China Pavilion: The metaphor

I mentioned previously that the China Pavilion is a surprisingly good metaphor for what China is going through now as a nation. After being in Shanghai (one of China's fastest growing and most international cities) for two months, China has revealed itself to be a proud nation who is extremely concerned with how it is perceived by the international community. However, due to rapid growth, the general Chinese population has not been able to catch up. What one ends up with is an exterior that looks half polished while the interior is glaringly flawed.

Before I continue my rant on everything that disappoints me about this aspect of China and become seen as a merciless traitor to my birthplace, here a few words that will hopefully save me from being deemed so. First and foremost, I love this country, it's food, it's people, and it's environments have given me fond memories to carry through my life. One of the saddest moments of my life was boarding that plane to New York when I was eight, knowing that being Chinese will mean something completely different from then on. Each time I come back, I've had mixed feelings about what I feel. On one hand, I still see the memories of everything I know and love and continue to find new surprises that secure China's prominence in my heart. However, time after time I find my self disgusted with certain ways this country has developed in the past twelve years. It seems that for each building that rises in China that I love, hundreds are built that I hate. This failure is an embarrassment to the reputation China is fighting so hard to build. The China pavilion arrives at a perfect time when I just can no longer look on and not be furious.

The art of Architectural Lighting

This past Wednesday I attended a seminar by Harald Hofmann of the Leox Design Partnership based in Germany. They do lighting design for architectural projects. They don't design the lights themselves, but rather uses them to create an environment or an effect that brings out another dimension in the architecture. The seminar provided a insightful look into the impact of light design and what the future holds for this medium.

 

Modern architectural lighting design started with Richard Kelly in the 1950s. The three pillars of light design as defined by him is; to support Function (for the comfort of the program of the space), to Reveal interior or Exterior elements (that maybe otherwise not highlighted by natural light), and to be Integrated with architecture (as a part of and not an addition to). Hofmann goes on to use two very familiar projects as an example. I.M.Pei's Louvre addition, and Allianz Arena by Herzog and de Meuron. In both these projects, artificial lighting is essential to the iconic presence these projects have in our minds.

Expo: The China Pavilion

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I had a chance to visit the China Pavilion this past Tuesday. I left the Expo that night with mixed feelings about how China is trying to represent itself to the world. The China Pavilion of the Shanghai Expo should have been a unrivaled testament to China's growing economic power and gloriously long history. Instead, it is if not one of the most laughable pavilions at the Expo, but also a surprisingly good metaphor for what China is doing wrong with all this new found wealth.

The pavilion is not without it's good parts. The film in the beginning does a good job of summarizing what has happened in China in the past fifty or so years. The drastic change, the key historical points, and an especially emotional section on the recent earthquake disaster all contribute to an amazing presentation of China. What follows does disappoint, but I will get onto that later. The other amazing moment comes at the very end, where a circular wall of water surrounds the exit escalators. The streams of water are timed to display patterns, images, and even Chinese characters. Not only is it cool to look at, it also treads into several interesting architectural concepts. This itself would have made a great pavilion, instead, it plays a loud finale to an otherwise lackluster score.

The pavilion is separated into three sections, each representing, the past, the present, and the future. The idea is pretty cute, but the execution is just horrible. Nowhere in the pavilion do you ever feel the time being represented. Instead you see a hodge podge of random exhibits. The "thing to see" at the China Pavilion, the giant animated wall of classic Chinese painting, does not command a place and presence. Instead, the worst part, a Disney like tram ride about different types of bridges, forces you to sit and suffer through not only mysterious odors, but build quality so bad that it transcends reality. Being on that ride is like being force fed a bucket of LSD and then kidnapped and strapped onto a tram and taken into some negative budget horror house build by a gang of toddlers.

Despite all its good and bads, seeing the China Pavilion is a necessity. China is the host of the Expo, and what China did with the Chinese Pavilion speaks volumes about what the nation is going through right now, and why there is some serious work that needs to be done internally, before China can step onto the world stage and command the presence it wants to.