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From "Micro-urbanism" to "Street
Theater"
Yung Ho Chang is a leading figure among a new generation
of architects to have emerged in Asia in the 1990s.
After studying and working in the
US for 15 years, he went back to his native Beijing to establish the
city's
first private architectural firm, Atelier FCJZ ("Fei Chang Jian Zhu,"
or "unusual
architecture"), in the early 1990s. In the face of unprecedentedly
rapid and radical modernization and urbanization in China and other
Asian countries, the questions of international influence and Asian
tradition,
as well as globalization and local specificity, have become the main
issues in architectural and artistic debates and practice. In fact,
negotiation
with modern and postmodern architecture and culture has a significant
history in Asia, occurring alongside many Asian nations' projects
of modernization. The globalization of the late-capitalist market economy
and the economic
boom in the Asian-Pacific region in the 1990s have encouraged such
negotiation even further and turned it into a veritable theater of
innovation. A new
generation, including Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, Sohn-Joo Minn, Chi Ti-Nan,
Kay Ngee Tan and Yung Ho Chang have opened up a new horizon of creation,
carrying out much more diverse visions of the urban reality and highly
inventive strategies to envision and construct future Asian cities.
As opposed to the previous generation, who defend a regionalism based
on recycling
Asian traditional elements such as vernacular motifs, spirituality,
"Feng Shui," Yin and Yang, etc., they open
their minds toward more immediate urban conditions in
Asian cities: high-density populations, fast but
uneven economic development, constantly shifting fashions and modes
of living,
multicultural co-existence of communities, chaotic and unplanned settlements,
pollution, traffic congestion, as well as political and cultural transition
in society. More imaginative and flexible strategies and solutions
have been brought about by their investigations of real life.
Having experiences in both the West and China, Yung Ho Chang critically
observes and analyzes the current situation of urban explosion in China.
He designs novel and relevant projects to improve the conditions of urban
life and architectural creation without simply importing conventional "global,"
high-tech and even "virtual" vocabularies as alternatives to
traditional or official styles. Putting real urban conditions for human
existence at
the center of his architectural research and practice, he focuses his work
on finding solutions to negotiate more humane spaces and to articulate
the excitement and pleasure of urban life in spite of the insoluble conditions
of high-density, speed and chaos. It's true that Yung Ho Chang has
been continuously interested in Chinese traditional and modern cultures.
However, the possible influences that he receives from Chinese culture
are not superficial and formal, as have been expressed by many through
replicas of Chinese architectural elements. He profoundly understands the
transformational capacity inscribed in traditional Chinese architecture,
as well as specific rules which enrich urban life such as the multiplication
of the central unit, "yuan" (courtyard), as part of the proliferating
system of urban expansion. He is fascinated by the dialectical relationship
between simple and plain facades and the rich, unfathomable and infinite
games of life unfolding behind the high walls, between the closed exterior
and the open interior. Inspired by the implicit but energetic tension generated
by such a contrast, he conceives new concepts and approaches such as "Micro-Urbanism"
to explore and reveal the potentials of physically and mentally expanded
living
spaces in the highly congested environment. His designs are therefore often
focused on creating, in single buildings, diverse and ever-changing spaces
which recall real urban life. The conception of the building's interior
becomes a type of urban planning while the exterior remains unique but
somehow "harmonious" with the existing, chaotic urban texture.
The best example can be seen in his recently completed building, "Morningside
Centre for Mathematics," in Beijing.
In recent years, the pace and scale of urban explosion in China have become
out-of-control in the wake of the economic boom and cultural mutation.
Facing such a reality, he questions: “When a city is losing control
of its space, can it still function?” The usual answers from the urban
developers, political and economic authorities, as well as many urban and
architectural professionals, are often to apply the classical modernist
tabula-rasa strategy to clean up the no-longer-functioning areas and replace
them with completely new urban constructions as once-and-for-all solutions
to achieve new social order. On the contrary, Yung Ho Chang’s solution
is to emphasize the necessity of scrutinizing the reality of existing urban
life and intervene in it with open-ended projects in order to revitalize
the suffocating life and history of the cities. He starts his reflections
on urban reality and possible interventions by raising the following questions:
"If space is no longer at work as the paramount urban infrastructure, does
it mean that time, the once secondary provider of order, may do the job
of organizing the events in the city all by itself? When the city becomes
temporal, would architecture follow suit?" Actually he considers the
city as a multi-layered and ever-changing process, a "temporal city/thin
city," or city on the move. His "Micro-urbanism" projects
embody perfectly such a consideration. On the other hand, articulation
of the multiplicity and complexity of the city and its perpetual potential
for transformation and reinvention makes him not only a great witness to
the richness of urban life and history, but also a designer who endeavors
to carry out actions in order to turn the architectural profession into
a highly flexible adaptation to real life and human demand. Taking speed
as the major element in urban reformation, he designed a bookstore ("Xishu
Shuwu") in Beijing using the bicycle as the basic structure. Another
project that Yung Ho Chang is currently working on is to help urban inhabitants
to transform their miserably dense habitats into more acceptable spaces:
since the Cultural Revolution many traditional courtyards (Sihe Yuan) in
Beijng, which were built for single families, have been distributed among
dozens of families. To claim the minimum space for everyday life, many
families have built illegal structures. To solve such problems of density,
the authorities apply almost systematically the tabula-rasa solution to
demolish the traditional districts and displace the inhabitants to the
new suburban townships. In opposition to such gentrification and destruction
of urban life and history, Yung Ho Chang proposes to help the inhabitants
reconstruct more reasonable and efficient structures with solid architectural
design. Also, he considers such an intervention as a voluntary action.
Obviously, the most challenging aspect of the project is the fact that
the architect's participation in "illegal" constructions
will eventually complicate and even cross the boundary between the legal
and illegal in the organization of urban society. Daily life in Asian cities
functions beyond the conventional ideas of urban order, proving that the
symbiosis of legal and illegal systems, as well as order and disorder,
can become an exciting terrain for architects to explore.
Related to these kinds of projects of "light" but provocative
urban intervention, Yung Ho Chang also works on projects which challenge
and even cross the border between limited spaces and unlimited perception
by putting forth the pleasure of experiencing shifts in vision and transgressing
the limits of architectural structure itself. The result is that in entering
his buildings one's mental world is brought towards an unknown horizon,
leading to unexpected discoveries of the Other. In his "Upside-Down
Office," he reverses the usual space-vision-psychological order and
subverts the conventional distinction between the public and private spaces.
One is "forced" to confront an "Other" side of oneself.
In the "Shan Yu Jian" residence, public and private parts of
the building are merged so that the separation between open life and intimacy
becomes meaningless.
Yung Ho Chang's architectural experiments have been largely informed
by other disciplines such as the visual arts, literature, cinema and theater.
More importantly, as a practicing architect, he has been collaborating
closely with visual artists. He has designed a Small Museum of Modern Art
(SMOCA) for the artist Cai Guoqiang. Also, he has been invited to design
the architectural structure for two stops of the touring exhibition "Cities
on the Move" (Vienna Secession, 1997; Louisiana Museum, 1999).
The exhibition at Apex Art is Yung Ho Chang and FCJZ's first solo
show in the US. Interestingly it is curated by a couple of visual art curators
and held in a space which is usually devoted to visual art exhibitions.
For this, Chang has created a site-specific installation to provide the
audience with a direct and corporeal experience of his architectural vision
and projects. The installation will function as a "Street Theater" in
which a scenario of dialogue and negotiation between Beijing's urban
reality and Chang’s innovative and somehow provocative projects in
the city unfolds. He has always been amazed by the image of the theater.
For him, architecture is a theater-creation: a theater of real life, with
humans in it instead of over-decorated stage design. He has commented:
"Obviously, an over-designed stage can weaken actors' action and bury
a play. There is similar phenomena in the field of architectural design. It sounds
a bit unbelievable. But, architects often ignore on purpose the demands of the
inhabitants and are happy with useless 'great designs.' Some architects
even intend to replace human thoughts with architectural elements. What they
are looking for is a play without actors."
Yung Ho Chang's "Street Theater" is an action against such
a "play without actors." Visible from both outside and inside,
it is also a most welcoming space for direct participation of the audience.
The ramp in the front room with a screening of the projected street views
and presentation of models provide a space for a "micro-urban fl‚nerie"
while the "peeping" device in the rear room can satisfy one's
fantasy of exploring the "backyard" urban life. The project is
also an intelligent and efficient "translation" of a made-in-China
"text" (reality)
into the New York context while adding extraordinary visual impact to the
New York street.
To conclude, we'd like to quote Yung Ho Chang's instructions to his students
for an exercise called "left space":
1. Choose a space ignored by "official architecture" for different
reasons, such as a lane in a city. Study its effects and functions
on events from as many points of views as possible.
2. Displace an everyday event into the space. The event may
be very simple, under the condition that it does not repeat
the same thing as in the original
event. Organize the space as to make to event unfold correctly here.
The extent of the transformation depends on the event chosen.
Perhaps you don't
have to transform the space. Instead you might only make some architectural
interventions on its borders.
Hou Hanru and Evelyne Jouanno
©1999
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