Because of its singular history and geographic location, Hong Kong represents a unique synthesis of global city and local territory. The extreme character of its temporal and spatial conditions makes Hong Kong a moving platform of exchange within the Asian and world markets. In Mapping HK, the architects of Map Office treat Hong Kong as a test case for a critical experiment, in which the city is documented both visually and in text, as an attempt to understand the effects of speed and density on our urban environments.

Mapping Hk

Arts & Photography

Gutierrez, Laurent

Portefaix, Valérie

Architecture

Map Book Publishers

Under the confluence of nomadic economics, technologies and industries--commonly known as "suburban sprawl"--the city of Detroit, segregated and isolated, constitutes one of the great monuments to decay by a Modernist city. It is perhaps the clearest and earliest example of the effects of a globalized economy and labor market. Urban Ecology contains a collection of projects generated by the International Center for Urban Ecology (iCUE), a nomadic laboratory for future cities. Since its founding in 1998 by Kyong Park, iCUE has accomplished five significant projects through international workshops like "Architecture of Resistance," installations, videos and urban designs. The laboratory investigation promotes discourse on the decomposition and possible reconstitution of a "moving city"--a more useful term through which to identify a city like Detroit. iCUE's projects have taken anti-architectural and non-urban perspectives, using multi-disciplinary processes and integrated collaboration with local communities and activists. Urban Ecology brings together essays on Detroit and many other cities in crisis around the world.

Urban Ecology: Detroit and Beyond

Science & Math

Boeri, Stefano

Biological Sciences

Perhaps China's most internationally acclaimed architect, Yung Ho Chang is particularly concerned with architecture's role in expressing and reflecting the indigenous culture. He advocates the wide use of bamboo as a building material in Chinese urban design, as put forth in his Bamboo City, exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2000, but while he focuses attention on the changes taking place in Beijing, he is mindful of the globalizing context in which the city is developing. In the past decade, Chang and his Atelier FCJZ (fei chang jan zhu, or "unusual architecture"), which he founded in the early 1990s as Beijing's first private architectural firm, have created a wide range of intellectually provocative urban projects in China that continue to receive acclaim.

Yung Ho Chang: Atelier Feichang Jianzhu--A Chinese Practice

Hanru, Hou

Xing, Ruan

Now more than ever, especially as it prepares itself to become a world stage for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is opening itself up to the influence of world architecture. This image-heavy catalogue from the first ever Beijing Architecture Biennial (2004) covers 3 individual exhibitions of avant-garde work: the Fast Forward exhibition featuring 13 advanced architectural firms, the Hot Spot series of individually curated exhibitions from 10 various cities, and the Brain Cells exhibition of architectural research institutes. The works in the exhibition are well-designed, innovative, distinct, and fresh--qualities that this catalogue also possesses. Showcased here, through some 300 architectural drawings and photographs, are examples of the most exciting new talent emerging within architectural culture today.

Fast Forward Hot Spots Brain Cells

Asymptote

Chu, Karl

China, the country formally known as the People's Republic of China, is the world's most populous country, with approximately one-fifth of the world's total population. It sits on a landmass of 9,600,000 square kilometers and is the third-largest country in the world. Since sweeping economic reforms instituted in 1978, the country's GDP has quadrupled and it is now the second-largest economy in the world. But those are just six basic facts. What does China really look like in the beginning of the twenty-first century? China paints a decisive and contemporary portrait of the country through short, thematic segments that blend lively, highly visual texts by Neal Leach and sumptuously illustrated photographs by Laurent Gutierrez + Val rie Portefaix. Each section considers a popular cultural icon--Mao, the Great Wall, video games, karaoke, Yao Ming, and so on--and divines what they reveal about Chinese culture. The book portrays China as the new America, a country that is fast becoming not only the leading industrial nation but also a dynamic center of world culture.

China

Leach, Neil

Photography & Video

Boston's Big Dig was the most expensive urban public work in U.S. history. The city's elevated six-lane highway, called the Central Artery, and the two tunnels under Boston Harbor, were some of the most congested, accident-prone motorways in the United States. The city's solution, nicknamed The Big Dig, was to replace the elevated highway with a series of eight-to-ten-lane underground expressways. Public Works presents a series of 14 disarmingly modest, speculative interventions by the Boston-based MY Studio, a multidisciplinary design firm operating in the space between architecture, art and landscape. Collectively, these interventions expose, connect and reconfigure the relationship between the underground expressways and the new parks that emerged in the Big Dig's wake, demonstrating the effect design can have on our conception of public space.

Public Works, Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig

How should Hong Kong be represented? This question found an answer through Concrete Jungle/The Parrot's Tale, a large-scale installation by MAP Office (otherwise known as the Hong Kong-based French architecture team Gutierrez + Portefaix) for the 2007 Venice Biennale. Beginning with a steamy, mist-filled island, roughly in the shape of Hong Kong, that was covered in oyster shells and inhabited by fake talking parrots, the work problematized the act of representation itself. This volume is an extension of MAP's Venice project and includes documentation of the complex process behind the fabrication of this much-talked-about artwork. Critical dialogues with Beijing artist Ai Weiwei complete the picture.MAP Officespecializes in critical analyses of spatial and temporal anomalies, and works to document the ways in which human beings subvert and appropriate spaces for their own uses.

MAP Office: The Parrot's Tale

WEIWEI, Ai

Gutierrez & Portefaix

History & Criticism

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