*Editor’s note: Invited by the Shanghai Urban Space Art Season (SUSAS), “One University One Village” joined our partners Atelier Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun and Wuming Architecture to create the commissioned work “Dwelling School.” The exhibition runs until 20 November 2023 — do go, and see, hear, smell, touch, read, and feel it. The article below is from Wallpaper*CN.*
*The German word Ökologie (originally: Oecologie) comes from the Greek words Οικοθ (home) and Λογοθ (discipline), meaning “the study of life and its relationships within a shared natural environment.” This was a piece of knowledge uncovered during the early curatorial research into the concept and theoretical evolution of “ecology.” This year’s commissioned exhibition “Dwelling School,” completed jointly by three groups of artists and architects, builds a profound dialogue on the banks of the Huangpu River, from both geographical and conceptual origins. Look deeper into this world, and it is not merely a distant “elsewhere” of materials or techniques — it also hints at the latent connections beneath contemporary Chinese social forms and industrial systems, offering a supplementary vision, a plain yet moving vision, to an increasingly narrow urban ecological perspective. — Executive Curator Gao Changjun*
The core concept of “Dwelling School,” the commissioned project for the 2023 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season thematic exhibition, is how to learn to live and dwell on a damaged planet.
The curators and three participating groups — “One University One Village,” Wuming Architecture, and Cao Minghao & Chen Jianjun — used architectural and artistic research methods to work with water, with earth, and with wood. Through interdisciplinary approaches, they explored dwelling wisdom and practice under the conditions of global climate change. “One University One Village” revived and improved traditional rammed-earth techniques; Wuming Architecture continued pushing traditional timber construction toward industrialisation; and artists Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun brought a perspective distinct from the architectural profession, placing dwelling forms within the context of global ecology to explore more complex environmental questions.
