Program: Exhibition
Location: Shenzhen, China
Period: 2017
One village, ten thoughts
The exhibition table is launched by Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and ALL Architects, showing 30 students’ research-based designs on Guangzhou Shenjing Village.
Shenjing is an “atypical” urban village on the fringe of Guangzhou’s territory. It has still kept some primitive landscapes. The slow urbanization here can merely be seen as an illusion, bringing unclear future. We hope, through our works, to trigger more explorations on many of these anonymous hidden territories in our cities. We believe the growths and deaths of these villages deserve more attentions in urban discourses.
There are ten design topics on the table: village entrance,ancestral hall, graveyard, square, street, canal, farmland, elevated highway, renting apartment, private house. The territory is not shown in a realistic and rigid way. Instead, we treat each design as a segment. They are collaged and articulated into an “interpretative village”. The clay, the chairs are collected from Shenjing Village. The juxtaposition of these diverse artifacts enables audiences to experience real lives in Chinese village. The space arrangement generates village-alike atmosphere: Collective banquette, roundtable discussion or informal food stalls, etc.: as a “ceremony of everyday”.
Whether audiences are familiar with the specific village, or whether these designs reach professional standards are not important. Shenjing here works only as a generic prototype. The intension here is not to solve problems, but to offer possibilities.
By showing our ten thoughts, we are expecting hundreds of, and thousands of thoughts. We welcome you to join our imaginations.
