Blueprint Beijing — Beijing Biennial 2022 

Astro Balloon 1969 Revisited — Feedback Space shown at:

Blueprint Beijing, the concluding exhibition of the first Beijing Biennial (2022) – curated by Ma Yansong and co-organized by MAD Architects – officially opened on January 13, 2023

Coop Himmelb(l)au’s recovered feedback installation of 1969. Based on the Feedback Circuit Program idea from 1971, the visitor’s heartbeat is measured and transformed. Visuals corresponding to this data input cause this feedback with the visitors, allowing them to communicate (network) non-verbally.

As the architecture section of the Beijing Biennial, the exhibition invites 20 main participating architects/​artists from around the globe, presenting their ideas. The exhibition also presents 8 architects and collectives showcasing visionary ideas through historic archives, as well as presenting 4 Chinese science fiction films with historic significance. Architects from different regions and generations responded to the curator’s questions about the future and the city of Beijing, ultimately presenting their unique vision on the topic.The exhibition is a collective creation with the vast majority of works created as site-specific commissions or adapted reproductions. The works in the exhibition transcend geography and age so as to collide, dialogue and resonate with ideas and emotions in order to stimulate the viewer’s imagination about the future of the city.

“The main theme of Blueprint Beijing is the future. In the exhibition, one part is about the Beijing of the past that everyone is familiar with, and the other part is about the Beijing in everyone’s imagination. We have juxtaposed the works of architects with idealistic visions and creative imagination about cities and buildings with historic visions from around the globe over the past century within one space. Although the site is not large the content is very dense, rich and informative. The opening of Blueprint Beijing in 2023 is also very much in line with the content of our exhibition, because the future must be full of imagination, full of energy, a more open and mutually entangled future.” – Ma Yansong

The blueprint, as an architect’s tool, refers to both the archive of history and the imagination of the future. Great architects transform reality through visionary thinking. Buildings are the largest and longest-lasting public medium in human society, and it is crucial to continuously push forward their pioneering nature, to be able to inspire and contrast with the ethos and culture of a city, a region and a nation. History is formed by our imagination of the future throughout the past. Through this exhibition, a key selection of inspiring movements is presented that developed in Beijing and around the globe, all envisioning the future. Progress in urbanism and architecture comes forth from the imagination of a better life. An architect’s creative task is to find a new direction through the constant confrontation and pull between tradition and innovation, local and global, individual and group, preservation and development — it is an experiment that never ends.

Exhibition Information
Blueprint Beijing
The first Beijing Biennial 2022 Architecture Section
Curator: Ma Yansong
Location: M WOODS Hutong, Beijing, China
Public Date: 11 am — 7 pm, January 14 — March 12, 2023

Participating Artists
Cheng Yanchun
Cook Haffner Architecture Platform | Sir Peter Cook
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU | Wolf dPrix
FCJZ | Yung Ho Chang
Drawing Architecture Studio
Junya Ishigami
Toyo Ito
Liang Chen
MAD Architects | Ma Yansong + Dang Qun + Yosuke Hayano
Eric Owen Moss Architects
MVRDV
OPEN Architecture | Li Hu + Huang Wenjing
Atelier Alter Architects | Zhang Yingfan + Bu Xiaojun
Sun Haiting
Wang Mingxian
Wang Zigeng
WAY Studio
Zaha Hadid Architects
People’s Architecture Office | He Zhe, James Shen, Zang Feng
Zhu Sha

Archive
Archigram
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Arata Isozaki
Kisho Kurokawa
Oscar Niemeyer
Frei Otto
Superstudio
Lebbeus Woods

Film
Joshua V. Hassel
Huang Jianxin
Jin Shan
Wang Jiayi + Roger Pigaut
Wang Minsheng

Architectural History Advisor
Wang Mingxian

About 2022 Beijing Biennial ​“Symbiosis”

2022 Beijing Biennial, themed ​“Symbiosis”, aims to reflect on how human civilization and natural ecology should coexist, and how digital technology and creative design can intermix and develop. The Biennial hopes to present typical art topics and samples in Beijing, the national cultural center, and enrich the connotation of ​“Symbiosis” in the dimensions of space and time: ​“Symbiosis” of space showing the prosperity of the synchronic development of diversified art ecology in Beijing, and ​“Symbiosis” of time interpreting the diachronic development and prospect of Beijing’s art ecology from the past, the present to the future. Beijing, with its broad, open, and inclusive spirit, has formed a traditional and diversified artistic temperament of ​“harmony in diversity.” All kinds of art forms, including painting, sculptures, films and architectures etc., join in building a thriving art ecology in this city, interacting with one another and driving each other forward. 2022 Beijing Biennial choses M WOODS Hutong as a sub-venue, and presents Blueprint Beijing for the architecture section.