October 4, 2004

The first annual Beijing Architecture Biennial was held from September 20 to October 2 at various venues in the Chinese capital. The event focused on current architecture in China, casting a positive lens on the many innovative projects underway in the country.

The centerpiece was a large-scale exhibition featuring works by architects from China and overseas at the National Art Museum in downtown Beijing. Architects currently realizing work in China were invited to submit renderings, models and explanations of their China projects. Among these included Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Steven Holl, Herzog + de Meuron, Paul Andreu, Foster & Partners and Zaha Hadid.

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OMA is currently working on the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing and an addition to the People’s Revolutionary Museum on Tiananmen Square; Steven Holl and Zaha Hadid are doing residential projects, and Hadid won the competition for the design for the Guangzhou Opera House; Herzog and de Meuron are re-working their design for the National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics; Foster and Partners’s new Beijing airport has recently broken ground and construction of Andreu’s National Theatre in Beijing is soon due for completion.

In addition, the current work of a variety of up-and-coming Chinese architects was featured alongside these celebrity architects. Exhibitions of student work and young Chinese architects were also held at Tsinghua University, which recently hired Venturi Scott Brown & Associates as campus planning consultants.

A series of eight sparsely attended panel discussions were also held; topics mostly dealt with the state of contemporary architecture in China, the growing interaction between designers overseas and the China market and China’s willingness to award high profile projects of national importance to foreign architects. In China, there has been much controversy recently about the apparent lack of cultural deference of many of the country’s signature architectural projects, which are being designed overseas.

The Biennial, which was plagued by organizational problems such as ticket sale and attendance issues, was sponsored by China’s Ministries of Culture and Construction. The Ministries hope to hold future biennials every other year.

By Dan Elsea