Vertical Life
8th Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture
The exhibition “Vertical Life – Urban Qualities in Future High-rise Buildings” within the context of the “2020 Qianhai Future Urbanism/Architecture Exhibition” is being held in Shenzhen, China as part of the 8th Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. Based on the exhibition theme “Superposition Cities”, six international architectural firms present their visions of the future of cities together with specific projects for Qianhai, the new up-and-coming district in eastern Shenzhen.
Utopia becomes reality: the idea of the vertical city has been championed by architects, designers, and artists throughout the ages. From the Tower of Babel to the fictional settings in films such as Blade Runner, this vision appears again and again in different scenarios; in the 1960s, the architect and urban designer Yona Friedman showed similar ideas in his “Utopia” and “Ville Spatiale” designs. Today, the underlying ideas of these utopias provide solutions for the very real challenges of the 21st century.
The unprecedented worldwide trend towards urbanization, resulting in ever-larger conurbations, has triggered a real boom in high-rise buildings. This is particularly true of China, where gmp has been active for over 20 years. The main design focus in their projects is to achieve vertical density whilst also preserving the heterogeneous functions of traditional urban neighborhoods. With a wide range of design concepts for multifunctional forms of vertical living, gmp always aims for the best possible quality of life of users and inhabitants.
With “Vertical Life”, gmp demonstrates facets of a vertical city using as examples three current projects in Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, and Beijing. The main focus is on Qianhai, where the Qianhai Integrated Transportation Hub is being developed. The scholarship students of the aac―the Academy for Architectural Culture initiated by gmp―cast an eye to the future: their visionary designs for a hybrid high-rise building in Qianhai present a contemporary development of the utopia of vertical urban living.
