Wild Be(ij)ing

狂乱的北京[或一切存在]

Author: Shuo Wang
w.shuo AT yahoo DOT com

Proposal

The Beijing Olympic Games presented us the image of a total integrated approach to the urbanity. It put up an extreme appearance that the city-state works as one mega-system with clear determination. Yet paradoxically, if you zoom in to the urban surface, out of the aesthetic of a perfectly manufactured stable image, emerges the fine grains of the proliferation of seemingly uncontrolled urban substances. The city is inundated with innovative urban upheavals – “vertical” eruption of the underground dynamics. We are witnessing the mutation of the city, in which logics for (re)production of urban substance are constantly reinvented. It is a paradigm of urban wildness that thrives against any discipline.

北京奥运为我们呈现了一幅城市整体化路线图。在这瞬间的表象中，整个城市－政府有如一个目标明确的巨大系统一般同步运作。然而矛盾的是，如果放大城市表面来看，在一个完美的稳定的意象之下，正涌动出更多细小的，看似不受控制的城市形态。这个城市正在被许多前所未有的剧变所冲刷着，无法抑制的动力正从城市底层喷发出来。我们正在经历一场城市的突变。狂乱的北京，一个生长和复制的逻辑总在重新被定义的城市，一个无法约束的“城市野生物种”泛滥的典范。

The wild growth driven by the economic boom has lead to the city’s heterotopias of countless lockdown enclaves. Huge segregated residential compounds have exploded to the point that architecture has swallowed any urban vision. Of the few strategies trying to deal with the uncontrolled rapid growth, many are preoccupied with domesticating order. Beijing simply subverts all those, and proof that the purifying procedure failed in registering the inherently turbulent mode of the multi-dimensional dynamics and tensions by which the city actually develop.

经济暴发带来城市的疯狂生长，导致北京对于无数孤立自闭的城市“飞地”的纵容。巨大的与外界隔绝的居住区填满了整个地表。这样倒置的乌托邦吞噬了人们所有对于城市的憧憬。在少数几个试图应对失控的快速增长的策略中，推行某种“秩序”大都成为一种当务之急。然而北京却推翻了这些企图，并证明了类似“净化”的措施用来对付城市中各种汹涌而至的张力时显得毫无用处。

Wild Be[ij]ing inscribes a prospective history for the mutating reproduction, attempts to evoke the wild city rather than claim to represent it. The project responds to the all-encompassing paradigm of wildness with an approach that merges two seemingly opposing concepts of urbanity into one: the mega-scale top-down planning that treats developments as lockdown enclaves vs. the unregulated mobile activities that flood the urban ground. It propagates a new urban process by utilizing the vast urban developments as framework to proliferate street commerce – instead of being parasitical, unregulated activities can weave into the rigid structure of existing mega-blocks and disturb it like a virus infection. Once they reach the critical masses that catalyst the ferment, the city will become a self-unfolding system that ultimately reinvents itself as an uninterrupted hyper-dense artificial landscape, capable of accommodating all manners of life.

Wild Be[ij]ing为突变中的城市书写一段前瞻性的历史。它并不力图真实表达北京的现状，而是试图通过将突现的细小城市生命体激发到巨大的城市尺度中，来唤醒这城市潜在的疯狂，并最终将之彻底改变。这一项目采取了一种将相反的两方面合而为一的路径：大尺度的将发展视为建立封闭区域的自上而下的规划 vs. 覆盖城市每一个角落的细小的不受约束的城市生活。它推广一种新的城市进程，将利用广大的城市化发展作为街头商业活动衍生的框架。这些日常的随意活动不再是寄生性的，它们将与现有的巨构体交织在一起，像病毒感染一般取而代之。一旦它们超越了临界的数量后，将成为能够自我展开的系统。整个城市终将演变成一个能够承载一切生活所需的，连续不断的，超高密度的人造景观。

Concept

Focus on Wild Beijing

Research for Alternative

Site: Dahongmen Area - South of Beijing between 3rd-4th ring road.
基地：大红门地区－北京城南三环至四环路之间

Urban Reforming Test

Wild Be[ij]ing proposes dynamic design procedures as a means of choreographing simultaneously the inhabitants, small initiatives, market and governmental forces in relation to the continuous changing urban environments. Below are three tests on pieces of urban fragments - of different scale, different stage, attacking different aspect of an existing system – they aren’t providing a complete set of answers to the site in present, nor do I desire to offer one, rather, they are possible scenarios of a desirable future.

为在不断改变的城市环境中同时协调住户，小商户，市场和政府等各个方面， Wild Be[ij]ing提出一种动态的设计过程。下面是三个不同尺度不同阶段的发展测试，分别面对当前系统中的不同方面。它们并不试图对基地现状给出一套完全的解决方案，而是尽可能描画出可实现的城市未来场景。