Danish projects in China

THE GOLDEN LION – VENICE 2006 

Danish Architecture Centre wins the world’s finest architecture award

Denmark has succeeded in winning the main prize, the prestigious Golden Lion Award, at the world’s largest architecture exhibition, the 10. international architecture biennale in Venice. This prize is for architecture what the Golden Palm is for film.

On 8th November at the award show in Venice, Danish Architecture Centre received the Golden Lion Award for national pavilions for the exhibition CO-EVOLUTION.

“I am very proud and honoured to receive this prize that corresponds to The Golden Palm of Cannes and the acknowledgement that goes with it. It is a prize that places Danish Architecture Centre and Danish architecture in an international league in line of Danish films. For the moment, we can benefit from having created the most outstanding architecture exhibition of the world, and this honour is not least owed to curator Henrik Valeur and the four drawing offices”, says a delighted CEO of Danish Architecture Centre, Kent Martinussen. 

Among the 49 participating countries, Danish Architecture Centre receives the prize for having initiated the exhibition CO-EVOLUTION – an innovative, astounding, and ambitious exhibition about sustainable urban development in China. An exhibition that bears the fruit of an international and multidisciplinary collaboration between young Danish architects from the offices CEBRA, COBE, EFFEKT, and TRANSFORM and four Chinese universities respectively.

The exhibition is curated by the Danish architect Henrik Valeur and the office UiD, who have created the frame story for CO-EVOLUTION by asking: How can we improve people’s living conditions without exhausting the very resources needed to sustain a better life?

The international jury, comprised of Zaha Hadid among others, has argued for the motivation for the distinguished prize: This pavilion shows us a country looking outward rather than inward, and proposes concrete solutions to water and energy management through visual forms of aesthetic merit. We salute the creativity, intelligence, and generosity of the Danish pavilion.

Minister of Culture Brian Mikkelsen says: “I am very thrilled that Danish Architecture has received such an outstanding honour, well, in fact the most prestigious in the world. I saw the exhibition in Venice in September and I was in no doubt that Denmark with CO-EVOLUTION had made an exceptional contribution. The Danish biennale contribution has gained massive, and well-deserved, international mention of the press, but the fact that we win the main prize of the biennale is a tremendous achievement. It documents that Danish architecture in a world scale finds itself on the top level, and it is one of my main objectives as Minister of Culture to ensure that we remain this on top level in the future as well.” 

The Danish audience has a unique opportunity to see ‘the world’s finest architecture exhibition’ in Danish Architecture Centre, where an identical copy of the exhibition of the architecture biennale is to be found until 21 January 2007.

Facts

CO-EVOLUTION is sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Culture, The Danish Arts Foundation and Realdania. Engineering consultancy provided by Carl Bro Group.

CO-EVOLUTION is initiated by Danish Architecture Centre by CEO Kent Martinussen. The exhibition is curated by Henrik Valeur and UiD.

The overall theme of this year’s architecture biennale is mega cities with the title ‘Cities: People, Society,  Architecture’. The international jury is comprised of Richard Sennett, Amyn Aga Khan, Anthony Gormley, and Zaha Hadid. See other prizes of the architecture biennale at www.labiennale.org

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CO-EVOLUTION presents four visionary proposals for sustainable urban development in the four Chinese cities of Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai and Xi’an.

View the movies from the projects here:

http://www.dac.dk/visBlaaPlayer.asp?artikelID=2371

Title: Magic Mountains

Team: COBE and Chongqing University
City: Chongqing

Chongqing, the biggest municipality in the world, is undergoing high-speed urban development. 50 million m2 of floor space and 500 km of highways are being added to the urban landscape and 1,200,000 people are relocating to the city every year.

Magic Mountains is an urban design proposing a new “Green” Central Business District (GCBD). The GCBD district resembles the natural skyline of Chongqing, but with inhabited mountains. The mountain-peaks match the high density centres; the mountains lower reaches resemble traditional Chinese neighbourhoods. The valleys are green open spaces accommodating the “living machine” – a system treating wastewater and generating renewable energy.

The inhabited mountains will reduce energy consumption by supporting passive cooling in summer and passive heating in winter. They are interconnected by a system of bicycle and pedestrian paths, and an efficient public transport system to minimize the need for transportation by car. Magic Mountains reduces the overall consumption of resources and energy by 22% and subtitutes 11% conventional energy for renewable.

Title: Performative Urbanism

Team: CEBRA and Tsinghua University
City: Beijing

Fatou is an old, highly polluted industrial area situated in the green belt of eastern Beijing. The factories left behind over 10 million m3 of polluted soil, enough to cover the entire city of Venice in a layer 2 m deep. Over the next 10-15 years the Fatou area is to be developed to create a new city.
Performative Urbanism consists of seven small urban districts organized according to principles of proximity and density to assure universal ease of access to public transport, recreational areas and the city centre.
Performative Urbanism presents a sustainable solution that permits the cleansing and recycling of polluted soil while simultaneously creating local jobs.

Performative Urbanism also demonstrates how the use of a natural water-cleaning system can supply the city with 50% of its daily water requirements and illustrates how the city may become self-sufficient when it comes to its energy requirements. The project operates on several scales; all of them integrated into the architectural master-plan to create an entirely new and beautifully topographically sculpted area in the generally flat city of Beijing.

Title: Shanghai SubCity

Team: EFFEKT and Tongji University
City: Shanghai

Shanghai has become one of Asia’s top lifestyle cities, featuring high-end entertainment and modern living conditions. In order to ease the pressure on the city, the local government is planning a number of sub-cities around the Shanghai-periphery.

Shanghai SubCity is a visionary proposal for the suburban district Jiading, next to Shanghai’s brand new $320 million Formula 1-track. The project suggests a new type of suburb, a dense SubCity cluster combining urban and natural qualities. The new city proposal is shaped to resemble a giant logo, ‘Che’, the Chinese word for car. Besides serving to brand and identify the new SubCity, the shape of the sign allows close connections between nature and urbanity. The green eco-park surrounding the city serves both as a leisure park and an eco-system providing the inhabitants with renewable energy, water and recreational areas. At the same time the park works like a vast geo-thermal energy plant heating the city during winter and cooling it in the summer. This will cover the 75% of total energy consumption in buildings which is currently used on heating and cooling.

Title: Citywall

Team: TRANSFORM and XAUAT
City: Xi’an

Xi’an is the most important historical centre in China. It attracts ever-increasing numbers of tourists. The historical city centre is surrounded by a city wall marking the border between ancient China and the new China emerging on the other side. Besides being affected by high levels of pollution, chaotic traffic and constant demands for improvements in general living-conditions, the city is also under pressure from steadily growing mass-tourism.

Citywall is a project proposing a new city wall around the existing historic one – a 14 km wide compactly-organized architectonic “belt”, providing transportation, accommodation, parks and squares, information centres etc.
This belt will constitute a new infrastructure featuring light railways to minimize travel-time and replace the thousands of taxis now crowding the inner city and polluting it with noise and fumes. Citywall will sustain the image of a dense inner city while addressing the problems of noise and pollution.

View the movies from the projects here:

http://www.dac.dk/visBlaaPlayer.asp?artikelID=2371

The Danish Pavilion 2006 in Venice

 This project is featuring a unique joint venture between China and Denmark. The CO-EVOLUTION exhibition shows how architects – cooperating with researchers and planners – are helping to meet the global challenges following in the wake of China’s massive economic growth and the intended “welfare boost”. The exhibition is the result of a project involving some of the most talented young Danish architects collaborating with students and professors from four top universities in China.The Challenge. Within the next 20 years, some 400 million Chinese citizens are expected to join the global urbanization race and the Chinese government has set itself the goal of creating appreciably better living conditions for its 1.3 billion-strong population. The rapid and extensive urbanization processes currently underway in China are vastly increasing consumption of natural resources, putting tremendous pressure on local and global environments. However, while – on one hand – living conditions have already greatly improved, on the other there are serious challenges.

“How can China proceed with its ambitious project to improve living conditions for its population without exhausting the very resources needed to sustain a better life?”

This is the question that the Danish curator and architect Henrik Valeur asks with the exhibition entitled CO-EVOLUTION.

The Collaboration. Over the past six months four Danish architects’ offices – representing some of the most promising young Danish talent – have been working with professors, PhD and post graduate students from four of the most prestigious Chinese Universities. The project teams, each representing a Danish architects’ office and a Chinese university, have developed visionary proposals for sustainable urban development in the four Chinese cities of Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai and Xi’an.

The Exhibition. The four teams are presenting new models for holistic, large-scale, urban planning; integrating local needs, knowledge and low-tech solutions with cutting-edge expertise and futuristic technologies. Furthermore, the four projects confront a wide variety of economic, environmental, social and cultural issues related to the rapid and extensive urbanization taking place in China. The exhibition illustrates the value of sharing knowledge, ideas and experiences across borders. In this case the marriage between the Danish tradition for sustainable and humanistic architecture and planning with local Chinese knowledge and technical skills. The project also merges the values and aesthetic expressions of two different cultures.

Pictures from the projects:

Xian Wall – by Transform architects

Bejing – Performative Urbanism

Chongqing Magic Mountains – by Cobe architects

Shanghai project by EFFEKT architects

The Danish Pavilion 2006, Venice, Italy

Inside The Danish Pavilion 2006, Venice, Italy

Title: Citywall, Xi’an

Team: TRANSFORM and XAUAT

Inside The Danish Pavilion 2006, Venice, Italy

Title: Performative Urbanization, Beijing

Team: CEBRA and Tsinghua University

Inside The Danish Pavilion 2006, Venice, Italy

Title: Magic Mountains, ChongqingTeam: COBE and Chongqing University

Source: DAC (Danish Architectural Centre)’s website 2007

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National Swimming Center, Beijing

PTW and Ove Arup (DK). Under construction, completion scheduled for 2008

The striking exterior of the National Swimming Center, being constructed for the 2008 Olympic Games and nicknamed, the “Water Cube,” is made from panels of a lightweight form of Teflon that transforms the building into an energy-efficient greenhouse-like environment. Solar energy will also be used to heat the swimming pools, which are designed to reuse double-filtered, backwashed pool water that’s usually dumped as waste.

Excess rainwater will also be collected and stored in subterranean tanks and used to fill the pools. The complex engineering system of curvy steel frames that form the structure of the bubble-like skin are based on research into the structural properties of soap bubbles by two physicists at Dublin’s Trinity College. The unique structure is designed to help the building withstand nearly any seismic disruptions.

Dongtan Eco City, Dongtan

Masterplan by Arup, for the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corp. In planning stages, first phase to be completed in 2010

Developed by the Shanghai Industrial investment Corp., Dongtan Eco City, roughly the size of Manhattan, will be the world’s first fully sustainable cosmopolis when completed in 2040. Like Manhattan, it’s situated on an island — the third-largest in China. Located on the Yangtze River, Dongtan is within close proximity of the bustle of Shanghai.

By the time the Shanghai Expo trade fair opens in 2010, the city’s first phase should be completed, and 50,000 residents will call Dongtan home-sweet-sustainable-home. The goals to be accomplished in the next five years: systems for water purification, waste management, and renewable energy. An infrastructure of roads will connect the former agricultural land with Shanghai.

Source: Business Week Magazine 2007