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books
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Conversations
Conversations
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Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most acclaimed artists and dissidents. This book presents him in conversation with theorists, critics, journalists, and curators about key moments in his life and career. These wide-ranging conversations flow between topics such as his relationship with China, the meaning of citizenship, moving his studio to Lesbos to be on the front lines(...)
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Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most acclaimed artists and dissidents. This book presents him in conversation with theorists, critics, journalists, and curators about key moments in his life and career. These wide-ranging conversations flow between topics such as his relationship with China, the meaning of citizenship, moving his studio to Lesbos to be on the front lines(...)
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Conversations
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$25.95
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Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most acclaimed artists and dissidents. This book presents him in conversation with theorists, critics, journalists, and curators about key moments in his life and career. These wide-ranging conversations flow between topics such as his relationship with China, the meaning of citizenship, moving his studio to Lesbos to be on the front lines of the migrant crisis, how to make art, and technology as a tool for freedom or oppression. Ai opens up about his relationship to his father as a poet and as a dissident forced into hard labor in a small village after the Cultural Revolution. He shares his thoughts on formal education and the importance of finding your own way as an artist. New York- both the city and its people- were formative for Ai Weiwei, and he speaks eloquently about how these experiences continue to influence him. Ai conjures up scenes from his long relationship with the city: dropping out of Parsons School of Design because he couldn’t afford tuition, making portraits in Washington Square Park as an undocumented immigrant in the 1980s, taking photos for the New York Times at demonstrations in Tompkins Square Park, and returning to set up the ''Good Fences Make Good Neighbors'' project across the city. These candid, spontaneous conversations reveal why Ai Weiwei has become such a major force in contemporary art and political life.
Conversations
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Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most acclaimed artists and dissidents. This book presents him in conversation with theorists, critics, journalists, and curators about key moments in his life and career. These wide-ranging conversations flow between topics such as his relationship with China, the meaning of citizenship, moving his studio to Lesbos to be on the front lines of the migrant crisis, how to make art, and technology as a tool for freedom or oppression. Ai opens up about his relationship to his father as a poet and as a dissident forced into hard labor in a small village after the Cultural Revolution. He shares his thoughts on formal education and the importance of finding your own way as an artist. New York- both the city and its people- were formative for Ai Weiwei, and he speaks eloquently about how these experiences continue to influence him. Ai conjures up scenes from his long relationship with the city: dropping out of Parsons School of Design because he couldn’t afford tuition, making portraits in Washington Square Park as an undocumented immigrant in the 1980s, taking photos for the New York Times at demonstrations in Tompkins Square Park, and returning to set up the ''Good Fences Make Good Neighbors'' project across the city. These candid, spontaneous conversations reveal why Ai Weiwei has become such a major force in contemporary art and political life.
Form:
books
books
Publication:
February 2021
February 2021
Subject:
Contemporary Art Monographs
Contemporary Art Monographs
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books
books
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For Rebecca Bushnell, English gardening books tell a tale of the human love for plants and our will to make them do as we wish. These books evoke the desires of gardeners: they show us gardeners who, like poets, imagine not just what is but what should be. In particular, the earliest English garden books, such as Thomas Hill’s The Gardeners Labyrinth or Hugh Platt’s(...)
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For Rebecca Bushnell, English gardening books tell a tale of the human love for plants and our will to make them do as we wish. These books evoke the desires of gardeners: they show us gardeners who, like poets, imagine not just what is but what should be. In particular, the earliest English garden books, such as Thomas Hill’s The Gardeners Labyrinth or Hugh Platt’s(...)
Title:
Green desire : imagining early modern English gardens
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For Rebecca Bushnell, English gardening books tell a tale of the human love for plants and our will to make them do as we wish. These books evoke the desires of gardeners: they show us gardeners who, like poets, imagine not just what is but what should be. In particular, the earliest English garden books, such as Thomas Hill’s The Gardeners Labyrinth or Hugh Platt’s Floraes Paradise, mix magical practices with mundane recipes even when the authors insist that they rely completely on their own experience in these matters. Like early modern “books of secrets,” early gardening manuals often promise the reader power to alter the essential properties of plants: to make the gillyflower double, to change the lily’s hue, or to grow a cherry without a stone. "Green Desire" describes the innovative design of the old manuals, examining how writers and printers marketed them as fiction as well as practical advice for aspiring gardeners. Along with this attention to the delights of reading, it analyzes the strange dignity and pleasure of garden labor and the division of men’s and women’s roles in creating garden art. The book ends by recounting the heated debate over how much people could do to create marvels in their own gardens. For writers and readers alike, these green desires inspired dreams of power and self-improvement, fantasies of beauty achieved without work, and hopes for order in an unpredictable world.
Green desire : imagining early modern English gardens
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For Rebecca Bushnell, English gardening books tell a tale of the human love for plants and our will to make them do as we wish. These books evoke the desires of gardeners: they show us gardeners who, like poets, imagine not just what is but what should be. In particular, the earliest English garden books, such as Thomas Hill’s The Gardeners Labyrinth or Hugh Platt’s Floraes Paradise, mix magical practices with mundane recipes even when the authors insist that they rely completely on their own experience in these matters. Like early modern “books of secrets,” early gardening manuals often promise the reader power to alter the essential properties of plants: to make the gillyflower double, to change the lily’s hue, or to grow a cherry without a stone. "Green Desire" describes the innovative design of the old manuals, examining how writers and printers marketed them as fiction as well as practical advice for aspiring gardeners. Along with this attention to the delights of reading, it analyzes the strange dignity and pleasure of garden labor and the division of men’s and women’s roles in creating garden art. The book ends by recounting the heated debate over how much people could do to create marvels in their own gardens. For writers and readers alike, these green desires inspired dreams of power and self-improvement, fantasies of beauty achieved without work, and hopes for order in an unpredictable world.
Form:
books
books
Publication:
October 2003, Ithaca, New York
October 2003, Ithaca, New York
Subject:
Landscape Theory
Landscape Theory
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books
books
Title:
Data feminism
Data feminism
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Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind?(...)
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Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind?(...)
Subject:
Archive, library and the digital
Archive, library and the digital
Publication:
March 2020
March 2020
Title:
Data feminism
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$39.95
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Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In ''Data feminism,'' Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever ''speak for themselves.'' ''Data feminism'' offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But ''Data feminism'' is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.
Data feminism
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$39.95
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Summary:
Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In ''Data feminism,'' Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever ''speak for themselves.'' ''Data feminism'' offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But ''Data feminism'' is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.
Form:
books
books
Publication:
March 2020
March 2020
Subject:
Archive, library and the digital
Archive, library and the digital
Form:
books
books
Price:
$31.50
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Summary:
In "Enduring innocence", Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products"- resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions-in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces-familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and(...)
$31.50
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Summary:
In "Enduring innocence", Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products"- resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions-in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces-familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and(...)
Subject:
Architectural Theory
Architectural Theory
Publication:
January 1900, Cambridge, London
January 1900, Cambridge, London
Title:
Enduring innocence : global architecture and its political masquerades
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In "Enduring innocence", Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products"- resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions-in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces-familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and trade-aspire to be worlds unto themselves, self-reflexive and innocent of politics. But as Easterling shows, in reality these enclaves can become political pawns and objects of contention. Jurisdictionally ambiguous, they are imbued with myths, desires, and symbolic capital. Their hilarious and dangerous masquerades often mix quite easily with the cunning of political platforms. Easterling argues that the study of such "real estate cocktails" provides vivid evidence of the market's weakness, resilience, or violence. "Enduring innocence" collects six stories of spatial products and their political predicaments: cruise ship tourism in North Korea; high-tech agricultural formations in Spain (which have reignited labor wars and piracy in the Mediterranean); hyperbolic forms of sovereignty in commercial and spiritual organizations shared by gurus and golf celebrities; automated global ports; microwave urbanism in South Asian IT enclaves; and a global industry of building demolition that suggests urban warfare. These regimes of nonnational sovereignty, writes Easterling, "move around the world like weather fronts"; she focuses not on their blending- their global connectivity-but on their segregation and the cultural collisions that ensue. "Enduring innocence" resists the dream of one globally legible world found in many architectural discourses on globalization. Instead, Easterling's consideration of these segregated worlds provides new tools for practitioners sensitive to the political composition of urban landscapes.
Enduring innocence : global architecture and its political masquerades
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$31.50
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Summary:
In "Enduring innocence", Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products"- resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions-in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces-familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and trade-aspire to be worlds unto themselves, self-reflexive and innocent of politics. But as Easterling shows, in reality these enclaves can become political pawns and objects of contention. Jurisdictionally ambiguous, they are imbued with myths, desires, and symbolic capital. Their hilarious and dangerous masquerades often mix quite easily with the cunning of political platforms. Easterling argues that the study of such "real estate cocktails" provides vivid evidence of the market's weakness, resilience, or violence. "Enduring innocence" collects six stories of spatial products and their political predicaments: cruise ship tourism in North Korea; high-tech agricultural formations in Spain (which have reignited labor wars and piracy in the Mediterranean); hyperbolic forms of sovereignty in commercial and spiritual organizations shared by gurus and golf celebrities; automated global ports; microwave urbanism in South Asian IT enclaves; and a global industry of building demolition that suggests urban warfare. These regimes of nonnational sovereignty, writes Easterling, "move around the world like weather fronts"; she focuses not on their blending- their global connectivity-but on their segregation and the cultural collisions that ensue. "Enduring innocence" resists the dream of one globally legible world found in many architectural discourses on globalization. Instead, Easterling's consideration of these segregated worlds provides new tools for practitioners sensitive to the political composition of urban landscapes.
Form:
books
books
Publication:
January 1900, Cambridge, London
January 1900, Cambridge, London
Subject:
Architectural Theory
Architectural Theory
Form:
books
books
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$19.95
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Now is the phantom chapter to the Invisible Committee's previous book, To Our Friends: a new critique from the anonymous collective that establishes their opposition to the world of capital and its law of labor, addresses current anti-terrorist rhetoric and the ferocious repression that comes with it, and clarifies the end of social democracy and the growing rumors of the(...)
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Now is the phantom chapter to the Invisible Committee's previous book, To Our Friends: a new critique from the anonymous collective that establishes their opposition to the world of capital and its law of labor, addresses current anti-terrorist rhetoric and the ferocious repression that comes with it, and clarifies the end of social democracy and the growing rumors of the(...)
Title:
Now
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Now is the phantom chapter to the Invisible Committee's previous book, To Our Friends: a new critique from the anonymous collective that establishes their opposition to the world of capital and its law of labor, addresses current anti-terrorist rhetoric and the ferocious repression that comes with it, and clarifies the end of social democracy and the growing rumors of the need for a coming “civil war.” Now emerges at a time when the Invisible Committee’s contestation has found echoes throughout the West, with a collapse of trust in the police, an inept weariness on the part of the political system, a growing urgency for opposition, a return of the theme of the Commune, a vanishing distinction between radicals and citizens, and a widespread refusal on the part of the citizen to be governed. As farcical political elections continue to unfold worldwide like a line of tumbling dominoes, and governments increasingly struggle to reclaim a legitimacy that has already slipped out of their grasp, Now clarifies the Invisible Committee’s attitude toward all such elections and their outcome: one of utter indifference. Now proposes a “destituent process” that charts out a different path to be taken, a path of outright refusal that simply ignores elections altogether. It is a path that calls for taking over the world and not taking power, for exploring new forms of life and not a new constitution, and for desertion and silence as alternatives to proclamations and crashes. It is also a call for an unprecedented communism—a communism stronger than nation and country.
Now
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$19.95
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Summary:
Now is the phantom chapter to the Invisible Committee's previous book, To Our Friends: a new critique from the anonymous collective that establishes their opposition to the world of capital and its law of labor, addresses current anti-terrorist rhetoric and the ferocious repression that comes with it, and clarifies the end of social democracy and the growing rumors of the need for a coming “civil war.” Now emerges at a time when the Invisible Committee’s contestation has found echoes throughout the West, with a collapse of trust in the police, an inept weariness on the part of the political system, a growing urgency for opposition, a return of the theme of the Commune, a vanishing distinction between radicals and citizens, and a widespread refusal on the part of the citizen to be governed. As farcical political elections continue to unfold worldwide like a line of tumbling dominoes, and governments increasingly struggle to reclaim a legitimacy that has already slipped out of their grasp, Now clarifies the Invisible Committee’s attitude toward all such elections and their outcome: one of utter indifference. Now proposes a “destituent process” that charts out a different path to be taken, a path of outright refusal that simply ignores elections altogether. It is a path that calls for taking over the world and not taking power, for exploring new forms of life and not a new constitution, and for desertion and silence as alternatives to proclamations and crashes. It is also a call for an unprecedented communism—a communism stronger than nation and country.
Form:
books
books
Publication:
November 2017
November 2017
Subject:
Critical Theory
Critical Theory
Form:
journals and magazines
journals and magazines
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$38.00
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At a moment when the word “design” has come to refer to everything and thus nothing, this issue examines the hidden mechanics and visible output of design practice in order to track the shifting role of designers in society and to gauge the capacity of designers to effect change in a world of mounting crises. The issue’s title, ''Instruments of Service'', carries a(...)
$38.00
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Summary:
At a moment when the word “design” has come to refer to everything and thus nothing, this issue examines the hidden mechanics and visible output of design practice in order to track the shifting role of designers in society and to gauge the capacity of designers to effect change in a world of mounting crises. The issue’s title, ''Instruments of Service'', carries a(...)
Title:
Harvard Design Magazine no. 52 : Instruments of service
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At a moment when the word “design” has come to refer to everything and thus nothing, this issue examines the hidden mechanics and visible output of design practice in order to track the shifting role of designers in society and to gauge the capacity of designers to effect change in a world of mounting crises. The issue’s title, ''Instruments of Service'', carries a double meaning. As defined in standard American Institute of Architects contracts, “Instruments of Service are representations, in any medium of expression now known or later developed, of the tangible and intangible creative work performed by the Architect and the Architect’s consultants under their respective professional services agreements. Instruments of Service may include, without limitation, studies, surveys, models, sketches, drawings, specifications, and other similar materials.” Instruments of service are the instruction manuals that architects—and other designers—make so that others can make something. They define the architect’s relationships with labor, construction, clients, and society. And these relationships—along with the agency of architectural practice—are changing as a growing number of external pressures force instruments of service to change. Architects and designers can also be seen as instruments of service to society, responsible to a continually shifting set of values. At a fundamental level, the designer’s job is to imagine and articulate a better future. In a time of crisis and competing value systems—market returns, cultural relevance, environmental response, social equity, automation—the role of the designer in society is ever more important and increasingly accountable to divergent interests that call into question the raison d’être of design practice itself.
Harvard Design Magazine no. 52 : Instruments of service
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At a moment when the word “design” has come to refer to everything and thus nothing, this issue examines the hidden mechanics and visible output of design practice in order to track the shifting role of designers in society and to gauge the capacity of designers to effect change in a world of mounting crises. The issue’s title, ''Instruments of Service'', carries a double meaning. As defined in standard American Institute of Architects contracts, “Instruments of Service are representations, in any medium of expression now known or later developed, of the tangible and intangible creative work performed by the Architect and the Architect’s consultants under their respective professional services agreements. Instruments of Service may include, without limitation, studies, surveys, models, sketches, drawings, specifications, and other similar materials.” Instruments of service are the instruction manuals that architects—and other designers—make so that others can make something. They define the architect’s relationships with labor, construction, clients, and society. And these relationships—along with the agency of architectural practice—are changing as a growing number of external pressures force instruments of service to change. Architects and designers can also be seen as instruments of service to society, responsible to a continually shifting set of values. At a fundamental level, the designer’s job is to imagine and articulate a better future. In a time of crisis and competing value systems—market returns, cultural relevance, environmental response, social equity, automation—the role of the designer in society is ever more important and increasingly accountable to divergent interests that call into question the raison d’être of design practice itself.
Form:
journals and magazines
journals and magazines
Publication:
February 2025
February 2025
Subject:
Magazines
Magazines
Form:
journals and magazines
journals and magazines
Holdings:
Description:
portfolios of plates (some folded) : ill. ; 32-46 cm
Description:
portfolios of plates (some folded) : ill. ; 32-46 cm
Author:
Subject:
Publication:
Paris : A. Vincent
Paris : A. Vincent
Title:
Concours pour le Grand Prix de Rome ... Section d'Architecture.
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Holdings:
Description:
portfolios of plates (some folded) : ill. ; 32-46 cm
Concours pour le Grand Prix de Rome ... Section d'Architecture.
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Holdings:
Description:
portfolios of plates (some folded) : ill. ; 32-46 cm
Form:
journals and magazines
journals and magazines
Publication:
Paris : A. Vincent
Paris : A. Vincent
Author:
Subject:
Form:
journals and magazines
journals and magazines
Price:
$71.50
(available to order)
Summary:
A ‘Pacific’ century, an Asian century or a Chinese century? On the threshold between the 20th and the 21st century, the transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific is forecasted by all; the move from America to Asia is noticed by many; and the replacement of the United States by China is feared by some: the awakening of the dragon provokes both wonder and distrust. After the(...)
$71.50
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Summary:
A ‘Pacific’ century, an Asian century or a Chinese century? On the threshold between the 20th and the 21st century, the transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific is forecasted by all; the move from America to Asia is noticed by many; and the replacement of the United States by China is feared by some: the awakening of the dragon provokes both wonder and distrust. After the(...)
Title:
AV Monografias / Monographs 109-110 (2004) : China boom, growth unlimited
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$71.50
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A ‘Pacific’ century, an Asian century or a Chinese century? On the threshold between the 20th and the 21st century, the transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific is forecasted by all; the move from America to Asia is noticed by many; and the replacement of the United States by China is feared by some: the awakening of the dragon provokes both wonder and distrust. After the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, in the last 25 years China has grown at a rate of 9 percent; in this period, its GNP has tripled, and the percentage of population living in cities has doubled, exceeding 40%. Fueled by exports, and backed by the postotalitarian protectionism of a single-party government, the stunning growth of China has not yet created global companies – the Sony or Hyundai that led the Japanese or Korean booms – but its large oil firms (PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC) try to find in several continents the energy needed by the world’s second importer; its technological companies (from Lenovo, that has purchased a division of IBM, to Huawei, that has created in Shenzhen a Silicon Valley-style campus, Doric Disney designs included) make up for scarce innovation with low labor costs; and its new breed of fancy millionaires, who build chateaux or buy French cosmetic brands, spearhead a large consumerist middle class, supplying a strong domestic demand that adds to the thrust of foreign markets. China’s unequal growth does not appear to be a large risk: the differences in income are similar to those of the US, and the contrast between the wealthy coast and the rural inland – where most upheavals have started, from Boxers to communists – is blurred as the development of Shanghai extends upriver along the Yangtze corridor, and as Hong Kong’s dynamism expands in concentric waves over the superregion of Guangdong, from that Pearl River Delta known as ‘the factory of the world’. More dangerous seem to be the weakness of the financial system, the persistence of administrative corruption and the scarcity of energy resources, the supply of which is being secured by heavy investments on the military, something that upsets its neighbors – Japan and Taiwan most of all, but also Korea and another awakening giant, India –, its competitors, and even the US, that urges its European allies to maintain the arms ban on China. On top of all this, in a country that has reached 1,300 million inhabitants in 2005, is the demographic scenario created by the single child policy and the accelerated ageing of the population, with an increasing number of 4+2+1 families, where now there are four grandparents and two parents satisfying the needs of a little emperor, but where in just 30 years a single adult will have to take care of six retirees. This huge economic and social transformation has expressed itself via an unprecedented urban explosion, shaped by titanic public works – large dams and suspended bridges, elevated highways and submarine tunnels – and with the foreseeable devastating impact on the environment and cultural heritage. The building frenzy that has attracted so many foreign architects to China – initially for technically complex or symbolically significant works, like some of the skyscrapers of Shanghai or the olympic projects in Beijing, but now more often for urban plans or conventional commercial developments – receives, according to The Economist, the added boost of a real-estate bubble that feeds on hot money placing its bets on the yuan’s revaluation. This process has turned some districts of Shanghai such as Pudong or Puxi into the most sought-after office areas in the world, and has caused in cities like Beijing an increasing decay of its architectural legacy, which barely respects World Heritage sites (The Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Ming Imperial Tombs and the Temple of Heaven), besieged already by a unanimous tide of trivial constructions.
AV Monografias / Monographs 109-110 (2004) : China boom, growth unlimited
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Price:
$71.50
(available to order)
Summary:
A ‘Pacific’ century, an Asian century or a Chinese century? On the threshold between the 20th and the 21st century, the transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific is forecasted by all; the move from America to Asia is noticed by many; and the replacement of the United States by China is feared by some: the awakening of the dragon provokes both wonder and distrust. After the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, in the last 25 years China has grown at a rate of 9 percent; in this period, its GNP has tripled, and the percentage of population living in cities has doubled, exceeding 40%. Fueled by exports, and backed by the postotalitarian protectionism of a single-party government, the stunning growth of China has not yet created global companies – the Sony or Hyundai that led the Japanese or Korean booms – but its large oil firms (PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC) try to find in several continents the energy needed by the world’s second importer; its technological companies (from Lenovo, that has purchased a division of IBM, to Huawei, that has created in Shenzhen a Silicon Valley-style campus, Doric Disney designs included) make up for scarce innovation with low labor costs; and its new breed of fancy millionaires, who build chateaux or buy French cosmetic brands, spearhead a large consumerist middle class, supplying a strong domestic demand that adds to the thrust of foreign markets. China’s unequal growth does not appear to be a large risk: the differences in income are similar to those of the US, and the contrast between the wealthy coast and the rural inland – where most upheavals have started, from Boxers to communists – is blurred as the development of Shanghai extends upriver along the Yangtze corridor, and as Hong Kong’s dynamism expands in concentric waves over the superregion of Guangdong, from that Pearl River Delta known as ‘the factory of the world’. More dangerous seem to be the weakness of the financial system, the persistence of administrative corruption and the scarcity of energy resources, the supply of which is being secured by heavy investments on the military, something that upsets its neighbors – Japan and Taiwan most of all, but also Korea and another awakening giant, India –, its competitors, and even the US, that urges its European allies to maintain the arms ban on China. On top of all this, in a country that has reached 1,300 million inhabitants in 2005, is the demographic scenario created by the single child policy and the accelerated ageing of the population, with an increasing number of 4+2+1 families, where now there are four grandparents and two parents satisfying the needs of a little emperor, but where in just 30 years a single adult will have to take care of six retirees. This huge economic and social transformation has expressed itself via an unprecedented urban explosion, shaped by titanic public works – large dams and suspended bridges, elevated highways and submarine tunnels – and with the foreseeable devastating impact on the environment and cultural heritage. The building frenzy that has attracted so many foreign architects to China – initially for technically complex or symbolically significant works, like some of the skyscrapers of Shanghai or the olympic projects in Beijing, but now more often for urban plans or conventional commercial developments – receives, according to The Economist, the added boost of a real-estate bubble that feeds on hot money placing its bets on the yuan’s revaluation. This process has turned some districts of Shanghai such as Pudong or Puxi into the most sought-after office areas in the world, and has caused in cities like Beijing an increasing decay of its architectural legacy, which barely respects World Heritage sites (The Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Ming Imperial Tombs and the Temple of Heaven), besieged already by a unanimous tide of trivial constructions.
Form:
journals and magazines
journals and magazines
Publication:
August 2005, Madrid
August 2005, Madrid
Subject:
Magazines
Magazines
