…we learn that a Chinese firm has been "secretly" copying an entire UNESCO-listed village in Austria, called Hallstatt. Residents of the original town are "scandalized," Der Spiegel reports, by these "plans to replicate the village—including its famous lake—in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong."
[Link to City Double]
IT was an unusual commission, unlike anything that Stuart Silk, a Seattle architect, had been offered in his quarter-century of practice: design three high-end custom homes for clients he would never meet. Although there were some specifications for functions and dimensions — total square feet, for example, and the number of bedrooms and baths — there wasn’t a clue as to style or a construction budget.
We used to dream of such clients way back in architecture school. We designed fancy expensive five-star hotels in school and then were asked to design toilet details after graduating. We accepted that as the bitter truth of architectural practice in reality. Alas, ten years too late. Damn you, China.
[Link to Architect's Dream Clients]
Amidst all the hype and talk about China’s oh-so-beautiful capital, little is known about entire ‘ugly’ neighborhoods hidden behind temporary walls. Would this really work in a real democracy?
This video of a transportation system in planning stage somewhere in China is interesting and innovative. It shows that the train doesn’t have to stop for embarking and disembarking passengers thus saving not only energy but also travel time.
Just when we thought that the nature of our urban spaces has been altered by the changing forms of economy and technology, the manufacturing-based cities make a comeback. In the previous half-century, we moved from a manufacturing-based economy to services-based economy thus altering the form of our cities from being centralized to being disperse. No longer was a single industry the major employer and the working class didn’t necessarily have to live near their place of employment as commuting to work became easier. This held true even in developing economies until of course, China took over the mantle of being the world’s manufacturer. Of course, manufacturing never died as someone has to manufacture the countless goods that we desire; it simply moved to places where it was more affordable to do so.
[source]. Edward Burtynsky recently released his pithily-named book, China