Event, Building

Ann-Charlotte Richter

ARCHITECTURE AND NATION BUILDING IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

CONSTRUCTION OF THE NATIONAL STADIUM OF BEIJING FOR THE 2008 OLYMPICS

Relationship between
architecture and nation building
Age of globalization

Nationalism and global consumerism drives architectural projects.

Architecture as marketing strategy
Mixed consequences.

This study reveals the rationale underlying the politicians’ and bureaucrats’ search for a global architectural language to narrate national ambitions.

Olympic Park

The bird’s nest

2003 started the construction of the Olympic park in North Beijing including the National stadium, highest profile architectural project among Beijing Olympic stadiums.

2004 the construction
of the stadium was
stopped by the
central government.

The stadium was designed by two prominent international Swiss architects.

Left to right Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron

80,000

11,000

Construction cost $463M

The image

video

Global architectural language

Competition

Linkage between city marketing techniques & image construction initiatives and Chinese nationalism.

State aspirations and global expectations articulated to create a wold image of Beijing.

Negotiate national identity

Building high-profile architectural monuments can be seen as status symbol showing economic and political power.

Beijing Olympics

“Great Olympics—New Beijing.”

Local government participated with Beijing in the bid hoping to solve its urban problems and boost growth in a relatively short period of time.

At the same time, it’s an opportunity to strengthen global status in an era of growing interurban competition and to finance large-scale planned construction projects driven and strongly influenced by the central government.

Represent to the world China’s rise as a new global player push urban economic development in Beijing and create a new image of Beijing.

With such a national event the central government of China intends to demonstrate to the world the country’s economic achievements over the past two decades.

Going for global architecture

Video

International architects

Debate

Such projects are seen as architectural experiments and even called “the laboratory for foreign architects”.

The result is cultural conservatives and the rise of a new form of cultural colonialism.

Cities loose authentic character and become more and more similar.

Chinese and especially Beijing-based architects and academics oppose commissioning state-sponsored projects to foreign architects.

They submitted a petition to the central government which led to a construction stop and financial review by the government as well as a change in design.

Summary

Importing global architecture

The international design competition held in 2003 in which the two Swiss architects won.

Beijing’s architectural design market is not open to foreign competition.

The petition by conservative academicians opposing the architectural design.

Active participation in debates by the intellectual community.

The campaign launched by cultural liberals criticizing the authoritarian and nontransparent decision-making process of the current political regime in China.

Beijing is strongly influenced, regulated, and penetrated by the central government.

Discussion

China's weird architecture finally hits the glass ceiling: Beijing to crack down on city's garish buildings

Fenny Chiang

China’s national identity

Author introduction

Acting Director of China & Asia-Pacific Studies, Cornell University. Chinese foreign policy and East Asian international relations.

Article Structure

• Review of China sports policy
• Beijing Olympics in presenting international image
• Divergent nation building across the Strait

China’s

Politics by other means

Among sport, military and national salvation

Sick Man of Asia

Policy Development

Sports system

Sports VS. Great Power Dream

Medals Won in 2008 Olympiad

Overseas Corps

小山智麗

李犁

East Meets West

Argument of bidding for Olympiad

facilitating the cultural exchanges and convergence between East and West

Objective

Theme

Logo / Emblem

Video

Yang Yang

Wuhan

Bradford

Good culture,

The implications of culture

MarTa BoloGnani

City of Bradford

Video

This paper shows how regeneration policies in Bradford have been modified following local, national
and international events.

Policy makers reacted to
public perceptions of the city itself and of its large Muslim community.

Three phases

Celebration

Pathologization

Exclusion

They have the potential
to deeply affect social relations in the city.

These changes are
reflexive of historical events,

constitutive.

Introduction

Regeneration

Regeneration visions and city self-projections are informed by less obvious but historically significant and sociologically important aspects.

Assumption

Recognizing the dynamics at work behind such visions allows us to understand the historical limits of regeneration policies,

and may help in predicting effects on
local social relations.

The shifts in the public use of ‘culture’ not only are a reflection on how policies influence everyday life,

but may also provide some insights.

This paper analyses the shifts in Bradford’s regeneration plans by linking them to local, national and international events.

The public use of culture in Bradford has a great potential to affect the city’s identity, politics and economics.

‘culture’

CULTURE

‘category of practice’

Chronology

‘one of the key places in the UK in which relationships between populations of Muslim and non-Muslim background are likely to be worked out in the future, either for good or for ill.’

Recognized both in the UK and abroad as a privileged site to observe the practical side of multiculturalism.

The shifts in the different uses of culture will be treated as ‘social facts’.

‘Good Culture’

Bradford culture was described as a distinctive and proud characteristic of the economically struggling former textile mill town.

‘politically & societally relevant’.

In the late 1980s, the Bradford festival had already been the occasion to celebrate one of the first multicultural sites of the city, Little Germany.

Mela, a place where the different cultures represented in Bradford would converge.

In 2002 the Mela became the centre of the bid for the 2008 European Capital of Culture.

Although the bid was not successful, its vision was at first supposed to be the matrix for much of the city’s regeneration and community projects.

Culture was seen as a resource for the whole city.

However, the bid failure and other historical events, such as the growing criticism of multiculturalism, changed the trend.

‘Bad Culture’ to ‘No Culture’

Local riots in the light of 9/11 started influencing the
self-perception of the city
in very significant ways.

The perception of a city conceals important historical forces, and Bradford has not been an exception.

Very little was left

By 2004 the plan for the
Museum of Spices was abandoned.

Branding Strategy

Before
‘to promote positively
the diverse cultural landscape
of the District’

After
‘to improve
the competitiveness
in the global markets’

One of the major achievements
of the branding strategy
was to have had its own official video included in the exhibition of the MoMA in New York.

Video

Bradford urban policies seem for now to have completely abandoned
a culture-informed vision of regeneration.

for a city?

constitutive.

Culture was a resource for positive community relations and interconnections.

Culture is a part of everyday life, and can be used as
a resource for the ‘powerless’.

identity.

Meanwhile

Diversity may not be most desirable for people who wish to move to a city

However, diversity has become
an international tourist attraction that can significantly contribute
to the economic life of a city.

Visiting ethnicity

A phenomenon of urban tourism involving areas that were once considered poor, unappealing and even dangerous, and now have been transformed into touristic attractions.

Heritage tourism has been a globally important instrument to reinforce national brand,
especially through museums.

In the case of Bradford, local urban policies seem to have put on hold leisure tourism investments in favour of business and city-living.

Had leisure tourism remained a priority, matching such a strategy with one of defusing negative stereotypes of the city’s Asian population may have opened new perspectives in Bradford’s re-branding.

Conclusions

Since 1997, ‘culture’ as a category of practice and as a political instrument has significantly changed.

In the late 1990s, ‘culture’ was an important tag around
which the promotion of the Bradford district was shaped.

The mela’s promotion,
the Museum of Spices project
and the 2008 Capital of Culture bid
are all positive examples of ‘culture’
in that phase.

‘Too much multiculturalism was becoming the problem’
-Sivanandan

Local, national and international events have turned ‘culture’ from something to celebrate into something ‘bad for business’ progressively pushing it out of the city’s vision.

The term ‘culture’ in
urban regeneration has both
a reflective and a constitutive nature.

Multiculturalism in your city?

Once we have established how the term ‘culture’ becomes relevant in regeneration, then it can be confidently predicted that its use has the potential to have some impact on the everyday lives of people.

Thank you.