EXHIBITION | China goes urban

The MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale in Turin kicks offs its Fall program with an eye on the future through an original exhibition titled “China Goes Urban. The City to Come,” curated by the Politecnico di Torino and Prospekt Photographers with Tsinghua University in Beijing, and organized in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo.

In 1978, 18% of the population in China lived in urban areas. Since then the number of inhabitants in cities has increased approximately 1% per annum and currently makes up 60% of the total population. New infrastructures and settlements have gradually modified the landscape, transformed property rights, swept away administrative boundaries, and “gobbled up” rural spaces and villages. The rapid, disruptive process of Chinese urbanisation unfolds before our eyes. Understanding it is not easy. Existing categories and models are useless. If we believe Chinese urbanisation to simply be an exaggeration and a flaw, we are effectively ignoring the fact it constitutes an epochal change, one which redefines roles and relationships not only from a geopolitical point of view, but also from the point of view of culture, imagination and possibilities. A change that the current pandemia makes ever more deep and hard. China Goes Urban proposes to change viewpoint, to look at reality rather than pigeonhole it in predefined categories and models. It is an invitation to explore the world by travelling through the city and architecture of today and tomorrow and circumnavigating the concept of city: although we all think we are familiar with and understand this seemingly simple concept, it shatters in the multiplicity of the contemporary urban.