Instant Garden: A Site Between Space and Place Introduction
Over the last few years, Chinese architects began to open their practices to the artistic realm around them, and during the same period they became involved in shaping the curatorial landscape for architecture in China. Such a remarkable encounter between art and architecture has already become an established site for the shaping of space and the making of place in the global cultural economy. In China, however, mainly is the importance of this conjunction due to the urban regeneration programme in its megacities followed with the rapid growth of museums and galleries, which witness the increased prominence of institutions articulating this connection in order to brand the programme and to attract further investment. Or to say, Chinese architects have not been ever aware that their practices are now developing into an expanded field, which is an urgent issue worth probing into. I start with revisiting the work Instant Garden by Li Xinggang as part of the onsite workshop and exhibition Investigate It to examine the narrative of site from the moment of traditional landscape painting in China to the present conditions of the country’s material environment, and elaborate how the curatorial gesture in this practice opens up a milieu translating embodiment of mountains in the painting into the critical engagement of the typology of roofs in building. It is the practice of site that facilitates the humanistic understanding of space and place in the urban reality in China. Within this framework are the three chapters exploring the central aspects of site