Not long now before I return to the UK. Today involved a trip to Lingan, 30 miles southeast of downtown Shanghai, with its New Harbour Town. This consisted of a patchwork of developments, many in mid-construction, spreading itself around the rim of the largest man-made bay in China. At the centre of the complex an enormous city hall is emerging; reminiscent of something you could imagine seeing in Dubai, reaching high up out of the dry, flat earth. Other areas made me feel as if I were in a flat pack world… situated somewhere between the near future and a 1960s film set. But how this town fundamentally differs from Shanghai’s super-modern architectural agenda I’m not too sure. Less ‘authentic’, it seems mere anachronism and peculiarly devoid of place; at best it is a collection of ideas loosely held together under the unifying banner of a ‘new’ town.
I’m not here to be overtly political, to make a ‘newsworthy’ story or editorial piece.
I’m here to use these sites as a framework to examine notions of pastiche and simulation in such design and, I guess, to indicate certain desires and motives bound into this. However, it’s hard to avoid the very real social, political and economic circumstances driving this urban phenomenon and how well thought through such fast-tracked towns really are. What are they going to be like in ten, twenty or fifty years..?
Then there are some towns that manage to offer a clearer vision of a simulated environment. Fengcheng appears to be such a place, instantly creating a more reassuringly orthodox, if only superficially, approach in re-presenting a Spanish-style town, with its low-sloping red-tiled roofs, patios and plazas. As text book a town as I’ve seen to date.
It’s been a long day, I’m on my third gassy beer and feeling pretty jaded, so I shall sign off..
