The work of Christoph Kumpusch’s Forbidden City Studio is currently being exhibited at the Beijing Urban Planning Center as part of Divergent Convergence. The show, hosted by the USC American Academy in China features projective architectural projects from schools all around the world. Here is part of the curator’s remarks:
Divergent Convergence will, for the first time, collect in a single exhibition the work of students and researchers from across American architecture schools, produced over the past decade. Projects will range in scale from individual works of architecture to proposals on an urban scale. More specifically, the selected projects will illustrate the responses of students and researchers to a series of questions critically relevant to the Chinese city today: How can architecture adapt to a hyper-compressed design and construction schedule? Should ancient neighborhoods be demolished to make way for new construction? Can cities accommodate rapid demographic change without opening up irreparable social rifts? How dense should cities become? How can sustainability be achieved in the context of increased industrial production? Ultimately, this multiplicity of investigative angles will constitute an in-depth study of Chinese urbanism and architecture in the context both of global economy and local culture . . .
Representing Cornell University are myself, Michael Duran, Joshua Nason, Landon Robinson, and Gregory Serweta.
