The "Seed Cathedral", UK pavilion by Thomas Heatherwick

…In Expo’s final week, people seemed determined to ward off the meta-question of “what’s it all for?” by concentrating on the mechanics of the Expo breakdown. The newspapers were full of speculations about the fate of various national pavilions, which, with a few exceptions (such as China’s), must be taken down according to the rules set by the Bureau International des Expositions. Amidst talk that Italy’s pavilion would likely be resurrected as a shopping mall, editorials complained that few countries appeared to have planned eco-friendly afterlives for their buildings, though Heatherwick’s Seed Cathedral again was the exception: the first charity auction of 7000 of the Pavilion’s seed rods caused an e-frenzy. Tellingly, there was little reflection about the purpose of the whole.

Perhaps this lack of reflection can be attributed to the fact that the point seems so obvious on one level. As with the Beijing Olympics, Shanghai Expo is intended to announce China’s ascendance to superpower status – probably the only message that every single visitor will take away from Expo. (Although such triumphal muscle-flexing was once an American specialty, ever since Congress decreed that public money can no longer be put towards Expos, U.S. pavilions have been in decline; 2010’s lacklustre effort, which came seriously close to not coming off at all, was sponsored by corporations from Citigroup to PepsiCo and derisively dubbed “Best Buy”.) There was little pretence that Expo might contribute to meaningful technological innovations or to global discussions about climate change, though the displays and case studies in the Urban Best Practice Area (Zone E) were apparently more high-minded. Few national pavilions made more than a nod to the green theme in their displays. One corporate pavilion was even dedicated to Oil: its theme “Petroleum Stretches Urban Dreams” was only marginally less credible than the Coca-Cola Pavilion’s theme of “Happy Plants”.

Coca-Cola signage on the main Expo axis

Instead, individual pavilion displays tend to resemble nothing so much as travel brochures, with a strong emphasis on cultural attractions, national values, and local products. The Canadian pavilion, for instance, showcased the National Film Board and Cirque du Soleil (not Celine Dion, thank heavens), the shop sold t-shirts and maple syrup, and the cafeteria featured poutine, a gravy-and-cheese-curd french fry concoction that seems designed to baffle any non-Canadian. The Pavilion was an unapologetic exercise in national branding: everyone left waving a free flag. Though the stereotypes can get tired, the sense that visitors ‘travel’ to different countries through their pavilion visits, experiencing the best of foreign lifestyles and consumer goods, has historically been one of Expo’s greatest attractions. Since Expo 67 in Montreal visitors have even been issued with passports which get stamped at each pavilion.

Canadian pavilion by Saia Barbarese Topouzanov

Prior to going to China, I’d assumed that the chance to ‘travel’ to other places and to glimpse other lifestyles must be the primary draw for Chinese visitors – and this did appear to be true for many, particularly those from rural areas, who’d been given free tickets (normally about £20 each).  But was this the whole story? The last night before I left, I had the opportunity to speak to one middle-class 24-year old Shanghainese woman who had specialized in Exhibitions and Conferences at university (complete with German teachers and English instruction). Stylish and confident, she had just come back from a beach holiday in Thailand. When I asked her what she thought Expo was all about, she replied without hesitation: “Cultural communication, not concepts.” While I am certain she is right, the communication ended up seeming surprisingly one way. Instead of feeling as if China is out to impress the world, I was ultimately more struck by how hard many countries were working to impress China. And as the record-breaking crowds confirm, the Chinese are enjoying the spectacle.

Shanghai World Expo 2010 will probably to go down in the history books as one of the most successful world’s fairs ever. The Chinese government was aiming for 70 million visitors; by the time Expo closed on 31^st October, they’d reportedly had 73 million. (To compare: Expo 67 in Montreal, one of the most successful world’s fairs of the twentieth century, had 50 million). As well as record-breaking attendance, Shanghai World Expo could justifiably claim success in other ways: the event was efficiently run, amazingly clean, with lots of user-friendly amenities in a vast underground city built to protect visitors from summer heat – restaurants, shops, and, yes, toilets, both Asian squat or throne-style. Take your pick.

Better City, Better Life

Expo also benefited from larger developments that took place at a scale and a cost that today seems only conceivable in China. The notoriously haze of pollution that normally engulfs Shanghai was gone, thanks to manufacturing restrictions in place for the duration of Expo, and the site was accessible thanks to a massive expansion of the subway infrastructure, now one of the world’s largest. And let’s not forget that the site itself – 5.3 square kilometres in the centre of one of the world’s most populous cities – was freed up by the displacement of 55,000 locals, giving an undeniably ironic twist to Expo’s “Better City, Better Life” theme. These developments added tens of billions onto the already staggering $4.2 billion spent on Expo itself, over twice what Beijing spent on the 2008 Olympics. Many say that Shanghai Expo is the world’s most expensive event ever.

Architecturally, the 190 pavilions on site ranged dramatically in quality. Some were spectacular, some were little more than painted big boxes, and some were derivative: Japan’s pink eco-blob was distinctly Graz-like. There were a few obviously eco-friendly green structures like New Zealand’s and Switzerland’s and even a few brown ones like Spain’s and Portugal’s (made of wicker and cork respectively).

Swiss pavilion

Spanish pavilion

UK pavilion by Thomas Heatherwick

Thomas Heatherwick’s UK “Seed Cathedral” deservedly stole the show: bristling with 60,000 acrylic rods, each containing a seed from Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, it was genuinely on-message and genuinely beautiful. Many national pavilions, however, made no effort to interpret the “Better City” theme environmentally. Certainly China, with its oxblood-red crown like colossus, did not. Nor did Saudi Arabia, whose pavilion – a gigantic ovoid “moon boat” topped by an electronic sign projecting celebratory messages about Chinese-Saudi Arabian friendship – turned out to be the fair’s most popular venue with nine hour waits.

Chinese pavilion

Saudi Arabian pavilion

Indeed, in the face of queues averaging 2 to 3 hours, I gave up after visiting the Canadian and African pavilions and simply wandered around Expo dreamland for the day. There was much to marvel at and enjoy. The visitors – even those in nine-hour queues – seemed curious, patient, and good-humoured. For all the slickness of the operation, there were frequent reminders that we were in China, from passing military parades to announcements exhorting us not to eat too much.  The signage was wonderfully bossy, as if written by someone’s mother. “Polite Language and No Noising,” instructed one. “Be patient and No Jumping the Queue,” said another. The sheer scale of the spectacle was hugely impressive. Yet walking around, I couldn’t help wonder, “yes, it’s fun, but what is it all for?”

Read the second part here.

The Urban Islands Project – reviving places:
www.urbanislandsproject.net

The Urban Islands Project is part of an ongoing project SPACEPILOTS introduced in 2009 under the title of Unlocking the City, aiming to excite young people about their city, engage them with their environment, and to empower them to get involved in the actual shaping of places.

We are inviting young people aged 16-25 from all over London to participate in the research and development of design ideas for Urban Islands.

- Join us on www.urbanislandsproject.net to receive the latest news and to help us detect existing or potential urban spots, overlooked and/or ignored, and revive them into Urban Islands!

We will launch the project in form of a small pilot at this year’s London Festival of Architecture [LFA'10], 19th June – 4th July 2010, in the Borough of Southwark, South London.

dates: 19th June 2010, project start;
4th July 2010 @ The LFA 2010, finale

place: Southwark, Southbank

theme: ‘reviving places through urban interventions and architectural
actions’

method: creative, collaborative exploring, mapping, filming, making,…

The Bartlett Planning informal talks on places and cultures are back with ‘Galicia: (re)presenting a Spanish regional space’, by Diego García Mejuto, research student at the Bartlett School of Planning.

• When: Wednesday 20^th January at 4:30pm
• Where: Room 5.17b, Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB

All welcome

Contact information: Amparo Tarazona Vento, a.vento@ucl.ac.uk

This month a new initiative was launched at the Bartlett School of Planning. The ‘Lonely Planner’ series consist of informal talks given by Bartlett Planning PhD students on places they are very familiar with, followed by questions and discussion. The aim of these talks is to learn and discuss about certain places through the speakers’ first-hand knowledge of them. Both their content and format are open to the presenter, who in terms of the former may focus not only on the places themselves, but also on spatial practices and planning policies related to them. Concerning their format, the talks may include descriptions, narratives, stories, etc. using those materials considered adequate, such as texts, poems, images or videos.

The first talk was given on 3^rdDecember by research student Kiavash Soltani, on the ‘Cities of Iran’. Following a thread defined by the classification of the 5 selected cities according to their main features (the Environmentally sustainable city, the Religious city, the Cultural city and the Modern city), he provided an informative insight into the characteristics, spatial practices and planning issues of Iran’s urban areas. In short, we were delighted with a polyhedral view of Iranian cities that included Iranian traditional music, ingenious solutions for cooling dwellings and their (mis)interpretation in contemporary architecture, major ancient urban developments to improve the image of the city, Western influences on planning, and spaces for social interaction such as public baths, sport venues or even cars, as Kiarostami brilliantly depicted in his film ‘Ten’.

The next Lonely Planner talk will take place in January, on the Spanish region of Galicia. We look forward to seeing you there.

Now in it’s 7th year, Writing-PAD – ‘Writing Purposefully in Art and Design’ – offers art and design institutions an arena in which to explore and develop the notion of ‘thinking through writing’ as a parallel to visual discourse in art and design practice. Writing PAD has not only brought together tutors from across the disciplines, but also from across roles: i.e. studio staff, theory staff, learning support, and learning and teaching (L&T) coordinators. Based at Goldsmiths, University of London, Writing PAD now works in conjunction with over 40 universities.

www.writing-pad.ac.uk

See also the new Journal of Writing in Creative Practice

The UCL Urban Laboratory is organising an interdisciplinary work-in-progress workshop for PhD students, who would like to present and discuss their research projects. The workshop will provide an open and informal space to discuss your work with regards to theoretical, practical or methodological questions and problems at any stage of your research. The *Stadtkolloquium* aims to create a supportive environment for urban researchers who would like to get feedback on their work and meet peer PhD students from other departments. It hopes to generate lively round- table discussions on diverse urban questions across various disciplinary backgrounds, such as Geography, Architecture, Anthropology, Literature, Cultural Studies, Development Studies, History, Environmental Studies, Health Sciences, Fine Arts, Planning, Engineering etc.

* Dates
The 2-day workshop will take place at UCL, 28. & 29. January 2010. Each participant will be given 25 minutes to present their work, followed by 25 minutes of feedback and discussion.

* Call for proposals
If you are interested in discussing your work, please send us your PhD outline (1-2 pages) and/or an outline of what you would like to discuss by 15. December 2009.

* Call for papers
Due to the time-frame, the presentation should ideally select a few specific aspects of the research project, such as questions around your empirical material, methodological approaches, the writing process, development of research questions, finding a manageable PhD topic, etc. Therefore, participants will be asked to prepare a short paper (2-4 pages) by 10. January 2010. This paper should outline their presentation and/or include questions for the group. It will be circulated and read by all participants along with the PhD proposals as preparation for the
discussion.

Dependent on the availability of free spaces, PhD students who would like to attend without presenting are welcome. All participants are expected to read the proposals and papers in preparation for lively feedback and discussions. Please get in contact with:

* Contact
Sandra Jasper, s.jasper@ucl.ac.uk
Lucrezia Barnes-Dacey, l.barnes-dacey@ucl.ac.uk

In the Roots of Romanticism, Isaiah Berlin suggested that German culture, being peripheral to the European intellectual life of the eighteenth century, had to define itself in opposition to the dominance of French culture. It was this negative self-identification that resulted in the birth of the Romantic movement. The 2010 Research in Progress Conference, likewise, proposes that this condition of dependence, generated by geographical distance, can be stimulating, productive, and sometimes even liberating.

How and by whom are such notions as “periphery” and “province” constructed? How does the acceptance or denial of one’s own “provincialism” influence identity and culture in general? What are the factors that produce cultural distance and why does it still exist in our contemporary high-speed and digital world? These are a few of the many possible questions our conference hopes to address. We encourage presentations that discuss various episodes in the history of art, architecture and culture in general, which may include such topics as European colonial empires, diasporas of war, and the effects of exile, mistranslation, migration and separation in aesthetic practices.

Deadlines:
November 15: Abstract submission (maximum 300 words). Please send abstract and a short cv in doc or pdf format to rip@mit.edu.
December 1: Participants notified.
January 31: Paper submissions due (2500 words, 20 minute presentations)
February 27: Conference.

Friday, 23 October 2009, 10am–8pm. (Registration opens 9:30am). All welcome.

Borderlands - Gas, Food, Lodging (© Nina Vollenbröker & James Santer)

part of: Bartlett Architecture &: Interdisciplinary Seminars

Room G02, Wates House, The Bartlett School of Architecture, 22 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0QB.

Organisers: Anne Hultzsch, Barbara Penner, Nina Vollenbröker

Participants: Stephen Bann (University of Bristol), Jan Birksted (The Bartlett, UCL), Simon Bradley (Yale University Press), Chloe Chard (Independent), Lilian Chee (National University of Singapore), Tim Edensor (Manchester Metropolitan University), Tamar Garb (University College London), Robert Harbison (London Metropolitan University), Susanne Isa and Simon Herron (The Bartlett, UCL), Barbara Penner (The Bartlett, UCL), Victoria Perry (The Bartlett, UCL), Jane Rendell (The Bartlett, UCL), Jilly Tragannou (Parsons New School for Design)

Architecture &: is a termly interdisciplinary seminar providing opportunities for staff and student researchers within the Bartlett School of Architecture to initiate research conversations at interdisciplinary crossings. In the fifth event of the series, we bring together architects, geographers, art historians, editors and writers to explore how travel conceives, represents and defines place; how it relates to questions of identity and location; how it generates specific forms of spatial practice, modes of seeing, and material culture; and how, more generally, it serves as a unique research context for diverse disciplines.

Addressing issues of perception, attraction and mobility, we have designed a day with two sessions of scholarly paper presentations that each concludes with a response from an expert in the field. Woven around these two fixed sessions, we have a mobile session that will take speakers and the audience onto armchair journeys through film or photography offering spaces to pause and reflect. In addition, in the spirit of a tourist taking away a souvenir or photographing a favourite scene while travelling, we have asked all contributors to bring a material object with them on the day that will be arranged in a display. Jan Birksted will respond to this ad-hoc cabinet of curiosities at the day’s end.

The morning session, Perception, focuses on the modes of architectural perception that are prompted by travel and the language used to mediate it. Why, and how, does ‘being-away’ influence the traveller’s sensitivity of the built environment (or vice-versa)? How are these impressions recorded in succeeding representations? Subjects discussed in this session range from guidebooks to jokes to travel as a metaphor for architectural experience. The speakers, Simon Bradley, Chloe Chard, and Robert Harbison, will take us to places such as Worcestershire, St Peter’s Cathedral, and local trains in Mexico and Burgundy – which will then be revisited by Stephen Bann in his response.

The afternoon session, Attraction, considers the attraction between architecture and travel. What attraction does architecture hold for travellers and travel hold for architects? What is learned, taken or brought back, and what fields of sentiment are opened up before, while and after ‘being away’? Papers by Barbara Penner, Victoria Perry, and Jilly Traganou, will consider the way allegories shaped popular touristic routes, how slavery underwrote the invention of classic British tourist destinations, as well as how a revised notion of travel today can still inform architectural production – issues which Tim Edensor will address in his response.

The mobile session, Armchair Travellers, will break up the day at three points to take the audience away from a strictly scholarly context on 30min-journeys through the speakers’ presentation of creative work. With Lilian Chee, Simon Herron and Susanne Isa, and Tamar Garb, we will travel to Singapore, between South Africa and Paris, and across America through various media of representation. Jane Rendell will respond at the end of the day to this collection of journeys.

This will be followed (from 6:30pm in the Bartlett Lobby) by the book launches of Barbara Penner, Newlyweds on Tour and Jilly Traganou and Miodrag Mitrasinovic’s edited Travel, Space, Architecture, as well as the exhibition opening of Nina Vollenbröker and James Santer’s Borderland: Gas Food Lodging. Robert Harbison’s book Travels in the History of Architecture (2009) will also be on sale.

Please join us.

For further details, please see: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/events/seminars/seminars.htm

Or contact Anne Hultzsch: a.hultzsch@ucl.ac.uk

Living Landscapes Lecture Series

curated by Stephanie Brandt and Carol Mancke
Autumn 2009

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Session 2 [2 November 2009]: Art and agency: formal and informal approaches to art in the public realm

Speakers: Vivien Lovell, Founder-Director of Modus Operandi Art Consultants, London and Jean-François Prost, artist and architect, Montreal. Jean-François is the co-founder of SYN and initiator of the collaborative research platform Adaptive Actions.

Time: 18:30 – 20:30
Location: The Building Centre, Store Street, London, WC1E 7BT [http://www.buildingcentre.co.uk]

Free admission
RSVP: livinglandscapes@spacepilots.net