Oct 16th 2020
Oct 10th 2021
China
goes
Urban
The city to come
An exhibition
at MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale
di Torino.
October 16th 2020
October 10th 2021
In 1978, 18% of the population in China lived in urban areas. Since then the number of inhabitants in cities has increased approximately 1% per annum and currently makes up 60% of the total population. New infrastructures and settlements have gradually modified the landscape, transformed property rights, swept away administrative boundaries, and “gobbled up” rural spaces and villages.
The rapid, disruptive process of Chinese urbanisation unfolds before our eyes. Understanding it is not easy. Existing categories and models are useless. If we believe Chinese urbanisation to simply be an exaggeration and a flaw, we are effectively ignoring the fact it constitutes an epochal change, one which redefines roles and relationships not only from a geo-economic and geopolitical point of view, but also from the point of view of culture, imagination and possibilities. A change that the current pandemia makes ever more deep and hard.
China Goes Urban proposes to change viewpoint, to look at reality rather than pigeonhole it in predefined categories and models. It is an invitation to explore the world by travelling through the city and architecture of today and tomorrow and circumnavigating the concept of city: although we all think we are familiar with and understand this seemingly simple concept, it shatters in the multiplicity of the contemporary urban.
Tongzhou, Zhaoqing, Zhengdong and Lanzhou are the new towns where we start to explore and where the exhibition begins.
Exhibition
itineraries
Photographs and videos, installations, maquette, data and infographics drive visitors along two logical itineraries.
The first one gradually deconstructs the idea that Chinese urbanisation is exceptional starting from the reconstruction of an “exhibition hall” in which developers and public administrations “stage” the city. The diversity and exoticism normally associated with Chinese cities are then chip away. By showing the ordinary everyday life unfolding in the new settlements, videos, images, installations and explanations gradually make new Chinese urbanisations more “familiar”.
The second itinerary begins from empty, distant, and lifeless spaces. Gradually, however, the same spaces become more animated: the photographs and videos narrow the gap between the visitors and the persons portrayed, their faces, gestures and movements. So similar to our faces and movements.
Tongzhou, Zhaoqing, Zhengdong and Lanzhou are the new towns where we start to explore and where the exhibition begins, moving from China to the world, and then back, from the world to the specific features of the new settlements.
To explore Chinese urbanization and question the features of the contemporary urban, China goes urban is organised around four main topics.
Urbanisation as a transcalar process
According to the UN, we live in the urban age. Since 2007 most of the world’s population lives in cities. The Chinese urbanisation is part of this global urban model made of relationships and flows, exchanges and intersections. Seeing from the global scale, Chinese new towns document the multiple forms of today urbanisation in which not everything is city, but everything is driven by the urban and show limits, contradictions and possibilities of today urban and economic development model.
Urban fragments
At first sight we can describe Chinese new towns by listing a whole host of heterogeneous, discontinuous buildings and spaces. Each one appears to go in its own direction, impossible to reciprocally connect, and impossible to interpret univocally. At the same time, the fragmented nature of Chinese new towns higlights the radical multiplicity of the constant process of the construction of space and reveals the many worlds that have always made up the urban.
Infrastructures
Viaducts, airports, railway stations, railway lines, and highways dominate the transformation of the landscape. Miles of pipes, cables, and conduits are hidden underground; telecommunications and satellite networks fill the air while their sensors continue ad infinitum to exchange invisible but omnipresent waves and microwaves.
Infrastructures are not just a background, a silent stage on which players and powers recite their roles. They are also, and perhaps above all, political, economic and social structures that define and support every aspect of urban life.
Urban and rural, and back again
On one side, the city, lights, skyscrapers, and roads full of traffic and people; on the other, the countryside, cultivated fields, farmers, and tractors moving in a rarefied, suspended atmosphere. This demarcation, so simple and clear, clashes with the reality before our eyes. Where does the city end and the countryside begin? The city is everywhere and in everything. Urban and rural are combined and superimposed, creating a sort of chameleon in which distinctions dissolve, differences are camouflaged, and predefined orders disappear.
Events
to learn more
NEXT EVENT
Thursday September 30th 2021
6.00 PM
Liberi Libri: Federico Antonelli e Filippo Santelli
With Alberto Bradanini, Centro Studi sulla Cina Contemporanea, Pierre -Alain Croset, Politecnico di Milano, Sergio Pace, Università di Torino, in dialogue with Federico Antonelli, Università Roma Tre, author of "Il diritto cinese. Dall’antica alla nuova via della seta" e Filippo Santelli, La Repubblica, author of "La Cina non è una sola"
THE EVENT WILL BE STREAMED ON ZOOM
WALKING THROUGH THE EXHIBITION
Debates within the rooms of the museum, presented by Claudio Jampaglia
Saturday October 24, 2020, from 3 PM | Reading the City: Close up, from Afar
with Alessandro Amaducci, Università di Torino, and Samuele Pellecchia, Exhibition curator. WATCH
Saturday October 31, 2020, from 3 PM | The Power of Infrastructure
with Giorgio Cuscito, Limes, and Francesca Governa, Exhibition curator. WATCH
Saturday November 7, 2020, from 3 PM | The Urban Dream
with Daniele Brombal, Università Ca' Foscari and T.wai, and Michele Bonino, Exhibition curator. WATCH
Saturday November 14, 2020, from 3.00 PM | Urban Materials and Urban Designs
with Augusto Cagnardi, Gregotti Associati International, and Francesco Carota, Politecnico di Torino. WATCH
In collaboration with Biennale Tecnologia
LECTURES ON CITY AND INNOVATION
Remarks on China and the world, by some Politecnico di Torino scholars
Thursday November 19, 2020, at 3 PM | City and Innovation
with Plinio Innocenzi, Università di Sassari, and Roberto Pagani, Politecnico di Torino, Scientific Officer at the Shanghai Consulate
Thursday December 3, 2020, at 5 PM | Rethinking the Traditional Chinese Village
with Carla Bartolozzi, Politecnico di Torino, and Du Qian, Shanghai Jiaotong University
Wednesday December 9, 2020, at 5 PM | The Progress of the Construction Industry in China
with Bruno Briseghella, Fuzhou University, Giuseppe Carlo Marano, Politecnico di Torino, and Camillo Nuti, Università RomaTre
Thursday December 17, 2020, at 3 PM | Towards Socially Integrative Cities with Francesca Frassoldati, Politecnico di Torino, and the authors of the book on sustainable cities in Europe and China (event in english)
Wednesday January 7, 2021, at 5 PM | An Oriental Idea of Postmodernism
with Antonio di Campli, Politecnico di Torino
LECTURES AND MEETINGS
Dialogues and points of view on the places of Chinese urbanization
Thursday March 4 2021 at 4 PM | China Goes Urban. China changing between society and urbanization
with Giada Massetti, sinologist and author of the essay about China Nella testa del Dragone. Identità e ambizioni della Nuova Cina. Event in collaboration with Skira
Thursday March 25 2021 at 6 PM | Lin Huiyin's Shadow and Stars. Portrait of a young woman between architecture and poetry in 1930s China
with Marco Trisciuoglio, Politecnico di Torino
Thursday May 6, 2021, at 6 PM | The perception of the city in Xi Jinping's China
with Stefania Stafutti, Università di Torino
HEAD TO HEAD INTERVIEWS
Dialogues on the places of Chinese Urbanization
Thursday March 11, 2021, at 6 PM | The Inner Mongolia Model: News from the Northern Front
with Steve Bisson, Paris College of Art, Alessandro Zanoni, artdirector-photographer
Thursday April 8, 2021, at 6 PM | New Districts and Beautified Villages in Urban China
with Gary Hack, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tim Oakes, University of Colorado Boulder (event in english) WATCH
Thursday April 22, 2021, at 1 PM | Displaying the City
with Ole Bouman, Design Society Shenzhen, and Beatrice Leanza, MAAT Lisbon (event in english) WATCH
SPECIAL EVENTS
Wednesday November 11, 2020, at 2.30 PM | China Goes Urban - The City to Come
International conference with renowned architectural and urban scholars.
with Ash Amin, University of Cambridge, Bian Lanchun, Tsinghua University, Ann Forsyth, Harvard University, Liu Jian, Tsinghua University, Lu Andong, Nanjing University, Bernhard Müller, Technische Universität Dresden, Brent D. Ryan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the curator of the exhibition Michele Bonino and Francesca Governa, Politecnico di Torino (event in english). WATCH
In collaboration with Biennale Tecnologia
Plan
your visit
China Goes Urban
The city to come
from October 16th 2020 to October 10th 2021
The current health situation has guided the design of the exhibition path, leading to technological solutions that allow the exhibition to be enjoyed safely, avoiding gatherings, and with ad hoc multimedia content, usable on your smartphone, designed to deepen the contents while waiting.
MAO Museo d'Arte Orientale
Via San Domenico, 11 - Torino
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm
Thursday from 1pm to 9pm
Closed on Monday - The ticket office closes one hour earlier
Full ticket: 10 €
Reduced ticket (from 6 to 18 years old, from 19 to 25 years old if students, people with disabilities, groups, affiliated entities): 8 €
Free ticket (children under 6, accompanying person with disabilities, Museum Pass, Torino + Piemonte Card)
China Goes Urban ticket + permanent collection: full € 14; reduced 12 €
ADVANCE TICKETS ONLINE
EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES FOR SCHOOLS
The visitor flow regulation system with digital interface was created thanks to the contribution of
