicoide and Downward Spiral co-editor, exhibition at the 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

At a moment when cities are increasingly unequal and segregated it asks if they can continue to be perceived as collective spaces and what tools or strategies can be used to transform cities into collective spaces. (E-flux)

Learn more about the “Cities Exhibition”. Proyecto Helicoide > Infrastructure > Caracas, Venezuela.

#ICYMI Olalquiaga in CNN:

Once hailed as the would-be icon of Venezuela's fast paced modernity, El Helicoide's downward spiral sadly represents the collapse of a national dream built on untenable social divisions.

One can only hope that both country and building will rise from their current situation and meet the challenges of a country whose vast oil reserves still hold an unfulfilled potential. For this to happen, justice must be served for the country's political prisoners, but also for its ever-present masses of urban poor. (CNN: “El Helicoide: The futuristic wonder that now sums up Venezuela's spiral into despair,” 2019).

Folleto El Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya: Centro Comercial y Exposición de Industrias, 1956.

Learn more and download the table of contents of Downward Spiral: El Helicoide’s Descent from Mall to Prison.

#URDownwardSpiral

Learn more about Proyecto Helicoide, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the architectural, cultural and social value of El Helicoide de la Roca Tarpeya in Caracas, Venezuela.