Ningbo
Ningbo is a harbor city at the east coast of China and has two million residents today. The city's location is three driving hours south of the metropolis Shanghai. Through the building of a new bridge over the Hangzhou Bay the travel time will be shortened to less than two hours. Therewith the city lies directly in the outback of Shanghai.
After Hangzhou, Ningbo is the second largest city in the province Zhejiang. At its present location, 20 kilometers into the interior at the junction of the rivers Yü Yao and Feng Hua, the city was established in the 8th century. Famous as trade city, that connected the large canal with the silk street of the seas, Ningbo was over centuries the most important harbor of the region.
In the 19th century the meaning of the harbor location in Ningbo decreased continuously and the financial and logistical know-how flowed into the construction of the new trade metropolis Shanghai. The city was only slowly able to recover in the second half of the 20th century of these sequences. During the economic opening of the country, Ningbo was declared a special economic zone in 1984. Additionally it became a free trade zone in 1992. With the new container harbor directly at the sea and the extension of the infrastructure, the city developed into an important distributor center for goods and services in the region.
The economic upswing went hand in hand with the loss of the historic building substance. The threatening identity loss through clear cut redevelopment became examined by national and foreign experts. The main problem however is hard to solve: Which utilization can be accommodated in the traditional single story wooden structures today? Single buildings like the Tianyi library stemming from the 16th century or the dwelling by Chiang Kaishek were remodeled and are accessible to the public as museums today. Around the moon lake, a new urban park emerged, in which important buildings with public utilizations remained in use.
The question of a new identity as a harbor city, with modern locations of industry and as a city of fashion, seeks its expression by means of contemporary architecture. With new universities, schools, public buildings and museums emerges an identity, which uses fragments of the historic buildings to document history self-sufficient.
This new city defines itself no longer through the old yard house development, but rather through its ambitions as a Mecca of design on the Chinese east coast.
A new administration center at the outskirts and the need for large new living quarters shifts the boundary of the city steadily into the landscape. At the same time the old villages become suburbs of the city. Their identity lives on in a new hybrid culture, out of which new architectural concepts and urban planning context emerges.
The exhibition will document the development of the city and will show
popular culture, urbane life and structures that were erected in the last years by means of single examples.
Plans, models and media presentation will introduce the different subjects:
-the city Ningbo and its everyday life culture (urban development, infrastructure, restaurant culture, leisure time)
-topics of the urbane development (function shift, change of the residential culture, patchwork out of historic fragments and new lodgings, landscape in the city)
-single architecture projects of (MADA s.p.a.m., WANG Shu, CUI Kai)
Curators of the exhibition are Eduard Kögel and BU Bing, project manager for Aedes is Ulla Giesler.
Speakers at the opening: Kristin Feireiss, Berlin
He Jianmin, vice mayor of regional government Ningbo
BAI Xiaoyi, managing director of Ningbo Urban Construction Investment Holding Co., LTD
Adrienne Goehler, Capital Culture Fund Berlin
Bu Bing, curator Ningbo
Eduard Kögel, curator Berlin
On September 8th, 2003, an informational evening of the German Chinese Economy Association in collaboration with stadtkultur-international (ski) takes place at 6.30 p.m.
Location: Hotel Excelsior, Hardenbergstr. 14, Berlin.
Topic: municipal and economic development of a large Chinese harbor and location of industry: Ningbo.
Further information: Jochen Noth/ski 030.310 950 18
Registration: [email protected]
