Chongqing Chaotianmen Different From Singapore Marina Sands Bay Architecture

In Chongqing, at Chaotianmen, at the Jiefangbei peninsula where the Yangtze and Jialing rivers come together, the complex designed by architect Moshe Safdie will be build. It is "an almost literal copy of their Marina Sands Bay scheme in Singapore", according to Daan Roggeveen, a Dutch architect quoted by Bert van Dijk, see here.

Overall impression in Singapore will be completely
different from the one in Chongqing
Photo: Danny Friedmann

Here you see the "card" like supports of the platform in Singapore.
Photo: Danny Friedmann

I do not concur, because it does not do justice to the creative work of Mr Safdie. I have been to the Marina Sands Bay in Singapore and you can see that Mr Safdie was inspired by a deck of cards, see here. The towers that support the platform are like three inverted V shaped cards. Mr Safdie makes clear that for the Chongqing Chaotianmen complex he was inspired by the sails of a ship. And the towers indeed look like curved sails, all to one side.  

Mr Safdie is certainly not a lazy architect copying his own work (self-plagiarizing) as alleged by Maurits Elen in Shanghaiist here. Yes, both designs have a platform on top of the towers. Mr Safdie is the one who made that building structure famous and it seems to have become his "trademark". But nobody would say to an architect that is doing another tower, but in a different style, that he is copying himself because he is doing another tower.  

continue reading ...

You Want To See The Arc de Triomphe? Come To Huaxi Village

If you are Chinese it is not so easy to get a visa to travel to some countries around the world. I suggest that the U.S. and the countries within the European Union might want to revise their policy, since most Chinese understand that they have more chances finding economic opportunities in China then in recession stricken U.S. or Europe.

China's richest village, Huaxi village (华西村), located in Jiangyin city in Jiangsu province, came up with a kind of solution:
You want to see the Arc de Triomphe, come to Huaxi village.
You want to see the White House, come to Huaxi village,
You want to see the Sydney Opera House, come to Huaxi village, see here.

The village copied some wonders of the world, including the Tiananmen gate, and the Great Wall.
Wen Renbao, made the Huaxi village into the richest village of China, by taking the local multi-industry (mostly textiles and steel) company, named Jiangsu West China Group Co., Ltd. (Huaxi Group) to Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Huaxi calls itself a model socialist village. Everybody works seven days per week! The free market combined with the socialist work ethos resulted in a high living standard for each villager. Each family gets a free car, a single family house to European standards worth more than 150,000 euro, free health care and education and cooking oil from the village committee.

When the originals were built no copyright law existed, and the copyright on those works of architecture that were created in the copyright era has expired already. Huaxi village made their investment for the replicas on the assumption that they can lure many Chinese visitors, making their plans to go abroad superfluous. Or since many villagers already went abroad they want to share the world with their fellow Chinese (or as they say in the mini video documentary that since everybody is working seven days per week, there is no time to see the world, so the world must come to Huaxi). Either way, if they are right, the villagers of Huaxi become even more rich.

Hat tip to Cecilia.

continue reading ...