Dutch architect Neville Mars lives and works in Beijing. He is part of the Dynamic City Foundation. Their research is archived in a wiki at Burb.tv.

What is the focus of your research in China and how do the results relate to your practice?

The Dynamic City Foundation (DCF) has set out to investigate how China can realize one of its ambitions; to build 400 new cities by the year 2020. To do this we have set up mixed teams of architects, planners and researchers from the social sciences. Central objective for a liveable urban environment in China is integration. We are working on a vision that connects the different fields and the different scales of design that affect the city.

This has also become the approach for our architectural work. The commercial projects of the DCF are always the result of a larger investigation. Especially for architecture and urban planning this is still very uncommon in China.




The immense speed at which everything changes is typical for China right now. How do you get a handle on matters when they change so fast?

Quite often we don't. At this speed just understanding the changes occurring today is hard enough, for foreign and local researches alike. The real questions (such as, how are the transformations shaping our future lives?) are generally not asked. We are trying to do this by developing different building typologies and different growth scenarios for the future, the year 2020 in particular.





Beijing Boom TOWER (BBT) at first sight looks to be a concept, an exaggeration, but do you think that it could actually be realised in China?

Our work is meant to stir the debate. We do this by producing very detailed and technically realistic solutions to important problems such as congestion and dense urbanization. The Beijing Boom Tower is an example where we set out to respond to the desires of the new residential middle-class we see emerging in China. They want more living space, a car and shopping close by. At the same time nobody wants congested roads, air-pollution and (social) segregation. The BBT proves architecture can, at least in principle, provide complete solutions to these conflicting desires. But the massively dense mixed compound also shows sacrifices will have to be made for future liveability to be maintained.





The 'West' seems to have stopped producing visions of the future. Will China deliver new images of the future?

Unfortunately China at the moment, is producing only images and tons of them. Innovative ideas for the future are, just as in the West, scarce. Compared to the existing context the carefully crafted renderings suggest highly sophisticated designs for China's new living environment. The pressured market doesn't seem to allow the time to consider the meaning and workings of the environments that are portrayed. However, the great thing about hyper-speed development is that this in itself is also already changing. China is rapidly becoming innovation-driven.





With the 2008 Olympics coming up the architecture and urban design of Beijing seem to be reduced to be a part of the advertising campaign to promote China. How do you feel about this architecture as identity design?

The marketing of cities and nations through mega-events such as the Games and the World Expo have long been a global trend. Architecture plays a important role in this process. The state of the art buildings are the stars of the media campaign that proclaim modernity and exuberance. At the same time and especially in Beijing, these events are used as stepping-stone urban renewal projects that should rejuvenate the city transforming it at once from a socialist urban context to a consumer environment. I am not concerned about building being icons; not even if mainly built by foreign designers. This will and should ultimately contribute to China's national identity. It has been the bold courage of China's leaders to realize such ambitious architecture. My concern is with the objective of a spin-off effect. The idea that somehow the stepping-stone projects will encourage the upgrade of the city as a whole. This is a form of organic planning the direction if which I am highly sceptical of. Even if this process should take place, the gap between the top-down event-areas and "real Beijing", defined by countless rows of communist era five story walk-ups will increasingly widen. Beijing will be a split city.





Photoshopped green and clean air on big billboards seem to be everywhere. What is it with these anti-urban images all around Beijing?

Similar to the event-architecture, marketing is for residential projects a driving force. On the compound billboards the projects are sold with images of huge mansions in a beautiful green park. This is particularly ironic standing on a twelve lane highway in the heart of smoggy Beijing, a mediocre skyscraper sticking out from behind the poster. What is sold is an impossibility, an anti-urban dream. If you do want to offer such villa's and so much green space in the centre of the city you will end up with the BBT. The anti-urban sentiments have to be put aside, the city must be trusted as our safe-haven for the future. Only then will China be able to produce liveable cities.