Theme: "Shenzhen Practice of Qucheng"

Time: November 25, 2023 15:00-17:00

Address: Report Hall, 2nd Floor, Guan Shanyue Art Museum

Lecture format: offline on-site lecture+WeChat video account online live broadcast

Zhang Yuxing, PhD in Architecture from Southeast University, Professor level Senior Architect. Researcher at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shenzhen University (Deputy Director of the Original Design Research Center). Founder and lead designer of ARCity Office. Director of the Academic Committee of the Shenzhen Hong Kong Urban Architecture Biennale (UABB) and Chairman of the Public Art Foundation of the Shenzhen Biennale.

"Qucheng" is a new urban design concept and method jointly proposed by Dr. Zhang Yuxing and Dr. Han Jing. The core idea of "Fun City" is to expect to stimulate the vitality of the whole city through strategic and serial "urban acupuncture and moxibustion" actions, starting from the creation of small and interesting places. Qucheng Studio is a research and practical institution centered on the concept of "Qucheng", focusing on urban micro renewal and urban curation. In recent years, it has created a series of important works that have been widely recognized.

The practice of Qucheng in Shenzhen has been ongoing for over a decade and will continue. Qucheng may reflect a certain ideal of our city: what is interesting is good, and an interesting city is a good city. Especially today, after 40 years of rapid economic growth, Chinese cities full of "rapid growth" may need to become more warm, textured, and detailed, because people are not cold objects, and cities are no longer machines. Although the deafening sound of Le Corbusier's statement a hundred years ago that "housing is a living machine" still resonates over contemporary metropolises, some minor changes and twists are happening.

Urban micro renewal+urban curation is essentially the restoration of daily life in modernist cities that has been separated by various rigid systems for a long time, because daily life is the most beautiful, it is the home where each of us lives. But if we don't transform daily life into a new scene through some clever means, it can also be said to be worthless because everyone is used to it and finds it meaningless. So it is necessary to excavate the intrinsic value of a place through urban micro renewal and urban curation. In the process of excavation, the first thing to respect is all these inherent things in daily life, which are also the most precious. Qucheng, as one of the initiators of China's urban micro renewal movement, has influenced many Chinese cities with its forward-looking vision and down-to-earth practices. We hope that in the current era of stock, Qucheng can provide another possibility for the development model of the next generation of cities in China.