March 27th, 2012
Coming friday Martijn de Geus will give a public lecture at the School of Architecture at Delft’s University of Technology. The location is Room P, from 1245 to 1345 (as part of the ARGUS lunch lecture series).
The lecture follows the recent announcement of Wang Shu becoming the 2012 Pritzker Prize recipient, the first Chinese architect to be bestowed this honor.
And coincides with Martijn’s recent full-time appointment at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China’s most prestigious architecture school.
The presentation will provide an overview of contemporary Chinese Architecture seen from a conceptual historic perspective, divided in four parts:
1 Chinese Conception of Space
2 China/ looking for identity
3 Chinese Architects today
4 2012 Pritzker Prize
After the lecture there’s time for questions and discussion.
Click for more to see some previews of slides from the upcoming lecture. (Including Wang Shu’s first building, a post-modern style government building in Haining, China and IM Pei’s first building in China, the Fragrant Hill hotel in Beijing)
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Tags: 2012, architecture, beijing, china, conception, culture, delft, Forum, identity, pritzker, research, space, tsinghua, wang shu
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December 13th, 2011
On December 1st Martijn de Geus organized, introduced and moderated a roundtable discussion at Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture.
The discussion included 8 prominent cross-disciplinary guests including LI Xiaodong + ZHANG Li (prof. Tsinghua University) + Roberto BANNURA (director Steven Holl Architects) + MAO Daqing (vice CEO Vanke, largest residential developer in the world) + Isabelle Cyr (World bank), and others.
Through our actions (buildings, cities, environments) and through our thinking (books, lectures, teaching) we influence the processes that create our future habitat. We shape the environment around us. How do we deal with the responsibilities that come with such a loaded function?And how does our thinking relate to our actions?
Vision. Impact.
The theme of this conference is split in two parts; an abstract theoretical agenda (vision) and a tangible reality regarding the future of Beijing (impact).
More info and pictures after the break.
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Tags: architecture, beijing, china, cities, debate, discussion, exchange, Forum, habitat, impact, research, roundtable, tsinghua, university, vision, workshop
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September 11th, 2011
“While the Chinese language has many verbs like: jian建, ying营, zao造, zhu筑, which with various nuances all refer to the action of building, it has no term that can be validly translated as architecture. The dissyllable ‘jianzhu建筑’ used in modern Chinese is in fact borrowed from the Japanese, who first used the expression in translations of American works, and even a modern dictionary like the Ci Yuan, whose first edition dates from 1915, does not include the expression.”
This article is based upon a comparative study between the history of Traditional (Classical) Chinese architecture and (Classical) Western -European- Architecture.
My aim is not to provide in depth comparative analysis of similarities in architectural phenomena, therefore this short text would be far too insufficient. But, I do want to hint upon conceptual processes in Chinese traditional architecture that have cross-referential conceptual components in the Western architectural culture, starting from a perspective or historical developments in Chinese architectural culture.
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Tags: architecture, beijing, character, china, Chinese, comparison, culture, global, history, identity, jianzhu, origin, research, rules, traditional, tsinghua
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March 1st, 2011
During my recent studies into Chinese culture I found myself intrigued by an apparent paradox in Chinese thinking.
On the one hand, there is the acknowledgement of unpredictable change as an important quality to life. On the other hand there is a striving for continuation or the fulfilling of pre-determined destiny. The Yi Ching, or Book of Changes, is based upon the believe that chance shapes the occurrence of events, without the presence of an underlying causal condition. In the Confucius Analects though, the Master says: ‘you should become like your father’, ‘you should not divert from the path’; thus stressing the importance of fulfilling destiny and filial piety.
How come, that a book like the Yi Ching, in which the fundamental believe is that all situations can always change, a book that has come to be the origin of all further Chinese thinking, is being succeeded by an ideology that seems to promote a static ideal? Did Confucius relate to the Yi Ching for instance, or did he wanted to radically revolt against it? Did he believe in perseverance instead?
In addition I am interested in how these two fundamentals of Chinese culture and society relate to contemporary developments. In a way these two opposites are coming closer together now and especially in China this is critical. There is the radically changing external world on the one hand; an environment that forces China to adept, to change into unpredictable futures. And on the other hand China is trying to maintain a coherent identity in line with its past, trying to safeguard important ‘static’ values, such as cultural heritage and regional identity. So rather then this text being a clear statement of my thinking, it tries to provide clarity in exploring this paradox, that can hopefully provide a conceptual framework for contemporary developments.
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Tags: analects, china, Chinese, Confucius, culture, debate, exchange, identity, living, paradox, research, thinking, Yi Ching
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