China Pavilion Research Articles

Digital China and its discontents: On the politics of Sinofuturism and image building at the Venice Biennale

This article examines how the China Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale attempts to reimagine a new ontology between contemporary Chinese art, artificial intelligence-generated art and artistic practices, as well as the official Chinese discourse on technological positivity. It argues that the China Pavilion can be read through the lens of a Sinofuturist discourse and how the pavilion is spatially and temporally situated in contemporary digital Chinese art. Taking the title ‘Meta-Scape’, the China Pavilion can be understood as a futuristic phototype that the Chinese state mobilizes in formulating a rhetoric of a cohesive digital civilization. This underlines the ways the pavilion not only generates technological inquiries to imagine new paths for artistic practices but also manifests the role that Chinese new media art has on rendering the nation’s international image. In exploring one of the AI-generated artworks titled Streaming Stillness (2022), this article investigates how the ‘techno-turn’ in contemporary Chinese art illuminates the digitalization of cultural memory in relation to the dynamics and discontents between technological aestheticism and China’s national image building process.

Innovative design solutions for contemporary Tou-Kung based on topological optimisation

Tou-Kung, which is pronounced in Chinese and known as Bracket Set (Liang & Fairbank, A pictorial history of Chinese architecture, 1984), is a vital support component in the Chinese traditional wooden tectonic systems. It is located between the column and the beam and connects the eave and pillar, making the heavy roof extend out of the eaves longer. The development of Tou-Kung is entirely a microcosm of the development of ancient Chinese architecture; the aesthetic structure and Asian artistic temperament behind Tou-Kung make it gradually become the cultural and spiritual symbol of traditional Chinese architecture. In the contemporary era, inheriting and developing Tou-Kung has become an essential issue. Several architects have attempted to employ new materials and techniques to integrate the traditional Tou-Kung into modern architectural systems, such as the China Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo and Yusuhara Wooden Bridge Museum. This paper introduces the topological optimisation method bi-directional evolutionary structural optimisation (BESO) for form-finding. BESO method is one of the most popular topology optimisation methods widely employed in civil engineering and architecture. Through analyzing the development trend of Tou-Kung and mechanical structure, the authors integrate 2D and 3D optimisation methods and apply the hybrid methods to form-finding. Meanwhile, mortise and tenon joint used to create stable connections with components of Tou-Kung are retained. This research aims to design a new Tou-Kung corresponding to “structural performance-based aesthetics”. The workflow proposed in this paper is valuable for Architrave and other traditional building components.

日本万国博覧会中華民国館の設計プロセス：公開設計競技の開催と再設計

The purpose of this report is to examine the design process of the Republic of China Pavilion for the 1970 Japan World Exposition in Osaka, using materials dispersed in Japan and Taiwan. The research revealed that the first prize proposal for the pavilion was selected through an open design competition, but that the jury, Ieoh Ming Pei, rejected it, and the pavilion was redesigned under Pei’s coordination. It was also revealed that throughout the design process, the design of the ROC Pavilion, despite its apparent modernism style, consistently attempted to express the Chinese spirit and traditions.

Passive design of green public buildings adapted to cold climate: a case study of China pavilion of the international horticultural exhibition 2019 Beijing China

This paper took the China Pavilion of the International Horticultural Exhibition 2019 Beijing China as the subject for study. Based on the influence of cold climate on people’s behaviors and their perception of the environment, the paper proposed designs of green public buildings adapting to the cold climate and analyzed the overall functions of green buildings via tests of temperature, humidity, illumination and total energy consumption to verify the ecological features and energy conservancy of the buildings, forming a closed-loop chain of procedures of the green design.

Folk culture China in the China Pavilion, Venice Biennale: repositioning ‘Chineseness’ in contemporary art discourse

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore how Qiu Zhijie’s curation of the exhibition Continuum – Generation by Generation at the China Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale offers a new understanding of ‘China’ and ‘Chineseness’. It is neither a reproduction of literati arts nor a critical use of symbols of socialist China, but an appropriation of Chinese folk culture to re-envision the central role of China in the global art scene. This new form of Chineseness is what I call ‘folk culture China’. Although the curator attempts to challenge the existing interpretation of contemporary Chinese art widely circulated in the art market, the curatorial strategy deployed in this exhibition inherits a culturalist view of Chinese culture by re-nationalizing folk culture as the essence of Chinese culture that sustains Chinese civilization. Folk culture China also highlights the importance of collaboration between folk and contemporary artists in which the former can remind the latter of the collective spirit embodied in craftsmanship, which is the core of the Chinese mode of art-making. More importantly, folk culture China is an anti-nation-statist discourse that paradoxically repositions China from an object of the Euro-American-centric contemporary art system to the center of the world.

To Explore the Inheritance of Computer Multimedia Art Design Based on Traditional Chinese Cultural Elements

With the development of computer digital media technology, computer multimedia art has emerged as a new art form.In China, it is very important to embed multimedia art in traditional Chinese culture, draw nourishment from traditional Chinese cultural elements, and give it a national character.This paper USES computer multimedia technology to discuss how to inherit and realize multimedia art design based on traditional Chinese cultural elements by analyzing the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games and the China pavilion of the Shanghai world expo, because they are the perfect combination of Chinese traditional culture and multimedia art.

Continuum Generation by Generation: The representation of Chinese traditions at the China Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale

Abstract This article focuses on the China pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale as a case study. The theme of the pavilion, Continuum – Generation by Generation, revolved around the long history of Chinese tradition and offered a visual re-elaboration of it by means of contemporary art and folk art. The works exhibited drew on Chinese mythology, masterpieces of Chinese art history, philosophical concepts and handcraft traditions, hence presenting a variegated image of (contemporary) Chinese art. This exhibition offers opportunities for a critical reading of the relationship between contemporary art and tradition implied by the theme Continuum, and I will explore the narrative and curatorial discourse it presented to the audience.

China's ancient past in its contemporary art: On the politics of time and nation branding at the Venice Biennale

AbstractThis article examines the China Pavilion at the 2017Venice Biennalethrough an exploration of temporality. It argues that the pavilion's deployment of a politics of time – by mobilizing China's dynastic past and its traditional arts to enhance the present – constructs a mode of cultural timelessness that sustains a stultifying visual and discursive regime. Touting the theme of 'Continuum – Generation by Generation', the pavilion paid a lofty tribute to folk-art practices such as embroidery and shadow play, elevating two paintings from the Song Dynasty as the fount of contemporary artistic imagination. This recourse to the past mirrors a predictable and safe representational strategy often mobilized by the country to shape its own public and media image on the global stage. In view of this, the pavilion can be more constructively investigated as an exercise in image and perception management, or nation branding, which reveals the self-narratives that the country embraces. Nation branding serves as a complementary analytical lens that probes the instrumentalization of Chinese traditions, history and past, while crystallizing some parallel visual logics and aims of contemporary art. Aesthetics and nation branding are, therefore, conjoined to question the shared visuality that perpetuates, to borrow a term from Rey Chow, the 'affect of pastness' that obscures a more timely and inventive imaginary of the country.

Cao Fei: Rethinking the global/local discourse

Abstract Cao Fei (b. 1978) was born and raised in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou by the Pearl River Delta (PRD), ‘the factory of the world’, as the artist defined it. Working with multimedia, primarily video, photography and machinima, her practice engages with popular culture, regional trends and globalized fashions. With an early official participation at the China Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2007, Cao Fei is one of the most renowned Chinese artists of the post-Cultural Revolution ‘new new human beings’ (xinxin renlei), and one of the few women artists from the People’s Republic of China who has been recognized and collected internationally by art establishments such as the Tate Collection in Britain, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA in New York. This article proposes to use Cao Fei’s work to explore the limitations of the global/local discourse and offer a more nuanced and complex understanding of this dichotomy in Chinese contemporary art.

President's Page

At the 2016 SEG Annual Meeting in Dallas, a historical photo was displayed in the SEG China Pavilion (see below). The photo was taken in 1981 during the first joint technical symposium between SEG and the Chinese Geophysical Society (CGS) in Beijing. The event involved more than 500 geophysicists and included approximately 65 timely technical papers contributed by both organizations. Kevin M. Barry (former SEG president) led the SEG delegation. Gu Gong-Xu (former CGS president) was the host. Lee Lawyer, who donated this photo, attended the symposium when he was the SEG vice president and chief geophysicist at Chevron (11th from left, third row from back). Believe it or not, I was also in the photo (third from right, second row from back). I contributed a paper on “Seismic migration in frequency domain with a phase-shift method” with my coauthor, Han Chang-Feng. Of course, I was very young at that time with a lot of black hair! Lawyer recalled, “Dr. Gu chaired the technical meeting. He used three flowers to show the time of the presentations. When the green flower was in, the speaker had time. When the orange flower was placed in the vase, he had five minutes to summarize. When the red flower was used, his time was up!”

Architectural Design Method of Architectural Engineering

After clearly defining the basic concept and category of architectural engineering and architectural design, this paper proposes basic requirements, and principles and mastery methods of design concept of architectural design, and describes dialectical thinking, system thinking and creative thinking method required in architectural design. To set up systematic architectural design methods, this paper explains the focus and requirements of the four stages of the architectural design: conceptual design, preliminary design, detailed design, and construction. Taking the China Pavilion at Expo 2010 Shanghai as an example, this paper analyzes design methods to solve the different problems in different design stages.

Consideration about Effects of the Expo Axis Underground Space on Development of Surrounding Regions as “Urban Catalysis”

The Expo Axis, located in the center of the Pudong Expo Site, extends through the Expo Site as the main entrance in the south and forms the “Four Pavilions along the Central Axis” with the Expo Performance Center, the Expo Center, the Theme Pavilion and the China Pavilion at both sides, which plays a very important role at the Expo Site. It effectively organizes tourist gathering and distributing at the whole Site by acting as a tourist hub and also drives development of the whole Site by acting as an important commercial complex in the Post Expo Era. In addition, during construction of the underground space of the Expo Axis, many innovative ecological technologies were used, which provided a great demonstration effect for regional ecological construction. In terms of the “Urban Catalysis”, this paper represents that underground space of the Expo Axis can be seen as a “Catalyst” and that it plays an important demonstrating and driving role in urban development of its surroundings and the Post Expo Era, triggers integrated underground space construction of the Expo Site and promotes construction of the whole site with the experience of a selected spot there.

Pitanje predstavljanja i identiteta između globalizma i lokalizma - slučaj paviljona Hong Konga na Venecijanskom bijenalu

In this presentation Lee Kit's art installation at the Venice Biennale in 2013 is used as a case study of the ways in which artworks represent and help to construct representations of Hong Kong's challenge to and subversion of an aggressive and powerful rising China. In contrast with the explicit social critique and grandeur of artworks exhibited in the China Pavilion, Lee Kit's art installation - "an impressionistic house" - in the Hong Kong Pavilion appears not only abstract but mundane and even trivial. As the artist was handpicked by the organizer, without any prior public consultation, there has been heated public debate on the extent to which it is representative of Hongkongness. I argue that the apparently trivial and ordinary elements of Lee's work constitute rather than reflect the new generation of Hong Kong art. These elements may also be part of a strategy for negotiating the political identity inescapably imposed on Hong Kong by China. Hong Kong art now has the potential to distance itself from or express skepticism toward the grand narratives presented by China, to paraphrase the writing of art historian David Clarke (1997). I believe part of the aims of the international conference on "Hong Kong as Method" held at the University of Hong Kong in December 2014 is to use the ordinary to destabilize and challenge Hong Kong's taken-for-granted political identity and thereby promote diversity and inter-Asian cultural dynamics.

Carbon Reduction in Mega Event’s Building: a Case Study of China Pavilion

Building sector is one of the main sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions. Comprehensive countermeasures are needed in cities to mitigate carbon emissions from buildings. This paper reviewed sustainable strategies that implemented in China Pavilion, the main exhibition building of Expo 2010 Shanghai China, and analyzes the achievement that the building has made in carbon mitigation. The results showed that energy saving design in construction and energy efficient technologies in appliance played a vital role in energy reduction and carbon mitigation in building. It also showed that solar photovoltaic power generation system applied in building would bring carbon reduction. The technologies bring with the building a reduction 6.5 kt CO2 each year. These green measures not only helpful in realize the goal of green event, but also will play a role in realizing low carbon society in the future.

On New Media Art, Its Development and Achievement in China

This essay is aimed to introduce the development status of the new media art in China; the author gave its definition based on his own understanding and observation, which included various forms. Moreover, the developing environment of the new media art in the world is presented systematically in the essay. The author combed the art history and technology history which are closely connected with the birth of the new media art. China has achieved many accomplishments in new media art forms, such as the successful hosting of 2008 World Olympic Games and 2010 World expo. In the opening ceremony of 2008 World Olympic Games, interactive art, installation art and virtual space are in perfect use. Especially, “scroll” has combined all the above technological methods into display, which brought about stunning sensory impact to the audiences. After two years, Shanghai was the focus of the world, 242 countries and international organizations that have attended 2010 Shanghai World expo. The new media art forms are bloomed and flourished, China pavilion’s Qingming Riverside was endowed with new vitality via these new art media forms.

Conceptualizing mega-event flagships—A case study of China Pavilion of Expo 2010 Shanghai China

Mega-event flagship (MEF) is a dual instrument for staging a mega-event and catalyzing regional urban renewal. Despite its unfailing popularity and controversial nature, many initiators seem to equate MEF development with signature architecture, resulting in a persistent issue of underuse among MEFs in the post-event era. Although research findings indicate that the early stages hold the key to the future of MEFs, insufficient research on this crucial matter has been done to provide useful analyses as to how to achieve this. To rectify this, this paper presents a case study of China Pavilion (CP) as the most spotlighted MEF initiated by Expo 2010 Shanghai China. Through participant observation, archival records, and documentation, the case of CP was extensively explored to learn how the client organization has addressed the issues of form, function, and future positioning at the early stages. By linking the pre-Expo conceptualization with its post-Expo performance, the case brings a renewed attention to the early stages of MEF development. Although it is a single-case study, this research yields results that indicate the possibility of having beneficial spillover impact on broader-scale urban renewal by balancing an MEF's dual mandate.

Nonlinear time history analysis of China Pavilion for Expo 2010 Shanghai China

SUMMARYThe peculiar building style and special structural system of the National Hall of China Pavilion for Expo 2010 Shanghai is a long‐span and large cantilevered steel–concrete hybrid structure with a shape of an inverted trapezoid in elevation and local discontinuity of floor slabs in plan for esthetic and functional considerations. Because of these characteristics, the building is classified as an irregular and complex structure. To investigate the seismic behavior of the structure, a refined finite element model was established by using NosaCAD. To simulate the nonlinear behavior of the members, the fiber section model was chosen for compression‐flexure frame members, and nonlinear flat shell element was chosen for tube wall. Nonlinear analysis was carried out to study the seismic behavior of the structure under the minor and major earthquakes at the level of intensity 7. With the analysis, the deformations, internal forces and damage states of the structure were investigated. Analysis results show that there is no damage on structure under minor earthquake, the structural system has sufficient capacity and ductility to resist major earthquake, and seismic performance objective of no damage under minor earthquake and no collapse under major earthquake can be reached. The deformation of the structure is less than the limit of the Chinese code. The order and distribution of damages on components of the tubes are reasonable, which can dissipate some dynamic energy. Finally, weak points were identified, and some corresponding suggestions were put forward to improve the overall seismic performance of this structure. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Exploration on the after Use of the Expo Pavilion

The expo 2010 in Shanghai from May 1st to October 30th has ended, after six months, 55billion dollars, and 73million visitors. According to the rules of the Bureau International des Expositions, the global governing body of Expos, all the pavilions on the expo site should be taken down. However that will put the Shang Hai Expo into dilemma, as which was characterized by its greenness, expo pavilions destruction will create tons of waste instead of “better city, better life”. Except for the China Pavilion and Expo performance centre, other pavilions have to wait to be chosen either remained or removed to other location. Therefore this thesis is trying to make some case analyses of the Expo pavilion in the history and explore the potential of the temporary building.

Shaking table tests on China Pavilion for Expo 2010 Shanghai China

AbstractModern structural engineering tends to progress towards more novel high‐rise structures through gradually improved methods of design and wide use of new materials. The National Hall of China Pavilion for Expo 2010 Shanghai is such a building specially designed with a shape of an inverted trapezoid in elevation and local discontinuity of floor slabs in plan for aesthetic and functional considerations. The preliminary analysis shows that the fundamental vibration mode of this structure is a torsional mode due to the special shape, thus resulting in the period ratio between the first torsional mode and the first translational mode exceeding the limit value stipulated in Chinese code. Shaking table tests of a 1/27‐scale structural model were performed to observe the seismic response characteristics, and verify the seismic safety of the structure. This paper presents the results of the shaking table tests in terms of dynamic properties, global responses, as well as local responses. It was found that the torsional effects were not significant by the analysis of the ratio between the maximum displacement and the average displacement of floor and torsional angle. Finally, weak points were identified, and some corresponding suggestions were put forward to improve the overall seismic performance of this structure. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

On the Beauty of Green Expo Architecture and Sustainable Development-Taking “China Pavilion” As An Example

‘Green’ or ecological’ architecture is the inexorable trend of sustainable urban development. On meeting the basic functions of architecture, the design of the China Pavilion harbours the essence of traditional Chinese culture while employing modern technology and hi-tech materials. This demonstrates the application of traditional elements in the form of architecture yet combines the beauty of architecture, energy saving, recycling of natural resources together to realize the sustainable development of this type of architecture.