Ancel
Visitor
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Shanghai 2010 - 2006/04/23 12:27
Extract from abstract:
...Current developments in 2005, such as the Universal Exhibition in Aichi in Japan and the announcement of the next exhibition of this kind, to take place in Shanghai in 2010, are surely anticipating a revival of an established way of imagining perspectives of this kind which relate to these previous historical occasions. The initial project for the 2010 WorldExpo at Shanghai has not avoided this tendency, though displaying a certain concern for the environment in the choice of its Expo theme: better city, better life. Hugo Lacroix has written a monograph about the team of architects that produced the first design for the 2010 exhibition infrastructure, titled Architecture Studio at Paris and at Shanghai, in which he points out that The European spokespersons seem to be very close to the ideas of the ancient Confucian philosopher Wang Fuzhi. For them too, the ideal consciousness is to maintain a state of evolution, avoiding all immobilisation. For them, eternity has acquired this meaning; the ability to actualize an endless process of becoming. This, then, is surely the reality that is necessarily driving us to conceptualize and construct projects on a planetary scale, that connect directly with the universe and with (meta) physics in a digital age. Let us recall, just briefly, that we have the Architecture Studio agency to thank for the construction of the Institute of the Arab World in Paris (with mechanical screens that filter the light, designed by Jean Nouvel) and the European Parliament at Strasbourg (a real cathedral of politics in the city). For Shanghai, Architecture Studio has produced a symbolic bridge, passing from the past to the future, as the philosophical expression of an invisible link between the historical quarter of the Shanghai Bund and the Pudong office skyline opposite. Together, these establish the context for this future World Expo. The movement of a passage in present time, viewed no longer as a utopia set in the future but as an objective dimension to the city as it inhabits the present, is presented not just as a single event but one that projects into the future...
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