Gba Uninterrupted: the installation created by Turin Design Hub architects and Polytechnic University of Turin researchers featured at the 9th Shenzhen Bienniale.
Another important recognition for the Polito Studio program born from the collaboration between the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Association of Architects of Turin, a unique model in Italy.
The 9th Shenzhen Bienniale of Urban Planning and Architecture in Shenzhen, China, titled “Urban Cosmologies” and hosted inside the recently opened Kingway Brewery Factory and will be open to visitors until March 12, 2023. This is the most visited bienniale in the world, which has sprung up in one of the largest metropolitan regions on the planet, the Greater Bay Area, also called China’s Silicon Valley.
- In Cina. Video Installazione firmata Torino a Shenzen
La Repubblica, Turin, 22nd December 2022 - Torino protagonista in Cina con gli architetti del Turin Design Hub e i ricercatori del Politecnico
Torinoggi.it, 26th December 2022
The Biennale curators, Andong Lu, Zigeng Wang and Aric Chen, invited the architectural firms of TDH – Turin Design Hub (2MIX Architects, Archisbang, Balance Architettura, BDR Bureau, Emanuele and Giovanni Cavaglion, Corbellaro SA Architettura, Gianpiero Moretti, PAT Architetti Associati, Edoardo Pennazio), coordinated by Politecnico di Torino and South China University of Technology, to investigate the stratifications of recent urban development in three disused industrial sites located in the Greater Bay Area region, developing visions looking ahead to 2050.
The result is the GBA UNINTERRUPTED installation, which takes the form of a large backlit lamp with a circumference of 9 meters supported by a vertical stand, positioned in the main pavilion of the Biennale. Its design allows interaction with visitors, who can, by rotating the lamp, scroll through the different images created by the architects.
The piece invites the Biennale audience to reflect on the potential spatial and temporal continuity offered by disused industrial spaces, which determine the opportunity to observe innovative settlement patterns, new urban functions, and connections between public and private. Starting with the division into 9 lots of 200 x 200 meters each and located in the 3 selected sites right within the Greater Bay Area, the architects of Turin Design Hub proposed, in the form of a continuous perspective section, a city in which to rethink land uses and spatial connections between even distant places.
After serving as Academic Curator for the 2019 Edition “The Eyes of the City” together with Carlo Ratti, the China Room of the Polytechnic University of Turin and the School of Architecture of the South China University of Technology curated the GBA UNINTERRUPTED installation, developed as part of Polito Studio’s TDH – Turin Design Hub initiative, in collaboration with the Turin Association of Architects and with the support of the Innovation Institute of Guangdong Yuehai Land.
GBA UNINTERRUPTED thus represents the latest result of Polito Studio, a two-year joint program of the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Association of Architects of Turin born in 2021 to overcome the boundaries between the academic and professional worlds in an increased mobility of skills to work in complex settings such as the Chinese context. Polito Studio is aimed at the internationalization of design practice and the contamination of knowledge between academic and professional institutions, which has materialized with the creation of TDH – Turin Design Hub – a collective practice formed by 12 professional firms and academic researchers – that is carrying out an intense project and research activity in the Chinese context.
