City of Fact by 王耀华 一个关于中国未来的建筑设想

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Guest Contribution by Udit Lorraine Belkine
Architecture student Yaohua
Wang started his studies in Beijing but then moved to Los Angeles in
order to complete his academic degree at SCIArc. As stated by Eric Owen Moss,
Director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture school since 2002
“SCI-Arc opened its Santa Monica warehouse doors in 1972 to a small group of
emancipated faculty and students, most of whom had rejected the prevailing
institutional models of the time, in favor of a more free form intersection of
teachers and learners, a patient critique of the old idioms, and an aggressive
pursuit of the promise of an ever-renewable pedagogy”.


As a fifth year student at SCI-Arc, Wang has just finished preparing his thesis which is due to
next spring. Wang decided to deal with processes and changes that are happening
in China, his home country, due to the global financial crisis of 2008-9. “The
crisis is providing a turning point for the transformation of Chinese industry,
switching the low-cost industries to high-tech industries” says Wang. “The government plans to build a great number of roads
and railways for the upcoming emergence of inland low-cost industries and
thereafter large-scale emergent inland low-cost industries will be the next main
step in China’s development”.


“The awareness of such great opportunities leads
my research on industrial building and on industrial districts arising there
from” says Wang “In the process, I am searching for architectural or spatial
solutions to the problems brought forward by industrial districts. Inevitably,
unrealized distinctive spatial systems will emerge from this problem solving
process. As the technical issues of the industrial district are understood,
seemingly the narrower the spectrum of potential architectural possibilities
becomes. The contemporary means of developing industrial districts do not
respond to human needs, the industrial district inherently serves its own
means”.
Wang’s awakening conclusion leads to the question: should we take such
results for granted, or should we reconsider their inherent
logic?

"If we look back at Chinese history, we find that
the form of Chinese cities always followed directives of politics and economy.
It has never been able to operate outside these constraints. Architecture
follows the will of politics and has never been able to advance beyond it.
Therefore, architects don’t have "real" power, such as political power, or
economic power. The power we have is the power of design, the power of
imagination. Since this power is so abstract, as an architect you need to look
carefully for chances to exercise this type of power. And always, these chances
are specific and transitory. If we as architects, do not seize the opportunities
that can give full play to architecture, but rather, simply and exclusively
follow the requirements of our temporary needs, we will merely continue this
vicious cycle of inefficiency and imminent obsolescence. We spend an
immeasurable amount of resources to build an inhuman and unstable system which
will become another problem we will need to solve in the future”.