GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, PLANNING AND PRESERVATION

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

POST GRADUATE WILLIAM KINNE FELLOWS TRAVELING PRIZE 2008

J. Cressica Brazier, Tat Lam

As millions of spectators are leaning towards Beijing broadcasts in the countdown to the Olympics, we will instead heed ex-Premier Zhu Rongji’s calling to Go West: to the megacities of Chongqing, Xi’an, and Chengdu. We turn our backs to Beijing-Shanghai-Shenzhen axis—and the made-to-order cities of production that were glorified in the Project on the City’s Great Leap Forward—in order to confront the consequences of this domestic and international bias towards the coastal zones. We will attempt readings of the Western cities as suggestions of a ‘Chinese’ modernity, in evolutionary contrast with the Occident-mediated development of the Opened and Reformed cities.

We will conduct a serial documentation of how the next wave of Chinese megacities is struggling with image and development. Both the standardization as well as the creative occupation and customization
of mega-development in each city will be investigated, focusing on ‘mixing up’ the three operative tendencies of Mega-blocks, the state-mandated form of all new housing projects: the community/cultural tendencies, architectural/urban tendencies, and marketing/economic tendencies.

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