A bamboo sculpture by sciSKEW comments on the city's urban growth
“At the top of Shenzhen’s Lotus Hill, a statue of Deng Xiaoping is frozen in purposeful mid-stride. From here he gazes down on this southern Chinese boom city, teeming with 14 million inhabitants, separated from Hong Kong only by a river and a border. Follow the path down the hill, through manicured gardens and past young families (the average age in Shenzhen is 30, the age of the city itself), and you reach the megastructure of the Shenzhen Civic Centre. Its overwhelmingly massive, blue undulating canopy evokes classical Chinese architecture, but is rendered in bold, postmodern, friendly style. It shelters Shenzhen’s governmental buildings, and a vast complex of indoor and outdoor public spaces. This un-forbidden city is currently playing host to the extremely ambitious, yet awkwardly titled, Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, which attempts to document the pace of change in this unwieldy new metropolis.”
While most architecture biennales are unappealing cocktails of dodgy architectural art and dense technical presentations, this one has a more popular touch. More than 60 installations by artists and architects occupy an underground hall at the civic centre, the massive public plaza above it, and various spots around the city.
via The Guardian
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