PennDesign students in the Department of Landscape Architecture are putting the finishing touches on their installation at the 2017 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (UABB) in Shenzhen, China, the premier event on the annual Asian design calendar. Directed by Professor and Chair Richard Weller and Adjunct Professor Valerio Morabito, the students are exhibiting a set of drawings related to the migrant worker’s village of Nantou in which this year’s Biennale is being staged.
The drawings are based on small details of daily life in the village, which students experienced on a recent site visit. Superimposed over the top of these very personal and small-scale drawings are masterplans of massive new urban developments in Africa being currently documented by Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Christopher Marcinkoski and Lecturer Javier Arpa. Explaining the rationale of the exhibition, Weller said the central idea was to try and merge these different scales and conflicting forms of urbanization.
Initiated by Shenzhen in 2005 and joined by adjacent city Hong Kong in 2007, the UABB is the only biennial exhibition in the world to be based exclusively on the set themes of urbanism and urbanization. Featuring some 230 participants from more than 25 countries and regions, the exhibition runs from December 15, 2017 - March 18, 2018.
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