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9/6/2006

China Contemporary

Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam

Architecture, photography and visual culture

A modern China seems to be on the ascendant. Advertising and propaganda promise every citizen a rich life, a private apartment, a car and one child in a modern metropolis. After decades of living under stringently imposed rules, people are now sensing the chance to work together to build a modern, economically vibrant China, one that offers scope for individualistic lifestyles and personal ambition. This transformation is being shaped entirely to a Western model. Now a number of Chinese artists and designers are raising critical questions about the course of change. The Netherlands Architecture Institute, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and the Nederlands fotomuseum have joined forces to stage a penetrating interdisciplinary overview of contemporary Chinese art, architecture, urban design and visual culture, which will offer space for this critical dissent.

Architecture

What is Chinese architecture now? Can we learn something from the huge, breakneck changes taking place in what is almost the world's largest country? It is questions like these that are guiding the content of the exhibition. New cities with populations in the millions are rising as from nothing, and existing towns seem transformed overnight into jungles of anonymous office and apartment towers. The euphoria about China's building boom masks a number of fundamental conflicts, however: extremely short-term planning, all-powerful and single-mindedly commercial real estate developers, the wholesale embracing of Western culture, the dismal quality of execution of building projects, and disrupted urban structures. The propaganda picture of the future is all too clearly at odds with the real world.

Conflict

A number of talented young Chinese architects and urbanists are playing a central part in a quest for critical and pragmatic solutions to those conflicts. The designers selected for this exhibition are not interested in building architectural icons, but nurture a sense of responsibility towards their culture, their society and their built environment. Both their designs and their pragmatic design philosophy, with its inherent social critique, have an implicit exemplary function.

Renderings

The idealized version of the future is represented in the exhibition by an awesome quantity of polished renderings, slogans and animations. These are confronted by the work of the selected designers, who react to this context with their installations, models, documentaries, photography, and films, conveying an alternative outlook on the future.

Publication

The exhibitions are accompanied by a full-color catalogue produced by NAi Publishers. The volume is introduced by Garrie van Pinxteren, former China correspondent for the Dutch broadsheet NRC Handelsblad, and includes essays by the curators of the exhibitions. (€ 29.50, ISBN 90-5662-500-4)

China Contemporary - Architecture, photography and visual culture is a co-production from: Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Netherlands Architecture Institute Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam

China Contemporary Architecture has been made possible through the support of Loyens Loeff and through the generous support of the 'Netherlands Culture Fund', the joint program of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Education, Culture and Science for the strengthening of international cultural policy.

Lectures, debates and more around China Contemporary

Opening: June, 10 2006

Netherlands Architecture Institute
Museumpark 25 - Rotterdam
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday: 10:00 - 17:00 Sundays and national holidays: 11:00 - 17:00

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