Portfolio of Jiang Hao (2013-2017)

JIA

NG

HAO

| PO RTF OLI O

JIANG HAO SELECTED WORKS

JIANG HAO contact

phone: +86 18796598060 email: moyofactory@gmail.com

education 2013.9-2017.7

University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Bachelor of Engineering (Hons), Architecture, RIBA Part 1

2013.9-2017.7

Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China Bachelor of Engineering (Hons), Architecture

extra-curricular experience 2014.9

Director, stage play 'ZHI JIN' It was invited and played in Suzhou Youth Drama Festival

2015.6

Undergraduate Research Fellowship, UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Workshop, Shuangwan village, Suzhou http://www.xjtlu.edu.cn/zh/news/2015/08/xjtlu-on-frontline-of-sustainable-local-development

2015.7-2015-9

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Online Parametric Customisation of 3D-Printed Buildings

http://www.xjtlu.edu.cn/zh/news/2015/09/aspiring-researchers-present-work-at-surf-poster-day

2015.9-2017.5

Editor at MPTF magazine (masterplanningthefuture.org)

Interviewed with Rossana Hu (Neri&Hu), Jiakun Liu (Jiakun Architects), Lu Wenyu (Amateur Studio), Lin Ji (Beijing Planning Institute)

2016.1-2016.3

Internship at ON-DESIGN studio, Shanghai Model-making, illustration for presentation and interior design

2015.12-2016.12 Director, documentary 'Edge Town' or 'Che Fang'

Entered 2017 London Film Festival and Cheap Cut short Film Festival and was premiered in 2017 UABB Urban Film Festival (http://www.xjtlu.edu.cn/zh/news/2016/11/student-directeddocumentary-entered-into-international-film-festivals)

skills languages: chinese, english adobe creative series: indesign, illustrator, photoshop, premiere, after effect, audition modeling software: rhinoceros, autoCAD, SketchUp, archiCAD others: film making, art, photography, interdisciplinary study, graphic design

contents Architectural projects Framing Indeterminacy the archive of nostalgia Soft Regeneration creative corridor Online Parametric Customisation of 3D-printed Buildings

Others Short Documentary edge town Artwork fish tank Academic Writing the potentiality of formlessness

#1

Framing Indeterminacy

Project type: academic | architectural design Time: 2017.1-2017.6 (20 weeks) Location: Shanghai, China Supervisor: Claudia Westermann, Aleksandra Raonic For centuries Shanghai has been a city for which the openness to flows of people, trade and investment was of key importance. However, the changes in the past years have been radical. With more and more migrants floating into the city, more and more parts of the city have been demolished to make space for a new denser city. Shanghai, which is possibly the most cosmopolitan of all Chinese cities with its history of the foreign settlements and its present that is marked by migrants from all over China, provides a challenging location for thinking a new architecture for culture and exchange that could be thought of – ideally, and in reference to Cedric Price’s Fun Palace – as an incubator for participation that reconfigures spaces to places. How could architecture respond to the unpredictable nature of urban change? How open can or should an architectural framework be? How could we frame indeterminacy?

SITE

Can a past that has slipped out of reach be reclaimed?

Should it be?

By which means?

Svetlana Boym

abstracts In the design process, the film Stalker by Andrej Tarkovsky served as a case study for questions of indeterminacy. Through a methodology of transference and translation from one site context to another and then from one medium into another, indeterminacy was re-captured and transferred into space. The new film frames past and future in rural China. It discovers ‘Nostalgia’ as a significant notion in contemporary China. The layers of perspective and the openness of frames in the film are translated into a base geometry which is shifted and then is broken again. It is a spatial abstraction of the two layers perspective that was discovered in Tarkovky’s Stalker - a preliminary answer to spatial indeterminacy.

In the context of the project, the above mentioned question by Svetlana Boym are extended to the future. Can a past be reclaimed, a presence be reflected, and a future be reframed by means of nostalgia? Famously, the architect Wang Shu is obsessed with nostalgia. His obsession is also critique of the speed of development in China. However, Wang’s nostalgia is inscribed in his works as a materialization of past memory. The memory is stored in fixed form. Is this the only possible way, or even a contemporary response to the questions that relate to the re-appropriation of the past? The proposal suggests that connections with past time and memory are related to the poetry of space, and that such poetry of space does not need old and aged materials. A mapping of nostalgia in the center of Shanghai, where the site is located, provides a visual representation of how people have dealt with nostalgia – critically or restoratively. The site, ironically, is currently an artificial beach. It was built in an attempt to create a Western image of leisure and party time on the Bund. Yet, it looks like the representation of a state that could be called cultural desert.

People have decided to bury their memories, and they map their future without continuity with the past.

In the Archive of Nostalgia inclined walls, zigzagging circulations, and fluctuating floors support reflective experiences. The Archive of Nostalgia stimulates memory and thought. It is interactive. Drawers of nostalgia can be pulled, accessed, and refilled. Mobile units transport what is archived to other cities, and bring new items of nostalgia in return. The proposal suggests that the indeterminacy of the future can be reframed by means of nostalgia.

CINEMATIC ANALYSIS ON TARKOVSKY’S STALKER NO strong modes of composition like symmetrical or central CINEMATIC ANALYSIS ON TARKOVSKY’S not creating strong figures...but figures can be STALKER doubtful...no

NO strong modes of composition like symmetrical or central

hierarchy between character and nature... ...not creating strong figures...but figures can be doubtful... no hierarchy between character and nature...everything seem equally important...

Conceptual sketch about uncertain framing

3-Layer scene setting and trangular character dispatch ...3-layer scene setting can form the space quickly and tell rich information about the context...trangular character dispatch implies the 3-Layer scene setting and trangular character dispatch

...3-layer scene setting can form the space quickly and tell rich information about the context...trangular character dispatch implies the relationship of them relationship of them

Conceptual sketch about uncertain trangular relationship

CAPTURE INDETERMINACY IN THE FILM THROUGH ONE SCENE

Grid the scene and Capture the indeterminacy

Modeling the Indeterminacy based on the relationship of viewer and scene

Your eyes, my friend, I love, Their magic play of flames, When suddenly they look up, And like a heavenly lightning, Hastily look all around...

But there is a stronger spell: The downcast eyes In moments of the passionate kiss, When there through the lowered eyelashes Burns a dreadful, dim fire of the wish F. I. Tutchev

EXPERIENCE STALER IN CHINA (FILM: 3’20’’) For full version: https://vimeo.com/224178588

Through the cinematic analysis on Stalker, I explored filming in rural China and found Nostalgia is the key towards future.

1. Poetic introduction 2,8. Fade into/out of the memories 3. Blend the memories with reality 4. Outlook of reality 5,6,7. Present how people treat the past, forzen in frames 1

one by one in museums Mapping Nostalgia in Shanghai presents notions of reflective nostalgia in terms of architecture, activities, urban scenes...

10. Waterhouse by Neri & Hu 11. Jinmao Tower by SOM 12. Nanjing Road Street view 13. Long Museum by Atelier Deshaus 14,15. Alleyway view

2

16. Plaza Dance

3

5

4

6

8

7

9

MAPPING NOSTALGIA IN SHANG HAI

10

11

14

12

15

13

16

SPATIAL EXPERIENCE DEVELOPMENT

Through a series of models, unique spatial experience is developed. Based on the perious research, two-layer perspective is concluded as one answer to the indeterminacy. In this step, site context is took into experience, so are the activities found in the mapping of nostalgia. In the model 1 (see above), the element ‘two-layer perspective’ is situated in relation to the site. There are facing differently, embrace the activities. In the model 2 (see below), new possibilities in terms of spatial experience are presented by breaking the indetermiate elements and recombing them. People and their activites dwell in between the elements openly. Finally, the experience of architecture is understood by the frame of one man’s eyesight (see right). When a man is experincing space, there is up (roof or sky) and down (ground or earth), left and right (walls) frame certain perspectives.

What would the experience be if the up and down, left and right, got inclined, twisted or even have a gesture to fall?

The fragmental experience in models would be mapped on site for the final proposal.

"...Shared, Immersive Environment..."

''...Poetically, Man Dwells...''

#2

creative corridor Project type: academic | architectural design Time: 2016.9-2016.12 (14 weeks) Location: Shanghai, China Supervisor: Glen Wash

Diary on the site Around 10 am.

Housewives come out of their houses and prepare the lunch...

Every housewife stand in front of their informal kitchen... ...and chat across the corridor...

Once who doesn't have enough oil or vinegar...

They can easily borrow from each other... ...What a lively scene...

However...

Cause the space is very closed...

Coughing can be heard from time to time... ...

It seems there is a tendency that people want to claim some public space as private...

Suddenly, an impulse came out of my mind...

Can I design a corridor which can embrace different kinds of activities...

Creative industry activities...

Filmmaker...photographer...musician...and all kinds of artists...

All contribute to a lively corridor...

An apporach from a mundane scene to an engine of creativity

-

Chinese collective housing was influenced by Soviet Union in the l950s. It usually comes with two forms, tower-type and slab-type. Tower-type housing is usually dominated by vertical circulation. Instead, slab-type housing is connected by linear corridor with living units allocated along the corridor.

Here is one case reflects how people evaluate the public space into an intermediate space (semi-public semi-private).

Due to the development, the original room size is no longer suitable for contemporary life styles. Regarding to that, people living in Meilong housing apartment (Shanghai) started to move funitures and kitchen supplies to the sharing corridor.

The original width of the corridor is 2 meters. By attaching funitures and kitchen supplies to the two sides of walls, the remaining width is 1.6-meter, still suitable for daily use. At the noon time, the corridor starts to be lively. Housewives from each units prepare their lunches for families. Housewives chat among the corridor transforming the corridor into a dynamic space. Such activites blurs the boundries between private and public spontaneously.

There is a heritage building in the middle of the site which consists mainly two parts: ground floor as a restaurant and the upper floor as collected housing. This combination in one building arose my interest.

The photos on the right are t a ke n f ro m t h e c o m m u n a l corridor on the upper floor.

Residents there get restricted from limited indoor area and take advantage of wide corridor.

They move their funitures aside the corridor as a solution.

Mrs Gu's house visit shows an alternative solution to limited indoor area: Double height (the floor height is 5.7m).

How to convert these notions of mundane creativities into a new architecture for the future?

informal kitchen sketch

corridor view concept

corridor view concept

“Corridor” is what you say when you mean “hallway” but want to sound a little more proper and perhaps British. Or, a corridor can take the form of a maze of secret tunnels discovered in 1982 underneath Mussolini’s headquarters at the papal palace. As depicted by ONE Simulations, the subgrade corridor points in thedirection of the Colosseum.

Rem Koohaas, Corridor, ELEMENTS

Roof Plan 5m

Third Floor Plan 5m

Second Floor Plan 5m

Ground Floor Plan 5m

South Elevation

梅龍镇廣场 WESTGATE MALL

East Elevation

Zoom out section

1

6

7

1

2

Keys

5

4 2 3

1: Double-glazed glass 2: Aluminium frame 3: Precast concrete panel 4: Screw pin-joint 5: Reinforced concrete 6: Grey glazed wooden floor 7: Steel cross frame floor structure

#3 summer undergraduate research fellowship

Online Parametric Customisation of 3D-printed Buildings Project type: academic | architectural research Time: 2015.6-2015.9 Location: Suzhou, China Supervisors:Thomas Fischer, Christiane Herr Team: Hao Jiang, Hao Wu,Yixin Han

Advances in 3D printing technology have reached architectural scales with 3D concrete printing, a digitally controlled fabrication process in which fibre-reinforced concrete is deposited layer-bylayer to fabricate building elements. In this paper we present a brief overview of key concrete 3D printing related research development efforts, followed by a report on a research project into the parametric online customisation and fabrication of small 3D concrete printed pavilions. The research project is set in, and addresses possibilities and constraints of, the developing local Chinese construction context.

How can the flexibility of 3d concrete printing be put forward to users or clients to enable their participation inbuilding customisation?

Research Method This project explored and evaluated possibilities of customising 3d concrete printed buildings. It was conducted through alternating cycles of design exploration and synthesis, informed by sketching, model making, data collection and expert feedback focused on material, fabrication, transportation and construction constraints, functional aspects, and structural evaluation. Key aspects of the approach will be evaluated through the implementation of a fullscale pavilion customised using the system.

Form Language The architectural language developed for this project is based on current possibilities and limitations of 3D concrete printing, related material properties and structural performance criteria. Functional aspects of use, ergonomics as well as fabrication and transpor tation constraints were considered. The form language allows for the recombination of segments and thus a broad variety of different and aesthetically coherent pavilion structures.

Recombination Relationships between any two of the sixteen segments are shown in the right diagrams.

Online Customisation User Interface The online customisation interface offers the user an extendable library of segment cross-section profiles and allows their recombination and parametric dimensioning.

Pavilion configurations can be visualised instantly and quantitative specifications are shown to inform interactive exploration and customisation.

Outcomes and findings Users and clients can be enabled to participate in building customisation if possibilities and constraints of online interaction can be mapped onto possibilities and constraints of 3d printing technology and materials. This was achieved in this project with the design of a suitable form language. One pavilion generated using this language will be implemented to stimulate further opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborative research and industr y engagement.

Outcomes and findings 3D concrete printing is an emerging research area, and currently in the early stages of its technological development. This project extends the scope of previous research to investigate architectural (functional, aesthetic, structural, economic) aspects of 3D printing within the framework of parametric design.

Findings achieved in this project are expected to lead to a built structure on the XJTLU campus, to inform industrial 3d concrete printing practice, and will be proposed for conference presentation and publication.

#4

edge town

Project type: independent | film Time: 2015.11-2016.8 Location: Suzhou, China Supervisor: Austin Williams

"The film explores the changing face of China and helps us understand a whole range of urban issues. It attempts to preserve some genuine local voices. The team, especially Hao, the film-maker, has created a valuable piece of work." Austin Williams, future project director and executive director of the documentary.

'Edge Town' tells the story of the social changes taking place on the fringes of Suzhou. It features interviews with a range of people living on the edge of the city's urban development to find out what memories remain and what thoughts they have for the future.

It has been entered for the Cheap Cuts Documentary Film Festival and the London International Film Festival in 2017. While it had to be withdrawn from these due to a complaint of the local government.

For tralior clip: https://vimeo.com/224176630

#5

fish tank

Project type: independent | art Time: 2015.10 Material: acrylic Form: sculpture

This artwork was inspired by the film 'Fish Tank'. It is Andrea Arnold's second film. It tells the story about an aggressive fifteen-year-old girl, Mia. It's about her growth meet with the inevitable contradiction and conflict. Fish tank is more or less, an metaphor. Fish tank contains an inner world that outside cannot get in. From the inner world perspective, the outside world is an illusion. A translucent sectional female body formed by layering acrylic slices connects the main topic of the film, growth and problems. The body itself also is a contradiction that it can be acknowledged by the outside and it can not be preceived.

#6

The Potentiality of Formlessness

Project type: academic | writing Time: 2017.2-2017.6 Supervisors:Tordis Berstrand Claudia Westermann

Introduction The term ‘formlessness’ can be traced back to the Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi (375-370 BC.). “Do we know the formless which gives form to form?” he asks. Zhuangzi experiences the invisible, immaterial, and unknown formlessness out of the defined form. To form a defined form, formlessness seems to be the prerequisite according to Zhuangzi. What would formlessness be before and after the forming? Looking at film, as one form of fine art with just more than 120 years of history, we could possibly conclude that indeed notions of formlessness contribute to form as well. In this essay, two recent art films are selected to discuss the notion of formlessness in a wider context, philosophically and cinematically. After the discussion of the films, an architectural project done by author, The Archive of Nostalgia, serves as a case study to explore the transference of formlessness from one form to another.

When discussing film philosophically and cinematically, Andrey Tarkovsky cannot be left out due to his contributions in exploring poetry in the cinematic world from a philosophical viewpoint. According to his book, Sculpting in Time, the concept of poetry can be unfolded. Poetry is the root of humanity; to think poetry means to to rethink the tradition, culture, community and idea of the time (1986). As Tarkovsky reveals in his diary Time within Time (1991) his explorations are based on studies all across the different fields of art. He was influenced by Leonardo Da Vinci, Russian literature as well as by film works of his time. His observations of society were transferred into a strong passion for change. He converted his experience into cinematic pictures that were created to let the audience experience the time that he had experienced at first hand. He can be considered following the view of John Dewey that art has to be experienced (1934, pp. 35-44). To experience Tarkovsky’s concepts, poetry again creates a link. It is proposed that the artist’s or architect’s experience and contemplation are the formlessness which give form to form. The following sections reveal the connection between two works of film and formlessness. Tarkovsky’s explorations in film are also further considered. Roy Andersson explores the existence of humanity in the Swedish context. Bi Gan senses poetry and converts it into his works of film. Both of them present new forms of film, however, formlessness exists before anything is formed and in the forming process.

Film Studies on Formlessness The film, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) is the final part of Roy Andersson’s film trilogy. Comparing this film with the two earlier films of the trilogy, Songs from the Second Floor from 2000 and You Are Alive from 2007, there is consistence maintained through the usage of fixed frames, and carefully designed three-layered scenes, which are supported by philosophic thinking and questions about life. The film consists of 39 fixed sequences shot from a medium distance. The film unfolds by two salesmen’s journey peddling wacky items offering a kaleidoscopic wanderings through different people in Sweden by shifting the protagonists. It might be inaccurate to define specific characters in this film as either protagonists or supporting actors as there are no clear hierarchies in this film. The characters push the film forward in an irregular and non-linear manner.

The director’s emotional drive is to reflect and question the history, to present the everydayness and to wonder about the future.

Roy Andersson was born in 1943, Gothenburg, Sweden. He was trained at the Swedish Film Institute’s Film School in 1960s. Throughout his career, he was not only devoted to film as an art, but also deeply engaged with Swedish culture and its history. He is the co-editor of the anthology Successful Freezing of Mr. Moro in 1992 and the contributing editor of the exhibition Sweden and the Holocaust.

Reflections on the history of Sweden and contemplations of contemporary

Figure 1: From ‘A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence’ (Andersson, 2014)

Sweden make the basis for the pictures. Roy Andersson is for Sweden like Andrey Tarkovsky for the Soviet Union. The artists experience their context and transform formless contemplations into artworks that speak a universal language as they transform what we could call – following the thoughts of Immanuel Kant (1790) - the order of nature. Andersson creates a new cinematic framework for art that is based on an interdisciplinary approach instead of following the mainstream methodologies of making films. The settings of the scenes reflect the influence of installation art. Scenes are often only created with fragments and do not provide for an overview. The performances in the film remind a comic. Scenes are presented to the audience in a manner that reminds a play on stage. The scenes happen in a quite open setting. Characters come and go in a frame that contains ground and roof or sky (See figure 1). However, while plays on stage usually have a defined perspective, the perspectives in Andersson’s film usually shift a little. He achieves this way an effect of indeterminacy. It is a gesture that appears to create what is always ready to become. Above, the components in the film have been compared separately to different forms of art. It might be possible to argue that this film is a blend of different forms of art. However, the indeterminacy in the film opens a space for the sharing of similarities with other works of art.

Dewey (1934, pp. 6-10) indicates that fine art lost its meaning when it shifted the focus from reflecting the experience of the everyday to celebrating elitist taste.

Such disconnection between experience and art removed vitality from art and with it also the possibility to experience art. In this context, one could say that Roy Andersson has re-created a positive model for fine art. Formlessness in the work of Roy Andersson reflects a specific way of interacting with the world and of tracing experience. It is an openness that creates nevertheless form.

The film triggers some thoughts that could be understood as new possibilities for architectural design. One could think of fragmentary spatial narration in reference to the fragmentary film narration. In this case, the experience of architecture would be cut into pieces and accomplished by the use of different languages creating a quality of uncertainty. The perspectives framed in the film are shifted from the very middle point. It means it does not employ center composition nor symmetrical composition which are most commonly applied in film industry. The off-center composition seems to always create potentiality for change. The unique composition animates the audience’s mind and triggers new ideas. Can architecture do the same? When we approach architecture, we always expect to experience a sequence of perspectives which frame the up and down, right and left. How does the design interact with the perspective frames defines how would people experience architecture. Providing asymmetric perspectives or suggesting inclined walls or other elements that create a language of uncertainty could serve as new possibilities.

Figure 2: From ‘Kaili blue’ (Bi, 2015)

The other work of art that I would like to reflect on is the art film Kaili Blue. It was made by the emerging Chinese director Bi Gan. Born in 1989, Bi Gan’s hometown is Kaili, a subtropical, humid village in Guizhou province. He graduated from the School of Communication, Shanxi, in 2008. The film project Kaili Blue was made with a couple of his friends and with a very limited budget. His first feature film inherits the temperament of Tarkovsky’s films. This temperament links the two artists who share the concepts and understanding of film. Bi Gan understands himself as a poet. “My film is like a heavy rain, and I hope you would not bring an umbrella.” Bi described his film to the public. The director intends to immerse the audience in his work. As Sloterdijk (2006, pp. 107-109) suggests, immersion becomes a positive force only when the collectives are in a shared immersive

environment. Here, two questions arise. If the film does provide such a shared immersive environment, in which way does the film interact with an audience and how does it relate to formlessness?

At the beginning of the film, a segment taken from a Buddhist text is introduced, “Because, Subhuti, neither the past, the present nor the future mind can be found” (Bi, 2015). The film is a fusion of time and space interwoven with regrets of having lost the past, uncertainty of the present and imagination of the future.

The main characters are three pairs of lovers with different destinies, which represent the past, present and future respectively. The poetic way of narration could be compared with Juan Rulfo’s literature work, Pedro Paramo. The novel tells a story of a man’s trip to his mother’s hometown tracing the memory of his father (Rulfo, 1955). The acclaimed narrative methodologies in Pedro Paramo are the fragmentation of characters, shifting narrators across space and time. Between two lines with simple words, Rulfo can tell two stories that happened in different times and spaces however with ankers that connect them. The same is done in Bi’s film. The continuity of time has been cut into pieces and recomposed by the logic of the film language, using train, mottled wall and circular movements as visual linkages. Pictures also shift freely between dream and reality which means that the film provides a context that is more than reality, beyond imagination. Many critics have mentioned that they experience a ‘poetic feeling’ when watching the film. Not only triggered by the poems that were written by Bi and read by the protagonist, this poetic feeling is also cultivated by Bi’s narration of the film. He incorporates poetry into his film like Tarkovsky did. Sitney (2015, p. 75) proposes that Tarkovsky films can exhibit the verbal linkages like rhyme, assonance, tropes of poetry.

Meanwhile, poetic linkage triggers the memory and memory triggers emotions and so on. Dewey (1934, pp. 35-44) also indicates that an aesthetic experience depends on the consummation of rhythmic movements which punctuate and define the aesthetic quality of it. Common patterns can be found in various experiences which indicate the inner relationship between experiences. Many scenes in the film are extracted from the director’s subjective memories and the observation of his hometown, Kaili, and from local people and their collective memory. Memory, as the formless extraction of one’s past, is the key to trigger one’s emotion. Typical sub-tropical scenes, Kaili dialect, 90s popular songs are the honest responses of Bi’s memory. These responses provide a shared environment for the collective that is immersive. The formlessness of memory allows the immersive environment to be shared.

Bi’s unstable, immaterial memory could be considered as the formlessness which gives the form to form. Memory works as an engine for creating various images of imagination. The created images serve as forms connecting past and future. In this case, the past can be passed over and the future will be more promising. In different cultural contexts, collective memory depends on culture, history and even climate. Vernacular architecture could be considered a representation of collective memory in a specific area. A gap between past and present is obvious in the development of urban China. History has been wiped out and memory

is disappearing. How could the architecture represent or preserve collective memory? Should it do so?

Architecture converts Formlessness from Film Above, two films have been discussed in relation to formlessness, and how their respective formlessness gives form to form. The two films share some similarities in the two directors’ flexible manipulation of different forms of art. Notions concluded from the two films extend to the architectural realm for thinking new possibilities for architecture. The project, The Archive of Nostalgia, converts the understandings of film into architecture.

Figure 3: From ‘Stalker’ (Tarkovsky, 1979)

The site on which we test these new possibilities for architecture is located on the west bund of Huangpu River, Shanghai. For centuries Shanghai has been a city for which the openness to flows of people, trade and investment was of key importance. However, the changes in the past years have been radical. With more and more migrants floating into the city, more and more parts of the city have been demolished to make space for a new denser city. Shanghai, which is possibly the most cosmopolitan of all Chinese cities with its history of the foreign settlements and its present that is marked by migrants from all over China, provides a challenging location for thinking a new architecture for culture and

exchange that could be thought of – ideally, and in reference to Cedric Price’s Fun Palace – as an incubator for participation that reconfigures spaces to places (Price and Littlewood, 1968). How could architecture respond to the unpredictable nature of urban change? How open can or should an architectural framework be?

How could we frame indeterminacy? These are the preliminary questions that initiate the project.

During the design process, the film Stalker by Andrey Tarkovsky served as a case study for addressing questions of indeterminacy. Through a methodology of transference and translation from one site context to another and then from one medium into another, indeterminacy was re-captured and transferred into space.

The new film frames past and future in rural China. It discovers ‘Nostalgia’ as a significant notion in contemporary China. Boym (2001, pp. 49-55) asks in her book, The Future of Nostalgia, “Can a past that has slipped out of reach be reclaimed?

Should it be? By which means?” The layers of perspective and the openness of frames in the film are translated into a basic geometry which is shifted and then is broken again. It is a spatial abstraction of the two layers perspective that was discovered in Tarkovsky’s Stalker - a preliminary answer to spatial indeterminacy.

Figure 4: abstraction of the two layers perspective, by author

In the context of the project, the above mentioned question by Svetlana Boym is extended to the future. Can a past be reclaimed, a present be reflected, and a future be reframed by means of nostalgia? Famously, the architect Wang Shu is obsessed with nostalgia. His obsession is also critique of the speed of development in China. However, Wang’s nostalgia is inscribed in his works as a materialization of

Figure 5: The Archive of Nostalgia, by author

past memory. The memory is stored in fixed form. Is this the only possible way, or even a contemporary response to the questions that relate to the re-appropriation of the past? The proposal suggests that connections with past time and memory are related to the poetry of space, and that such poetry of space does not need old and aged materials. Poetry is a special kind of measuring (Heidegger, 1951, pp.

276-278). The strangeness in the poetry is what remains unknown and endows the greatest possibilities.

A mapping of nostalgia in the center of Shanghai, where the site is located, provides a visual representation of how people have dealt with nostalgia, critically or restoratively. The site, ironically, is currently an artificial beach. It was built in an attempt to create a Western image of leisure and party time on the Bund. Yet, it looks like the representation of a state that could be called cultural desert. People have decided to bury their memories, and they map their future without continuity with the past.

In the Archive of Nostalgia inclined walls, zigzagging circulations, and fluctuating floors support reflective experiences. Inclined walls or other architectural elements are designed to offer unstable perspectives. Zigzagging circulations and fluctuating floors are intended to provide an immersive shared environment for people to interact with their memories. The Archive of Nostalgia stimulates memory and thought. It is interactive. Drawers of nostalgia can be pulled, accessed, and refilled. Mobile units transport what is archived to other cities, and bring new items of nostalgia in return. The proposal suggests that the indeterminacy of the future can be reframed by means of indeterminate nostalgia.

In terms of formlessness in this project, the experience of film, site and society carry forward the project step by step. Even the thoughts concluded from the previous two art works have spontaneously influenced the project. Is it not this intangible reflection that represents the immaterial and invisible formlessness?

Conclusion To conclude, the discussion of the notion of formlessness begins with the art film pioneer, Andrey Tarkovsky. Through his effort, he maintains the continuity of film, as a new form of fine art, connecting it to an earlier form of art, poetry. It is argued that by transforming a form into another form, formlessness formed by experience and contemplation are the prerequisite. Two recent films by Roy Andersson and Bi Gan continue the complex work of converting the fusion of their experience and understanding, as formlessness, into works of art that are form. Lastly, an example from architectural design by the author of this essay confirms the argument by transferring film to architecture, from one form to another. It is the personal experience that configures the forming of forms.

Reference Andersson, R (2014), A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, 101 minutes, Blu-ray, Stockholm: Studio 24 Bi, G. (2015), Kaili Blues, 110 minutes, DVD, Shanghai: Dangmai media Boym, S. (2001). The Future of Nostalgia, New York: Basic Books pp. 49-55 Dewey, J. [1934] (1980) Art as experience. New York: Perigee Books. [Excerpts] Heidegger, M. [1951] (2003) ‘Poetically Man Dwells’, In: Heidegger, M.: Philosophical and Political Writings, London: Continuum, pp. 265-278.

Kant, I. [1790] (1976), Excerpts from Critique of Judgement, in: Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns (eds.), Philosophies of Art and Beauty, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp.277-331 Price, C. and Littlewood, J. (1968), ‘The Fun Palace’, The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 12, No. 3, Architecture/Environment, pp. 127-134.

Rulfo, J. [1955] (2011). Peideluobalamo [Pedro Páramo], Beijing: South Sea Press Sitney, A. (2015). The Cinema of Poetry, 4. Andrey Tarkovsky’s Concept of Poetry, New York: Oxford University Press, pp.64-100 Sloterdijk, P. [2006] (2011). ’Architecture as an Art of Immersion’, Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 12. Pp. 105-109 Tarkovsky, A. [1986] (2016). Diaokeshiguang [Sculpting in Time], Haikou: Southsea Tarkovsky, A. [1991] (2007). Shiguanglideshiguang [Time within time], Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press

moyofactory work