by Neville Mars, Saskia Vendel, and Dai Yang
The 2005 installation Beijing Boom Tower (BBT) presents a model showing 6 hectares of the capital in 2020. The design of the block underlines the conflicting desires of the modern metropolis: its boom demand for urban space, and its consequent suffocation. BBT is the product of suburban-feel living at 10 times Manhattan density.
5000 duplex apartments are stacked to form an integrated environment. Full-scale parking, retail and amenities systems are laid on. A privacy gradient acknowledges the increasing reality of a competitive housing market seeking privatisation and exclusivity. BBT presents an extreme architecture of networks, bridges, escalators, highways and towers; a continuous system that reunites the segregated Chinese society within one vertical neighbourhood.
The BBT model is the central part of an interactive video-installation. Projectors shoot graphic information against one facade of the tower block, turning its skyscrapers into giant bar diagrams. Mini-cameras capture the inner-world of the structure as they weave through the abstract spaces. These images feed back to a wall of closed-circuit black and white monitors, providing the audience the street level and penthouse perspectives. The spectator feels himself a guard in control of this building, as he chooses which angles to view.
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