architecture

project

,
,

. Abitare
China
.

Digital Beijing
Chinese modern architecture is full
of controversy, especially since
many new buildings have been
regarded as toys by Chinese people
with a joking tone. A special conversation about space and time with
theatre director Lin Zhaohua.
/
photo courtesy of Abitare China

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The architecture that disappeared over the time
Abitare China / A conversation of Abitare China with Lin Zhaohua

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his conversation with Lin Zhaohua took place on the lakeside close
to his house. The low Beijing horizon was lost behind the greenery
clustering around the shores of the none-too-expansive stretch of water.
Since ancient times a feature of Chinese literati writer-painters and
artisans work has been the use of space to represent time. The famous
couplet celebrating the Grand View Tower in Kunming has, The
five-hundred-li breadth of Dianchi Lake rushes up to meet the eye; the
events of millennia past pour into the heart. We too seem to have passed
beyond the bustle and clamour of Beijing.
Lin Zhaohua is one of the most well-respected directors in the world of
Chinese theatre. His world is a simple one, needing just tea, a cigarette
and a theatre. He has turned down numerous offers to make films and
TV dramas. He is more interested in traditional and Buddhist-inspired
performance pieces. His work exhibits a marked divergence in
profundity and thinking from the so-called experimental theatre
prevalent in China in recent years. Now in his seventies, he seems at ease
anywhere.
Abitare How do you go about recording time?
LZ I have no concept whatsoever of recording time and I have no plan
as to what I do when. The direction you go in on stage has nothing to
with everyday linear time and theres even less of a link between drama
and the course of an ordinary human life.
A If time is broken, can space still be in motion, can people still be in
motion?
LZ Of course. Its then that we may achieve the greatest freedom. You
constantly see space in motion in drama whereas to see the same in the
real world depends on individual experience. Actually, in traditional
drama and opera, motion in space and time is produced simultaneously.
If our concept of space is merely physical it would be a dead thing. We
often criticise extreme realism when we are directing for the stage or
choosing an artistic direction. One has to touch ones own soul and be at
ease with oneself.
A The motion of people and the motion of space have different
possibilities in time.
LZ In terms of space-time, theres nothing in the Western dramatic
tradition that can compare to the level of freedom in writing Suzhou
ballads. It mixes performing and narrative styles; jumps backward and
forward; deals with psychology, reality, subjective and objective views;
its a richer culture and much more free. After being in the theatre for so
many years I no longer have a concept of space-time and this allows
characters to achieve a kind of subconscious state. The greatest human
freedom is in our minds, in our subconscious.

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The movement of time and
space happen at the same time.
Picture of The Master Builder.

In 2006 Lin directed a production of The Master Builder, Ibsens last major
dramatic work that shows a successful architect. In his version of this play,
widely seen as one of the most profound, Lin broke with narrative convention
and turned the whole thing into the master builders stream of consciousness of
memories and thoughts flashing through his mind.
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LZ The Master Builder was a breakthrough in dramatic performance.

What is what we call counterpoint? Its both this character and its not
them; it is occurring in the play and its not. The idea came like some
physicist making a discovery, as if in an instant your mind split open and
something you werent sure what leapt out of it.
A And so this conscious world of logic is broken open. I was reading
recently how modern physics has moved on over the past fifty years
from the electron volts of solid state electronics and chemistry to the
million electron volts of nuclear reactions to the billion electron volts of
particle physics. Scientists are hoping that by finding these particles
they've been seeking for so long we will gain a full understanding of the
natural world. There are bound to be even more miraculous discoveries,
like perhaps other dimensions. There is of course a link between physics
and philosophy, so they say in future
LZ I hardly ever think about the future, I just do what I do. Its very
simple.
A Im talking about a way of thinking what do you think of
postmodernism?
LZ I dont understand postmodernism. Humanity is destroying the
environment it needs for its own existence including in here (points to
head) and then thinks about what to do about it. They make a big
thing of postmodern art and drama now in China but I dont think
much of it theres been no process of development towards
postmodernism in China.
A So where does your thinking come from?
LZ Not from anywhere; I begin by thinking about myself. When
humanity is enveloped in information, do we become more clever or
more stupid?
A So putting on all these historical plays, are you concerned with the
historical background behind each story? What view of history do you
take?
LZ I dont have one. History is recorded by people and is far too
subjective: thousands of years of history, a few hundred years of modern
history, a few decades of contemporary history, then theres Party history
and even the history of drama its enough if you can write your own
history of yourself. When I put on historical plays I dont pay any
attention to the temporal setting but think more of the things of the self.
When we did Shakespeares last work, Coriolanus (2007) the things Id
learned about history throughout my life were always there right
throughout. For years critics and audiences didnt think too much of this
play of Shakespeares, people said it lacked humanity and the plot wasnt
complex enough and had no romance. Ultimately it was a return to a
personal history; this play was the product of Shakespeares lifetime of
contemplation.
A By coincidence, The Master Builder was also the final major work of
another great playwright, Ibsen. Audiences have probably seen you
more as the master builder of the theatre.
LZ You cant call me a master; theres a sense of destructiveness about
the word.
A There was a lot of Ibsen himself in The Master Builder. In his later life
he met a young woman whilst on holiday and they kept up a
correspondence for a long time
LZ You see; its better to read the history of literature rather than straight
history.
A They say that the taste of Zen is like the taste of tea and that is how I
understand one of your habits. Is it because there are ideas brewing in
the tea?
LZ Nothing so mystical. But there is something you get at that moment
you pour out tea at that moment there is only this, not all those
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problems you think about when youre rehearsing. You pour the tea
slowly, slowly; its a presence and an absence.
In 2008 Lin directed a performance of Maeterlincks Les Aveugles using an
all-blind cast. In this work twelve blind people are marooned on an island where
they await rescue by a priest who is in fact already dead, symbolic of the plight of
the human condition. After two months of rehearsals, the amateur cast of blind
people were able to bring audiences to tears with a resolute performance
showing something of the loneliness of their world. The stage was dotted with
boulders and nothing else. The blind actors felt their way about between the
rocks, guessing where the others were and looking out for each other. The lighting
was deliberately dim except that occasionally a bright light at the back of the
stage would illuminate the audience making them examine themselves and
their selves that were being portrayed on stage.
A When I watched Les Aveugles I too became a blind person, they came
up with the questions that I too would ask in a place of endless darkness.
I asked myself, do they dream, do they understand love?
LZ They cant see the world around so they have more room for
imagination; they still dream. If they had no dreams they would have no
hope in their hearts and no way of carrying on. There were members of
the cast whod had close brushes with death and theyd had the
purgatory of watching the world around them disappear bit by bit. They
drew strength and hope from the world and people around them and
these blind people were able to keep on going.
When we began rehearsing I said Im not having you perform a play, if
you are doing something you dont think is even possible. When they
succeeded in doing it they got such an amazing feeling of gratification! It
inspired even greater hope for them.

(1936) .
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(1998),
(2000),
(2004) (2006).
Lin Zhaohua (1936) Born in Tianjin. He is
a theatre and modern Peking Opera director,
works with Beijing Peoples Art Theatre and
he is Dean of Peking University Research
Institute of Theatre. He has directed more
than 60 theatre plays. His own studio has
produced experimental works that include
Three Sisters Waiting for Godot (1998), A
Parody (2000), The Cherry Orchard (2004)
and Noras Children (2006).

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(, 1962)
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2008.
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Pei Zhu. (Beijing, 1962) Educated at Tsinghua University

and UC Berkeley, Pei Zhu has given lectures at Tsinghua
University, Beijing, Columbia University in New York, and
Rhode Island school of design in Providence, USC in Los
Angeles etc. In 2005 he founded studio Pei-Zhu, a
platform for researching the relationship between Chinese
philosophy and contemporary architecture, an
experimental practice dealing with future and tradition.
Studio Pei-Zhu won many important international
designs, such as Guggenheim art pavilion at Abu Dhabi,
Guggenheim museum Beijing, first place for the control
center of Beijing Olympic 2008. Pei Zhu was invited to
participate in many important exhibitions: Chinese
Pavilion, Biennale Architecture 2010, Venice; Chinese

Gardens for Living Illusion into Reality, Dresden;

exhibition of Chinese contemporary architecture, Paris;
China Design Now, Victoria and Albert Museum, London;
Chinese Contemporary Architecture, Rotterdam; 1st
biennale of the architecture and art of the Canary Islands,
Spain, biennial Sao Paulo, Brazil; Alors, la Chine?, Centre
Pompidou, Paris.

www.studiopeizhu.com

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/ First level plan

/ Second level plan

The facade

After the Olympics

The Digital Beijing Building was built as the control and data centre for
the 2008 Beijing Olympics. After the games it is the data centre for six
leading communications companies in China, and it accommodates
also a digital museum a virtual museum of Digital Olympics and an
exhibition centre for manufacturers of digital products. The rapid
development of the digital age has greatly impacted on our society, life
and city. If we say the Industrial revolution has resulted in modernism,
the Digital Beijing Building begins to explore what will occur in the
digital epoch. Resorting to topology, the concept for Digital Beijing was
developed through reconsideration and reflection on new aesthetic
images in the era of digits and information. Appearing like part of a
magnified digital bar code, or an integrated circuit board, it emerges
from a serene water surface. Here we are seeking a specific form, trying
to reveal an enlarged micro digital world suggestive of the microchips
abundant but ignored in our daily life. With an abstracted mass, like the
simple repetition of number 0 and 1, this building is an impressive
symbol of the Digital Olympics and of the information era.

Digital Beijing is an information centre for the city. While used as a

packet of Olympics information, the volume was divided into four parts.
The east side was an office area, with good lighting and good views. The
middle and west parts served as digital machine rooms. With a flowing
digital carpet, quick and efficient net bridges, and a floating museum,
the transparent medium between them forms a multi-layer relationships.
When walking through the floating bridge on the natural water and into
the interior, people can not only obtain rich visual experiences, but also
feel the strong contrast of different scenes and the dialogue of nature
and science. The virtual digital museum in the middle of the building is
the CPU of the whole system, for its the only part which is open to the
public. The long east-west facade of the building opens to the city with
the safe required entrance on the shorter south-north side, in order to
highlight its sociality and waken public passions to new technology.In
the future, the Digital Beijing Building will be evolving with the same
pace of technology.

/ Architect
, Urbans / Studio Pei-Zhu, Urbans
/ Project team
, , /
Pei Zhu,Tong Wu, Hui Wang
/ Associates in charge
/ Liu Wentian
/ Design team
, / Li Chun, He Fan
/ Structure associate

/
China Institute Building Standard Design &Research
/ Build area
100 000 . / sqm

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