Art Journal #30: Emergency homes; NAMOC

Fan Di-An, director of National Art Museum of China, has really done sth different for NAMOC. Granted, I never visited NAMOC that much before the Cai Guoqiang show (and honestly there isnt much to see before then). But since Fan came, with the digital media exhibition Synthetic Times in 2008 (which I missed, too bad), I think NAMOC has gotta a lot more exciting. There's a decided shift to more contemporary exhibitions, eg, Li Chen, Zhan Wang, etc.

The emergency shelter exhibition was a fantastic art/architecture angle to respond to the one year anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake. Fan Di-An organised to have architects and designers from all over the world to showcase design of temporary shelters for disaster relief. The Swiss showed a stackable table with Toblerone and light-torch attached at the bottom. One Chinese firm showed paper-made tents that are easily folded and stored. Another one showed how they use conrete debris from the earthquake site together with unused wheat (cut up) to create non-loading bricks that can used for reconstruction - in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way.

The most impressive one is this firm (unfortunately didnt get their name) who designed a "urban system" with an inverted pyramid as its focal point. In their minds, the functioning, well-thought-out temporary town is not just a temporary shelter. While temporary shelters were designed to be temporary, unfortunately people invaribly stayed longer in them than intended - often a few years, rather than months as reconstruction takes place. So you need sth that last. Also you need an urban strategy - again because reconstruction takes time, and having a social/architecture order to things is critical when people are there 2, 3, 4 years. Finally, whatever you put in needs to generate hope. They use the inverted pyramid structure to create focal point, and pyramids of different colors will each form school, townhall, hospital, etc. They also form convenient meeting places for shelters from the sun and rain.

Wish there will be equally good and meaingful exhibitions like this when WKCD opens.