 All right, welcome everyone to our second evening lecture of the semester. I'm really thrilled to introduce tonight, Meng Yan and his Chen Zhen-based practice, Urbanus, which he co-founded with his partner, Chao Dulu. If this semester's lectures are an attempt to trace how architectural and urban practices are today constructed, Urbanus has no doubt emerged as one of the most interesting and influential model of its kind since its founding in 1999. Around that time, forays into China's opening up and the accompanying rapid urbanization that resulted were proliferating in the West from Kulhasa's research on the Pearl River Delta to Hull's pamphlet architecture series and to the start of significant international competitions and commissions, Hull's linked hybrid, the CCTV international competition, the bird's nest, which brought together Herzog and Nimero and the artist and activist Ai Weiwei or Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou Opera House to name but a few of the most significant icons of the beginning of the 21st century. Amidst this breathtakingly fast building boom Urbanus as a practices name suggests, develops an architecture that is deeply embedded within the new Chinese urban condition, registering its speed and embracing its scale but also recognizing its infrastructural and connective gaps and actively engaging its historical fabric. While the previous generation of architects chose to advance architecture either only in relation to itself or only in relation to generic conditions such as the question of globalization, for example, and with both positions leading to a certain disinvestment from the question of context, leading to Kulhasa's famous fuck context, which he declares in his essay, Bigness, Urbanus emerges instead as leading a new generation of architects that is both entirely global in his thinking and ambition, as well as through its conversations among colleagues and collaborators from around the world but is also entirely embedded in a localized practice able to channel its deep knowledge of the context it is operating in toward affecting real change. Whether they are breathing new life into existing buildings and neighborhoods as with their thoughtful Xiaomi urban village project, their beautiful rehabilitation of the old housing typology of the Tulu housing project, which was exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt a few years ago with rave reviews or their transformation of an old industrial neighborhood into the uploft cultural complex or whether they are intervening with a combination of boldness and restraint as with their buildings for the science and technology library University of Shenzhen or the Duffin Art Museum, Urbanus is single-handedly advancing architecture as practice and as discourse within the completely uncharted territory that is Chinese urbanization. In fact, their practice and engagement in shaping the architectural landscape and urban thinking for the country goes beyond building, realizing both the need and potential for architects to bring their skills as synthesizers, coordinators and collaborators. They have embraced a sense of responsibility in facilitating discussions across a spectrum of actors that range from government planners to developers, residents of urban villages, as well as other colleagues, architects engaged with urban redevelopment to share ideas and concerns through their gallery E6 formed as a strong and unique platform for collaboration and exchange. Extending this role as leaders shaping the field this year, the two partners are co-creating the Shenzhen Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, one of the most energized Biennale data has emerged in recent years with a very strong kind of streak of a kind of urban thinking. They have won numerous awards, too many to name here today, but everything from architectural record awards to plan awards to the Chinese Architecture Achievement Award in 2016. And if you are interested, they are hosting a Chinese language discussion at G-SAP on October 14th about the event with G-SAP alumnus, Zhong Shan Huang. Did I say it correctly? No, terrible. It's okay. Tonight, we are really thrilled to welcome Meng Yan. Please, welcome. Thank you for your great remarks. Thanks, GSAPP, to bring us back to New York. About 20 years ago, we live and work and survive in New York, just like you guys do. And 2001, we come back, we went back to China and to practice mainly Shenzhen and Beijing. So, but for some reason, we always felt that we are not, we never really left New York. I think the city has inspired us for many years, especially at the formative time of our practice. New York is such a unique experience for us, not only because of its high density, the kind of vibrancy of its city. It has been kind of a model city and ultimate city of all cities for many, to research, to reference, even to target for. So today, I'm gonna talk about architecture, for the city, the subtitle is city above the city and city inside the city. You will see a lot of these are inspired from our earlier New York experience. For architecture lecture, I think one of the fundamental dilemma is to talk about architecture in a very isolated and abstract way, project by project. So I would like to today to reformat my lecture to give a much more contextual background and understanding and help people to understand why and how we do this and that. So I will start from this topic. Back in the 80s, this is when the late 80s, this is when we were studying in Tsinghua in Beijing. I'll give a little bit of a background before urbanism was formed. There was a radical art movement in 1980s. It was at the time of very strong economic reform, political considerations and hope and no hope, a very kind of contradictory period of time. But everybody know that after 1989, the system, the kind of situation changes. So we basically, as a student, what I did is to kind of retreat from the reality and study and the kind of traditional Chinese culture and Chinese garden of the literaties totally detached from the reality. What is happening around us? So this is a kind of situation after, so I was doing all these little paintings and studies. At the time, the city I live, Beijing was pretty much a horizontal city, a two-dimensional city. It contains cities within cities. So it's kind of like a big maze that you really not have a chance to see the city as a whole because you are only part of this experience of intertwined Houttoums and courtyards houses with a mixture of the Soviet style down way and big super block and with fragments of modern architecture. It's kind of a mix of this horizontal kind of experience. But after, when I came to New York, I see the completely different type of city, not only just the vertical skyscrapers, but the kind of intensity of how the city presents itself. In the Chinese eyes, beyond just the kind of intensity of the skyscrapers, I also see the kind of poetic atmosphere behind this kind of scene. In my eyes, at the time, the city really transforms itself into kind of a traditional Chinese vertical hand scroll. It has the mountains and seas and valleys. And even the water towers on the top of the buildings, in my eyes, becomes little pavilions and tea houses. It stirred up a lot of imagination, even the noise, the ambulance, the fire trucks on the streets. And to me, it's very strangely transformed itself into something quite different. So how we see the city exist in two different ways. One is the city that we experience in the public domain and on the streets is a vibrant city. But once you get on the elevator and go up through the dark tunnel and all of a sudden you reach the top, you see a completely different kind of city. So it's a city above the city. It gives you a completely different experience. So at the time, when we were in New York, we walk around the city and read books. Of course, this type of experience stimulates a lot of research. And so I did a series of sketchups, little drawings trying to catch up the kind of myths exist here and there in the city. I always see there is something hidden at the point somewhere in this kind of vertical three-dimensional city, alive above. So later on, we went to Shenzhen. Shenzhen was a model city and still is for China's economic reform. At 1979, Deng Xiaoping set up this kind of experimental fields in the southernmost border of China. It was quite a clever move. So after that, for 20 years, the city has grown from 30,000 population to 13 million. And then in 79, it looked like this. And all of a sudden, now it has a population more than 20 million. So it was a very dramatic change during the past 20, 30 years. I was there with this. In 1988, I was at the shore of Shizhou, which actually the starting point of the economic reform. Now, even the ship once Deng Xiaoping was at is sitting in the swimming pool because the city expanded so dramatically. And the Chinese photographer captured the kind of early 90s scene. This is when we were at 95. There was the second chance that I happened to be there in Shenzhen, but I was shocked at the point because I thought Shenzhen has no history. But all of a sudden I was there in the kind of old village town kind of setting. So I see the skyscrapers in contrast with the kind of traditional tea houses and a lot of things. That was called Shenzhen Market. Today's called East Gate, Dongmen. But that was before, this is the couple of slides I took. I didn't know where I was, but I took a couple of photographs in 95 before the demolition of that area. Now today is gone. So I see this kind of duality between the modern skyscrapers and the village type co-exist in 95. 1992, this is the second time that Deng Xiaoping came to Shenzhen to reassure his kind of economic reforms success. Now after that, Shenzhen was meeting up once again. Very famous photographer captures also the kind of condition back in the early 90s. Time is money, efficiency is life, is the slogan at the point. So it was shocking at the time. I remember because it's so different than the kind of prevailing kind of political slogans at the time. But at the same time, the photographer also noticed that Deng Xiaoping was quite worried. Look at his face at the time. That was at the time that Shenzhen was in crisis. If you read the history of Shenzhen, you'll know that was a discussion about socialism versus capitalism, whether it is good at the point. But later on, he's much more happy because he had reassured the successful experiment. A couple of years later, this guy came to Shenzhen with this group of students and wrote about and report to outside world the condition that is really unique happening in the PRD area. When we were in Shenzhen, it was as a time, we call it the post grid leap forward because Shenzhen has gone through 20 years of fast forward development. It was 1999. So we decided, okay, urbanus is more than a design practice. It also should be a think tank, an urban curator and mediator. It aims to formulate architectural strategy from the complexities and uncertainties in contemporary Chinese urbanism. We're proud to say that we never changed that goal. We set up back then. And we has been very consistent to concentrate most of our work in the city. We thought that the architecture tries to re-establish and stimulate a meaningful urban life in the current Chinese urban reality. And we witness the kind of dramatic change during the past 15 years in Shenzhen. And now, this is interesting picture, you see the left is New York, the right is Shenzhen. For some reason, this looks like quite similar from a distance. But don't forget, if you look at the map, you see the complete different type of city. The fabric is so different. And we believe that the city, what's happening? The city should be dense and complex. It's kind of a dirty reality, should not be totally cleaned up. Hybridity and coexistence of difference and otherness nurtures a vibrant urban life. I think that believe supported us for all these years' work. And we have done a lot of project, I'm not gonna talk all of them, I will keep like three hours of doing that. But this is the kind of condition that we, once we were in Shenzhen, we're facing, it's the city of objects of things that cramp together without much kind of organization. If you look at this picture, it tells you the kind of situation. Because of the fast urbanization, there are isolated urban kind of voice and residues everywhere. So the very first task for us, these are very old projects, I'm just quickly gonna go through, is to refill all these kind of voice. So we call it urban refuel campaign, to try to establish linkages and new urban functions in the existing urban space resulted from that. So we did a series of these urban public spaces because they're also not much to do at the point. So we pick up all these little jobs and try to fix it. But I think the point is that at the time, because of the unstable situation, because of the clients a lot of times, especially the city, the government, doesn't know much how to do these type of residue space. So we give them suggestions and proposals and they accept. A lot of times, for example, like this, architects have an opportunity to work with the clients to figure out not only the building program, how to use them. This is one of the first built projects we did in Shenzhen. It's a little museum building with landscape and public space. And also it's one of the first exposed concrete buildings in Shenzhen. And residue places like these gradually, we transform them into like little gardens and pavilions. We have been keep doing this for almost like 10 years. A lot of these projects is already gone in the process of the latest urbanization. It played a significant role at the time to provide leisure spaces and public pocket parks for the immigrants in the city. So it's, and then we realize that it's important to practice in a brand new place to research, to learn about the city even before you start design. So we call it research design. I think the key point is this particular project. The research where we did is not only just a research for research sake, it's really at some points lead to the final design product. So it was at a time when the housing price in Shenzhen exceeds the capacity to buy the product, to buy the housing by the majority of people who live there. Around 2005 and six, it was the point the price gets skyrocketed. It was exactly the same time we got the task. It was a research topic. It wasn't a real product at all. A lot of people didn't know that. It's a research project to study the possibility of adapting this typology, this kind of prevailing too low typology into a kind of dormitory like new housing. So it's a given topic. So we did this research. We did research all the different sizes the spatial configuration and also how people use that. So we come up with series of research and proposals. Sometimes we think that this typology can be used in the urban kind of condition on top of the shopping mall or maybe more isolated or somehow combined to create a little group. And finally, the developer get interested and they decided to do an experiment to maybe build it. So they select one of the typology. This is how the too low come into existence. It's really because of the research. And then I think more importantly, we come up with the strategy how this thing can be adapted in an urbanistic condition and how the city and the developer can collaborate to acquire a cheap land to put this kind of low income housing anywhere in the city. This is how it's adapted in the end. It becomes a instead of a castle like typology it really opens up and empowers us. And originally we didn't have a site but later on we find this together with the developer is a close to the highway. So the dialogue between the building and the neighbor becomes really critical. So the materials we use is really kind of a cheap prefab concrete panels. And also the building itself is a hybrid building. It's not just housing, but also have a little in and has public facilities and things like that. So it really becomes a testing ground for kind of a new collective way of life that has been gone for many years. So we did that internal courtyard. We add a little bit more dense area and we built it in 2008. So life has evolved quite a bit after its completion. So we have been using that as example to see how a new community is formed. And we're very glad to see that there has been two dozen new born babies out of this Tulo. There are many, many babies with old ladies. Hybrid stacking. We learn the experience from New York and of course Hong Kong as well the how to do vertical buildings. In a site like this, it's very dense kind of urban sites in Huaqian Bay, which is very famous for electronics. At one point it contains 60% of the electronic parts in entire China. This huge market is vibrant, it's full of activities. But what happened is that the city government always want to clean it up and make it kind of a usual shopping area instead of to study the kind of nature behind this. So we did a lot of research of Huaqian Bay and see how the different business coexist in this type of urban condition. It's really not just a shopping street, it's the area intertwined with a lot of different forces. So once we had a project in Huaqian Bay in a very tight site, like this, we noticed that there are about 200,000 people passing by this site every day. And the site with a small hotel in the middle, the clients calls for kind of a parking structure, a vertical parking structure with a compensation of this hotel. That's it. So what we can do, we figure out, is a good opportunity to reroute a lot of the traffic existing either pedestrian or vehicular traffic and also the logistics in the site. So you see the building, actually it has a little lot of arms that connecting to the existing buildings. It's infrastructure, it's a vertical infrastructure. It contains the kind of retail space on the ground floor, logistics on the ground and multiple parking structure in the middle and with a hotel on the very top. So it's a very hybrid building. So the requirement is that there was one existing building on the site which cannot be demolished and all the business have to keep during the construction process. So it's quite a challenge to keep the building with all these volumes added on the top. So this is the kind of the model. It's more than a regular building. It really becomes a machine that contains all these different portions. Even the multiple parking is considered to be flexible for future developments, maybe for retail, maybe for other purpose. On the top, I was envisioning kind of a village type of hotel on the very top because of the privacy issue, you have to keep the privacy. So this is during the construction process. The building takes about 10 years to build. It's a very complicated steel structure. It has to go over the existing building and the traffic pattern is also quite complicated. It leads to different levels of the building. So in the end, it's kind of like this. It hasn't been finished yet after 10 years already. It tries to link with the surrounding building. You don't see this building from the street. It's actually internal and it's hidden. So this is, for us, is a very interesting typology that we kind of carry this thinking in a tight site in different buildings. For example, like this one even, on the periphery of the site, the clients call for a hybrid building with factories, a museum and a library and their headquarters office. We can't put regular buildings on the same site. So we have to stack them somehow from the bottom up and so we figured maybe the building can be integrated and works also with the surrounding, even if it's very tough, kind of chaotic situation like this. I like this photo. It's a hybrid building. So the museum is very tall and the factory is close to the noisy highway and the office is at the other corner forming an internal courtyard. So the building looks simple at the beginning from the outside, but it's very kind of complicated inside. So it has a kind of a vertical library in the very center of this building. It cuts through the entire plan and the plant, the factories and the museum can see each other at the middle. So this is kind of the library. So it's kind of like an urban square that people miss every day. You have to go through this space to go to a lot of other functions in the building. So it opens up this kind of internalized kind of public space in the middle. So even the stairs, the courtyards, happens everywhere in all parts of this building to get lights and ventilation. So the building becomes a kind of monolithic at the same time, but also a hybrid inside. And beginning with that and go further, we pretty recently, we got another competition in the site like this. It's a very typical kind of no-character residential district. It's kind of like this. It's very typical, a typology you see in China, the housing, the commercial, the school, the kindergarten, so it's a very quiet place. And the competition calls on the very tight site a kind of cultural and sports center. But later on, after we received the brief, we figured out that it's a very rare opportunity that we can stack things and we have to. We have to build almost like 70 meters of this cultural and sports complex. So for us, we thought it's a good chance to put the three portions of the buildings on top of one another. The bottom portion is really the library, the most accessible, usable space, and the theater in the middle. And the middle portion is really the swimming pool and the other facilities. The top is the sports. So the circulation, besides the vertical elevator shaft, we created these type of linkage. We learned a whole lot from the Hong Kong and Singapore shopping malls, the vertical shopping malls. I think that could really kind of create a different layers of public space in the air. So look at this section. It has the three components, the bottom, the theater in the middle, the library, and the swimming pool and the sports. And between that, there are public gardens and connected by huge escalators. And they are linked together. So even after each components, each box is closed at night, the public access is still valid. This is the model to show the kind of relation. Of course, this is very challenging structurally. So we hired a very good structure engineer to make the structure a transfer, a lot of complicated sort of structure treatments to make it happen. It's still in the process. And this is updated sections. The reason why I show this is working on the idea like this in China is very challenging. So we have to figure out all these kind of details and how the structure and building are merged together in sections. So this is gonna be how it looks. It's still in process. So the very last of this series, the stacking typology is this. We have a site between the two little hills. In Shenzhen was a hilly town before. Because of the fast urbanization, all of the hills were raised to flat in the past 20 some years. So these are the two remaining hills in the middle of the city at the moment. So you see the stripe here. Right in the middle, there was a factory and the developer get this space. There's a huge site. They wanna build a kind of a complex. It's a commercial complex. But what they did, this is the SOM muscle plan. We were given this, there are basically towers by SOM. And this is apartment towers by Hong Kong firm. And architect Tonika is doing a huge shopping mall at the bottom. And then it's interesting, there was 100,000 square meters of loft apartment buildings left on the top of the roof of the shopping mall. So we were given the problem to design these apartments. Because the developer thought they can make enough money by these towers and the malls and these apartments. So they don't care. They said, okay, whatever you do on the top, if you do this lab, that's okay. If you do something else, it's probably also okay. But get us the square meter, 100,000 square meters done, that's it. But what we found is super interesting idea that SOM wants to connect the two hills with bridges, with pedestrian bridges because it's one island, totally an island separated by wide highways. So it's an isolated site. But by connecting to the two public parks, it has a lot of opportunity that this is what we thought. So we talked to the client, maybe we can make it flat. We can do our urban village on top of that shopping mall. The client said, wow, it's a good idea. But remember, you're gonna get the same design fee. That makes really a tough job, right? So we decided, okay, maybe we can do something because there's never done this way to have smaller buildings on top of the huge shopping mall which can really form a village-like setting that people actually going from one park to the other can pass this area. So we thought, this is really different. Like, it reminds me of the New York experience. Once you are shopping mall, you don't know what's above you and then all of a sudden once you go through the escalator or elevator, you go to the top and you see the village. All of a sudden, you see the village and you see the hills. So you're above the existing city. It's quite kind of a poetic kind of idea. So we thought, okay, let's do that. So we create this little kind of a village with the bridges. It becomes an interesting kind of urban design project. But simply creating a village isn't really helped because it will look really odd if you have a cluster of small buildings on top of the mall and have to have a dialogue with the towers. It's really tough. So you have to somehow small and big at the same time. So we create this envelope, the intermediate clusters of loft spaces that surrounds the village and which can dialogue with the bigger towers. So it creates something like this. So we're not, on the other hand, we're not afraid of a commercial project. I think we do a lot of commercial projects. I think it has a lot of opportunity to have a bigger impact on the city than smaller works. So it created this layer of spaces, the smaller in the center, the bigger volume surrounding. So we have this gradient kind of scale. And you see the mountains beyond. So there are commercial and loft space, residential, office, museum, theaters all together on top of the existing buildings. So we tested all this. Different sort of units. And the units is factible. It could be 4.5 meters and could be three meters tall. So they can be modified later on. So architects only laid out the frameworks and the users can later make modifications. So the construction started a couple of years ago and is evolving. Now this is how it looked like. It's a huge project. They haven't started the bridge yet. You see on the other side, this is the bridge. Okay, so beyond this architectural project, I have to speak up. I'll talk about another topic, which is the city's growing difference. Why the analogy of this year has to be in urban village? What is urban village? After all these years, there comes the coexistence of two urban realities in cities like Shenzhen. One is the kind of bottom up informal and all one is the kind of top down urban planning. So you've got really this kind of a dual realities. You see the picture on the left and right. There are two aspects of the city. So within most of the new developed Chinese cities, the urban space is dominant by the modernist architecture typologies, such as the gated communities, giant shopping malls, isolated office towers and theme parks. This is very typical. On the other hand, the urban village like this is the kind of byproduct of the rapid urbanization. It's the result of this kind of dual system of the previous planned economy, the land ownership created this kind of urban setting. There are many urban villages still existing, providing housing for new immigrants and to support the city for all these years. Like Bai Zhizhou, this is one of the biggest urban village still existing. This is Xia Sha, another one. You see the kind of contrast between the village and the city style. This is the Biennale site, the Nantou. Although it's super dense and vibrant, it provides a very kind of vivid urban lifestyle, which is actually urban. Inside the village or outside the village. This is the question. So a lot of people call it the urban village, but to be more accurate is the urbanized village. So there are still 30 of them urban villages inside the Xinjiang's special economic zone, which provide housing clusters for the booming immigrant population at the moment. And what we can learn from all these kind of vibrant, informal settlements, what the city around it can learn from within the villages. These are the questions. So starting 2004, we have been researching these urban villages. We are trying to find ways to solve these problems, the kind of super dense condition, lack of public spaces and all these issues. Can it be resolved? Or it has to be raised for the urbanization. So we envision at the point kind of rooftop urbanism which can be connected all these buildings. We thought that could be a way to do it. In 2006, there was a critical time when the first urban village get demolished like this. And it was a kind of very different so-called successful story to regenerate the village across the border of Hong Kong. So this is very first example. It was as a time when the city of Xinjiang tried to integrate the urban village into the city to get rid of all the urban villages in five years. The city announced the big plan in 2005. It was at the same time the first biennial of urbanism architecture happens in December the same year. So we exhibited the urban village proposal in the first biennial and we showed the city there are alternative ways to do it. That was a critical moment. And then we published this little booklet about the urban villages. But unfortunately, just before the Olympic 2008, the village that we were focusing was demolished and replaced. So a little bit later, we involved in a real urban village intervention project which is in this Da Fen village. It was a typical urban village in the mix of the city. But it's also a special village because it contains a very interesting kind of enterprise, oil painting business that were imported from Hong Kong in late 80s. So the village evolves itself. And at the same time, the government has been trying to regulate and improve to invest in the village to make the business booming. So it was a kind of cold effort of top down and bottom up. So it's a rare opportunity to see the government to engage into the village. And this is what we found originally in the village. It was a quite peaceful kind of condition. It doesn't really have the typical urban village problems and everybody have a job and everybody has this opportunity. So at the time, we were assigned the job to design a museum in the village. So we thought the museum is a good opportunity to really make a linkage inside the village. So the museum should not be a typical museum. It should be a sandwich, a kind of an overlap once again of different things. Maybe the market on the ground floor, the typical museum on the second floor and also on a village on the top. So we make this proposal and was finally accepted with this kind of hybrid museum in the urban village. So the ground floor was seen as an extension of the existing fabric of the village with markets and a lot of kind of public functions. And the second level is a typical white boxes museum and the third level is the village of rentable spaces for tea houses and bars and restaurants and a lot of other things that typical museum doesn't have. We see the museum as a device to bridge the village with the surrounding city. So the museum was built in 2007 and it was kept empty for a while and later this is a village on the top. This is a vision that we provided. It shouldn't be that simple and clean. It should be hybrid and vibrant. But now after almost like 10 years it becomes one of the most visited museum in the city of Shenzhen. It's free, it's accept a wider audience. It's because of the peculiar location it trust a lot of visitors as well. So later on we also organized kind of painting wall mural exhibition on the museum. So the museum itself is evolving. It seems like ever ended project. So 2010 is a critical point when the first time we put the urban village on the international kind of level. We make it really a public event in case of this World Expo in Shanghai. We designed the World Expo Pavilion. Also we organize events in Dafen. We produced this kind of installation project by 500 more artists in Dafen and tell the story that each individual story of these people who work in Dafen for all these years. So this is really an exhibition not about architecture it's about a group of people. Their personal stories collectively becomes the Expo Pavilion. So it has always different kind of components in the exhibition which interactive and also in Dafen Village there are a group of architects and artists rework the museum by murals and other installations. And then we publish a set of books. It's a collection of little books about Dafen, the museum, the story of the people and also about the urban villages in general. There's new set of books coming out this year. It's called Shenzhen Case. These are the byproduct of the Expo project. It has a thorough research of a lot of the urban villages in Shenzhen including Dafen as a kind of a case. 2011 we formally started this kind of research arm of urbanists. We start to use this opportunity to really study the kind of post urban village time that seems that we're ending unfortunately. Starting 95, you see the city only contains in this type of configuration, but after only 10 years the city has expanded so dramatically. It seems that we are entering this kind of post VIC era in Shenzhen because of limited land resources. The city is undergoing a huge campaign of so-called urban regeneration process. There are projects everywhere which contains hundreds of millions of square meters of regeneration projects. They're all the same pattern. So the type of Rasa isn't this the only model when the Chinese cities are now facing this kind of new urban regeneration process. So we're asking urban renewal has further kind of swept away the time-honored historical areas and the hybrid urban life. So this is the condition that we're facing the problem of being replaced by a more globalizing standardized configuration everywhere. Not one, but hundreds of these are happening. All the urban villages are about to disappear. So at the point that we came up with the concept of cities grows in difference. It's really not just about the urban village. It's about the future of the city. Can we have a kind of a new city paradigm of coexistence? So today's city should be a manifestation of a balanced coexistence of different value systems. It should be a civilized community with maximum heterogeneity and diversity in which people co-live in one world sharing a variety of dreams. So this is kind of contrary to the Olympic slogan that I remember is one world, one dream. I thought that was pretty scary. So I come up with a very different idea. The city's growing difference highlights multiple identities and multiple perspectives. It emphasizes difference, hybridity and resistance. That was this year's Biennale. It's okay, so the last story I'm gonna tell is really about the venue of this year's Biennale because three weeks from now we're gonna come again, talk specifically about Biennale. So I'm not gonna talk about the exhibition but the venue, why here? Once again, a lot of people still believe that Shenzhen was a little fishing village. Let me tell you, that's not true once again. Shenzhen was an old city, nobody trust me. Look at this map of Qing Dynasty. The city of Nantou is here. Shenzhen has a history of more than 1700 years old. It's a very old town. Look at all these involvement. I'm not gonna go to details. But I see the pictures in Qing Dynasty. In the 80s, 90s, the city evolves. This is the excavation, the site where people find city 1700 years ago in Jing Dynasty, Dongjing. This is the site. But unfortunately the city, the old city was 90% gone. It's an urban village at the moment. But look carefully, the old town is still there. It really becomes a mixture of the earlier kind of industrial sites with the typical urban village. This is, you can tell this is quite a challenge for the Biennale. It's really an overlapping of a historical town underneath this contemporary urban village. So this is a very interesting situation. You have the village and you have the remains and scattered sites inside the urban village, which is historical. So it's an invisible town. It is an invisible historical town. But here we go. Let me tell you, this little city gate is older than Tiananmen in Beijing, 600 year old in the early Ming Dynasty. You'll see that. And you see indigenous culture in Shenzhen, unimaginable old temples. See the mixture of historical and contemporary condition. You see buildings building the 50s, 60s, 80s and 90s. So very rare in Shenzhen, you have a whole spectrum of architectural heritage. You see the whole thing, the whole history there. This is very vibrant site. It's gonna be host the opening ceremony here. And the factory will host the thematic exhibition, the research. And this photo I like, you see the historic buildings together with mountain towers and village buildings. So the Biennale will be part of the urban regeneration process. It's the first step. It's not the final answer, but it actually opens up an opportunity to engage the exhibition with the real village problems and condition. So the Biennale will also scattered in the entire village. In the factory zone, it will open up. This is a kind of a longer view of this regeneration. And in the center, in the public plaza, the exhibition will take the center space and it will be transformed into a more public square in the middle. It's gonna be additional small buildings and event spaces and public structures erected in the museum. So the exhibition becomes really not only exhibition itself, it is gonna be a real intervention and this is gonna be an action. So in the end, in the summary, an urban intervention is all we do. It is a reflective kind of action taken in response to the complexities and uncertainties in contemporary urbanism in China. It transforms the role of the architect from service providers to multiple role of design thinker, researcher, urban curator, or mediator, urban intervention is an activism with professionalism. Thank you. Thank you, Wang-Yang. I wanted to just kind of respond around sort of two different kind of themes before we open it up to questions from the audience. I think one of the most impressive aspects about your practice, aside from the kind of amazing amount of production and buildings that you've done in just the last 18 years, I guess, is, you know, of course I think the theme of your lecture, the engagement with the kind of urban and you sort of laid out these themes like architecture for the city, inside the city, and the city above the city. And I think particularly for, you know, from a kind of American context, where we have sometimes sort of a kind of split between a disciplinary split between urbanism and architecture, you know, there's some people who design cities and there's other people who design buildings. I think you're clearly trying to sort of overcome that and you showed the pocket parks at the beginning of the talk, but you actually didn't really show a lot of the kind of urban scale projects that you've been involved with. And you also didn't talk about, you know, kind of the area where you work, OCT in Shenzhen, which you've actually kind of like totally designed the environment around your office, which is, I think, incredible. So it's a kind of, for those of you that may not know, it's a kind of formerly industrial area with old factories and dormitories, which has turned really into a kind of cultural hub with Urbanis' office, but also the kind of public spaces that you've been involved with and the art terminal and the OCT museum and that sort of thing. I guess the kind of engagement with Urban is, I guess it really has a sort of agenda, if I read it correctly, which is sort of twofold, I would say, which is number one, to kind of move away from the sort of the SOM or the kind of Western model of Urbanism, I think, which has been really dominated, the kind of development of Shenzhen in a lot of ways and sort of an awareness, like you said, of the kind of Urban village, the history of something rather than being eradicated, maybe something to be aware of in its kind of messy and unique character and something to be preserved. But also, as you said, in terms of policy now, people are also recognizing that it's kind of an economic engine of welcoming migrants and providing affordable housing. And so on the one hand, I think your urban agenda shows us the kind of those unique characters of Shenzhen, but also then another aspect of it, I think, which comes out in the kind of ladder projects is this sort of idea of kind of vertical Urbanism, which comes not from the past, but as you said, like shopping malls in Hong Kong and Singapore. And I see that agenda is really also kind of against the sort of the tower and podium, and which leads to like some really interesting kind of typological invention in these kind of very, these new sort of complex and three dimensional buildings that you're now working on. So that's, I would say, one part of the kind of engagement with Urban. And the second part that I kind of see, which maybe you spoke about less, but alluded to in your role as a kind of urban, sort of urban curator, urban mediator, is maybe about the way in which dialogue plays a role in your practice. And of course, you talked about, you're curating the upcoming Shenzhen Biennale. So you're obviously bringing together other architects, but you also collaborate a lot with other architects. That's actually how we met seven years ago. And then of course, you have a, in your office, you actually have a gallery where you invite artists and architects and you show your work and you bring other people. And your partner, Shaodu, in his off hours, has actually opened a bar in- Now it's closed. Oh, it's closed, okay, it's gone. Architects can make good business. That's the problem, right? Usually we tell architects to, moonlighting is good, it's hard to make money in architecture, but it turns out it's the opposite for, the architecture for you is more productive, I guess. But anyways, I guess coming back to dialogue, you also talked about the dialogue with kind of developers too. And so I'm wondering, I guess, how do you, in New York City, when we kind of talk about the city and when we have dialogues about the city, there's maybe a tendency to, that either certain voices are kind of often excluded or we land up with, through all the kind of dialogue, we often land up with the kind of lowest common denominator. So I guess my, maybe a question then is about, how do you maintain your own voice in all this kind of dialogue and with all these people? And so that's kind of a first question, I guess. Yeah, it's always tough to convince people to believe you. They don't have to, I think. It's a good opportunity for architects to expand your field of research. I think if you understand, I think the reason why we do research, even before we do actually design, is to really use the project opportunity to understand the city better. If you want to have a kind of a valid dialogue or more convincing dialogue with whoever you talk to, you better understand the situation better. So we actually can share a lot of things. Otherwise you have to, a lot of time you talk to your own self that people don't respond very actively. So that's why I think we have this kind of research idea, not just for, I think the research portion is really important to understand, to really define the problem better. I think a lot of times, and I think the crisis at the moment for architecture is that we have so much solutions, but no problems. We have so many, technically know-how, but a lot of times if the target is wrong and you don't get what you want to get. So on a purely logistical level, how do you, you didn't talk that much about the process in the office and maybe you could talk about how you find, I mean you showed 10% of your projects. How do you find time to do research and how do you do research and how does that happen in the office? Is it something separate? Is it, does it happen with each project? Can you talk about that? Yeah, sure. The research, we actually, we started this urbanist research bureau later UPRD in 2011, but actually the research starts from the very beginning. But not, formally we established a branch and they're doing research and then this portion is doing design because we see each project is opportunity to learn, to understand the city, to understand the problem better. You know, the city of Shenzhen for us is a new place. We were not born there, we don't know this place. Which is all of a sudden we were there because of, not because we like the city, just because we hate the city. Because we see so many problems in the city. So we want to, because if we have to work there, we have to improve our own environment, the same thing like you mentioned the OCT, right? The reason why we do that, we have to make ourself comfortable, we have to make the environments better. So in the office I think every project is a chance that you really take that chance to learn. Just like, I mean like architects, we can't work like superficially in a kind of a vacuum. You have to be like an artist or a novelist. You have to experience, you have to live there to experience the life and really understand the issue. So I think there's no clear sort of definition between the design and research. It's all design. Just like when we talk about urban design, what is actually urban design? I didn't show a lot of our urban, sort of so-called urban project, but what about the architecture? Architecture is also part of the urban design, I think. Also the landscape. We never, none of us actually learn landscape at all. But I see that opportunity to really become the urban project. So I think that's the kind of situation. We really want to tackle, to add this kind of a complexity to the city that we live. It's too simple-minded. A lot of times people see problems. That's also why we use, we wanna use this kind of urban, the Biennale situation to bring people, to bring different voices and different expertise to tackle this issue. I don't think that we can, alone, we can deal with that. We need help. We need a lot of help. Actually, we're not that powerful at all. So... Well, I think the, from the Dauphin Museum, which you built in 2005, I mean, that shows in a way how a single piece of architecture can kind of transform bigger urban territory around it. And if I understand your proposal for the Biennale correctly, it sounds like a very similar intent. And I think it's actually, it's really nice having you also at this point, kind of at the beginning of the semester. And speaking for the third semester, we're at this kind of hinge between sort of looking at the city and looking at the site and then looking at our kind of, the beginning of our sort of buildings. And so I think your way of operating is actually very sort of relevant, I think, also for the students here. Should we open it up to questions? Sure. Graham. Yeah, thank you so much. Fantastic lecture. And it's been many years I've followed your career with great admiration. And what I found especially interesting in this presentation was the long personal history going back into the 80s with the sketches which I'd never seen before. And it's kind of interesting that when China was in a massive industrial revolution, if you like, in that period, very fast growth, you were looking at art. And then I see it as a kind of theme through a sort of intelligence and an intellectual reaction against accepting the change that actually is happening but trying to find another way to reflect intellectually about how to work with it in very close proximity and actually a choice to move to Shenzhen would be very interesting to know more about that exactly how you did that. That would be my question. Yeah. Good question. Why? At the time I think we, when we were in Beijing at the time in the early 90s, I think it was at the time when Deng Xiaoping actually went to Shenzhen in 92, he kind of reassured that the model was quite successful from his point of view. And we heard a lot of happenings at the time in Shenzhen and I happened to be there like twice in the early 90s. And after I came to the US, of course, Shenzhen was booming in the kind of late 90s and it generates a lot of opportunities for architects. It was at the time when at the very beginning there were big firms going to Shenzhen and later Shanghai to practice in mid 90s. And later on, I think more and more kind of independent firms in the US and Europe, they go to cities like Shenzhen. So at the point I remember when I was in New York, we heard a lot of kind of rumors that this city provided some opportunity for the desperate architects like us surviving. So we were very curious. So this is a kind of, it's really kind of opportunity driven, I would say. I never imagined myself to be in Shenzhen. I think at the very beginning in my first trip, I took like 30 hours from Beijing by train to Guangzhou and another four hours or something to Shenzhen. To just see in 1988 the bunches of high-rises. Because that's the only place that in China you can see high-rise buildings. So we, but besides that group of high-rise buildings, there was nothing in the city. I was so boring and there was nothing happened, and no history like what I imagined before, just because of, you don't know, a lot of times. So in the last nine to old village, like that's a new one for me and it's going to be the site for the Biennale. I was amazed that you found this archeology underneath of, it's not an, it's actually, and then you had the map with the multiple old cities across the territory. That was, I mean, I'd seen your exhibitions before of the growth of Shenzhen, but I'd never seen that deeper early history. How did that happen? Good question, because let me tell you this, the Biennale actually came later. The research of Nantou comes earlier. I think that's the reason why we bring the Biennale to Nantou actually. We did, about a year ago, we did a research by chance. I know Nantou, we have been to Nantou, of course, but not really a thorough research, but in 2015, we started the research of Nantou and we found this amazing history and at the same time, we heard the district government was trying to regenerate or redevelop Nantou at the point. We know there was the force there, there was the power that wanted to change something, but later on we found they didn't really know how because they thought about Nantou was the old town and everybody know that. At one point in the Qing Dynasty, it controls Hong Kong and Macau. And Hong Kong and Macau were separated from China, just in Nantou, actually. It was a county office that controls the whole region. It was really big. So at the point we thought that was really something different and after that research, about a half year, then we thought, okay, maybe the Biennale and we were elected as chief curator. That we thought, okay, maybe that we should bring other expertise because people are confused. They want to redevelop Nantou to the historical town to bring back history because it's like Li Jiang, all these kind of tourist attraction. That's very typical kind of thinking. They want to do that and there are original plans. There are already tonsil plans in the past 10 years that they want to rebuild this kind of historical glory of that period. So we thought that's quite scary and then we thought, okay, maybe it's time to bring a whole lot of expertise and knowledge to Nantou. That's how the Biennale happens. Okay, last thing. I find one of the really sort of beautiful things is that you have this utopic capacity to imagine impossible things to go together and for a really actually impossible life to be lived together and you make it work. So what is your deep philosophy? Ha ha. I mean, how do you, you know, when so much in China is to make it modern, make it fast, make it quick, how did you arrive at this way of seeing and of being with a calmness in the middle of, I know you're not calm all the time, in the middle of all this change? I mean, it's just fantastic, I think. Is there a lesson you can teach us in there? I don't know. I don't know, it's a tough question. I think to be tolerant, to be inclusive of different ideas and different opinions, and to add complexity and kind of novelty in a way in the kind of Bernal situation that we were at every day, it's not, I mean, working in China is exciting in one hand, but it's very dangerous and also very, it drains you very quickly, I would say. That's a lot of architects and a lot of firms working in China get drained very quickly. Just because you have to follow, there was a kind of invisible power surround you that kind of push you to somewhere that you don't know at the point, but I think to really, based on my experience, I think there are many different aspects of my experience, especially the earlier experience. Look at the kind of complex sort of history of my career, you know, like living from 20, 30 years in Beijing, this kind of cultural history in the middle of this kind of deep tradition, but at the same time a crazy city where we built CCTV and all these kind of monuments, this kind of paradoxical condition, but all of a sudden we were in New York and live in a place like this. And to be in Shenzhen all of a sudden in a brand new city with no history, so I think this is kind of a paradoxical condition that really shaped the kind of, you call it philosophy, or something deep embedded in our mind, the kind of desire and anxiety, something that you wanna do something, but based on what you learn and what you experienced previously, is everything kind of come together, I don't know, it's a very complex kind of feeling that you wanna change. I don't know if, you know, answer your question, I couldn't, I tried very hard. But it's too difficult. Are there questions? It's a whole lot of information, I think. Sure. Right. You know, if you notice that they're on the internet, that now China is going back to this kind of bicycle kind of maniac craziness. I remember, I totally agree with you, in the 70s and the 60s and 70s, the city is full of bicycle, we are like number one, it's a bicycle kingdom. People ride bicycles to work, to everywhere. But later on, because of the cars and all the expanding traffic condition is totally changed. But now, because of the internet, there are bicycle companies now, it's everywhere, they share a bicycle, it's a big thing now in China. If you go to China, you go to Beijing and Shenzhen, there's a big problem with the bicycle at the moment. It's because the government wants to regulate the shared bicycle, but haven't figured out the way yet. So they have to stop. There are millions of new bicycles coming out. But I think we're somehow going back, I think now, to the kind of bicycle enthusiasm, in no way. It's kind of a more intelligent bicycle system. Even for the Biennale, I think we're actually targeting to incorporate the bicycle, because the venue, we don't have a subway connection. The venue is kind of isolated. It doesn't have, oh well, the bus is there, but it's not really convenient. I think the bicycle could really help. So, I don't know, to me it's a very good way to really slow down. The bicycle gives you a good opportunity to experience the city in a completely different way. But unfortunately, we lost that for the past 30 years, almost. Oh really? I didn't know that. Something like, for example, you would probably purchase a house in OCT for about just ridiculous amount of money that you have to pay. But if you rent a house, you can probably, with the same amount of money, you can probably rent a house for like 100 years or 120 years. So why would anybody ever purchase a house if you can just rent it until you die? So that becomes like the real struggle for Shenzhen citizens. So nobody really buys houses anymore. So people just rent house forever. And that's a situation that's facing the Western US, some part of Eastern US as well, just because you just can't afford to purchase a house. So people just kind of live on the life of renting. And it's been working out great. Like Airbnb definitely helped out as well. So as an architect, I would like to know your point of stand on this kind of urban situation where we wouldn't be able to really build new houses anymore because there won't be any consumers for them. It's probably not that simple. I think deeply rooted in every Chinese, I would say there is a very kind of, there is an urge to buy, to own. Let me tell you, this is exactly true. I mean, the Chinese is probably the most enthusiastic, enthusiastic to buy, to own something. I mean, we came from this kind of agricultural civilizations. I mean, every farmer wants to have their own land. That's why the urban village is so unique because in Mao period, everything belongs to the country, belongs to the government, belongs every piece of land in the city, belongs to the city government and the central government. The only exception, because Mao is from the countryside, the only thing that he left for the farmer as a compensation is their plot for their housing. This is why the urban village survives because of the private ownership. In socialist or communist China, it's hard to imagine there are private owned or collectively owned property. That's the only exception. That's why I think the whole campaign of integrating the urban village into the city is to get rid of that. Let me tell you this. That's the whole kind of secret to get rid of this private ownership. After five years, if we're successful to get rid of all the urban villages, then the city has become modern lithic. All the developers can do whatever they want because now it's super difficult. You have to negotiate with individual owners of any piece of land. Just like New York, people own different piece of land. So you can't take even Rockefeller, you cannot take a big chunk of land and develop 1 million square meters in one shot. But in China, that kind of project is everywhere. But regarding your project, regarding your question, I think, of course, renting is a big issue because people cannot afford, especially young people. In Shenzhen, especially, people like us are extremely old people. I mean, the average age in Shenzhen just reached a past a little bit of 30 years now, before it's all like 20 something. Now it's getting older, and people can't afford. So I think the good news is that now, because of the urban village, because of the changing of the policy and also the kind of economic condition, a lot of the even the developers are looking into opportunities to renovate a lot of the urban village housing into rentable apartments for young immigrants. I think this is, to me, it has just happened, I think this year, I think this is a good move. Possibly, if that happened, that's keep happening. Now even I told Adam that even the leading developer, you know, Wanqi, with the leading developer in China, they also, they are renting a lot of the farm buildings, the village buildings, actually, to manage somehow and renovate and rent out to the young immigrants who just came. I think that's at least a good kind of start to think. But once again, Chinese, they want to own. There are people who's gonna buy, no matter how expensive. I cannot afford it, but some people can. Thank you. One last question. Thank you very much for the presentation that you did. It was very inspiring. You mentioned that you studied on how to build intense and tight areas from New York and how different businesses cooperate and coexist. How did your experience from New York help you in your projects in Shenzhen? Excuse me, can you repeat the last sentence? How your experience from New York helped you in your projects in Shenzhen? So it's basically, what I learned from New York is that New York has a very kind of generic kind of planning, great system. It's a very kind of generic and flexible system. But on the other hand, because of the individual private ownership, the outcome of the city is quite diverse, quite individualized because if, like I said before, each developer can only take a piece of land, adjacent lands, and develop his own. He can take a large chunk of land to develop kind of a modern lithic project. I think in China, especially in Shenzhen before, the land was quite cheap and it's fairly easy to acquire a big chunk of land to develop a small building, relatively a small building on that land. So that's why you, if you look at the plan, I have that comparison plan between Shenzhen and New York from above the air. So you see the fabric is so different. One of the reasons is the land ownership and the way people use the land to create this kind of isolated islands of developments and objects. But in 2004 and 2005, Shenzhen established the first in China the kind of economic, ecological preservation line, which kind of a self-restraint. It's kind of a pioneering efforts to set up a red line for his own developments. So beyond that, Shenzhen has very limited land resources now. That's why so many sort of urban regeneration projects is going on at the moment. There are very few new kind of developments. So I think this is how we can learn from New York is really to how to redevelop in the existing kind of a situation. New York is like constantly evolving. It's like redevelop and build the city upon the city itself. I think it's that process that the new city like Shenzhen now is learning. So I think this is an interesting kind of period of time when the city has to think about how to densify itself because everybody in Shenzhen saying, okay, we have no land to develop now. But if you look at the fabric from the Google map, if you are a New Yorker, look at Shenzhen, the fabric. You see empty lots everywhere. So that's the difference. I think now people start to realize how to densify the existing, how to make the fabric really work better. It's a long way to go because we already developed a lot of things. You have to change the policy. You have to really start from the policy level to redevelop the existing city. It's really tough. But it's time to do that. Thank you, Meng Yan. Thank you.