0%DENSITY

OBBLIGO DI SOSTA | 密度 0% DENSITY

Italian Architects and Designers in China—Call for Ideas!

27 September – October 6, 2012
Beijing Design Week, Beijing

 

A project promoted by the Embassy of Italy to the People’s Republic of China in collaboration with Beijing Design Week 2012.

Supported by: Rizzoli China, Beijing Industrial Design Centre

Exhibition: 751-DPark, Watertank (Beijing Design Fair), 27 September – 2 October, 2012

(posters and custom envelope: 60 x 90 cm)

 

The call for ideas promoted by the Embassy of Italy to the P.R.C was launched on the occasion of BJDW 2012 as an open platform for creative expression dedicated to the large community of China-based Italian studios and independent professionals in the field of architecture and design. Dubbed Density 0%, it asked for original visual contributions and reflections around the much urgent and debated topic of ‘urban density’. Participants were to submit realistic or imaginative renderings of a space of pause and suspension responsive to the highly congested cityscapes of contemporary China. Chinese urban areas are spaces of flow per excellence where spontaneous forms of communal anchorage and aggregation seem inexorably thinning out of their spatial memory while increasingly becoming product of artificial zoning built in new commercial and residential quarters insulated from the porous fabric of the ‘social’.  The theme ensues from a wider perspective, one that concerns man and ‘world’ – world intended as a space of sharing and coexistence, therefore a prelude to a process of action for and of the community that is inseparable from a form of ethical and civic thinking. The participants had to offered their own interpretation and perception of a possible space of decompression and its functions, a hiatus within the uninterrupted urban context, in form of an image, providing a title and short description of the concept.

The posters were also presented in an exhibition on display in the Watertank of 751 D-PARK, one of the main hubs of the design festival, and were collected in a limited edition publication realized by Rizzoli China.