“Cities, grow in difference”is a cultural, social, spatial multi-level symbiosis, also shows tolerance and respect for diversity. As Shenzhen is a symbiotic of “top-down” rational planning and “bottom-up” spontaneous growth, urban village is a heterogeneous symbiosis of history and reality , chaos and order, creativity and mobility. Nantou Old Town, the main venue of this biennale, is the consubstantiality and symbiotic of an ancient and a modern urban village. Themed “Cities, grow in difference”, this biennale is a platform for new theories, new experiments and new practice models, focusing on “discovery” rather than pre-set communication space, is an ever growing biennale.
This biennale started the first open call in its history, mainly aimed at”urban village archives” and “urban village experiment field” forum,trying to collect a wide range of urban village related research, a collection and collation of documents ,a knowledgeableinduction and summary ,and ultimately be showed at the exhibition in a systematic way, through the whole community of Shenzhen ,to make a rich archives.
Activities have gained extensive response both inside and outside the industry, attracted urban design research team ,universities and student team, independent architects, academics, photographers, illustrators and artists from all over the world, also artists who works in urban villages. The curatorial team received nearly 100 pieces excellent program applications globally.
From June to mid July, the curators invited the applicant to conduct two rounds of interviews, to make an in-depth understanding of the exhibitors’experiences,stories and their proposals. After the interview and several internal discussions, fully consider theintegrating degree of each project and how it worked in the exhibition narrative framework, the curators selected about a quarter of the programs to exhibit on this biennale. Selected works usually have a unique entry point, based on speculative views, in-depth research, thorough analysis and effective narrative methods, response to a series of urban problems such asurban villages, and express them in a high quality exhibition.Those research and videos who fail to be selected will also be included in the archives of the bibliography, which will include images and literature on urban issues such as urban villages and will be permanent preserved.
The interviews of the exhibitors
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More details about the Open Call
14th August, 2017 UABB OPEN CALL for “Urban Village Archive” submission
21st April, 2017 UABB OPEN CALL for “Urban Village Archive” submission
