Exhibition

3 min read

September 8, 2008

Cover image for Superstar: A Mobile Chinatown Exhibited at Venice Architecture Biennale

MAD's latest work "SUPER STAR – A MOBIL CHINATOWN" will be exhibited in the theme pavilion "Impermanent Cities" of the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. This unit invited 12 young architects from all over the world, including MAD, BIG, and WEST8, to provide a new urban body organization for the future of the suburbs of Rome, which are increasingly losing vitality and characteristics. MAD's "Super Star" will be exhibited in the main exhibition hall of the Biennale, the Arsenal.

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"Superstar - Future Chinatown" is a new type of Chinatown conceived by MAD.

Chinatowns scattered around the world, like shopping malls, gas stations, and McDonald's there, are like toxins, making every city monotonous and boring. The endless restaurants and unchanging antique buildings in Chinatowns are attached to the rigid imagination of the Western world about China. There is no real life here, just like the old theme parks left by this country in a foreign land, poisoning the urban space and people's understanding. If we want to revive, we must fight poison with poison!

"Superstar - Future Chinatown" is MAD's response to this outdated and excessive Chinatown. "Superstar" is a holistic, harmonious and constantly updated model of the future Chinatown. It is a planet with rich real life, where people can enjoy Chinese food, enjoy a quality life, and carry out various cultural, educational, and sports activities. This is a planet of creation and production, where people can learn, imagine, and realize their ideas in the studio.

At the same time, this is a new society where the entire system is driven by the content it contains. "Superstar - Future Chinatown" bursts out unknown energy in the uncompromising change and principled conservatism. It can stay in any corner of the world and exchange new passion and energy with its environment. It is a self-sufficient planet: the agricultural center here provides all-natural food, does not need to extract energy from the ground environment, and can recycle all waste. It is an aerial residence with real lakes, snow-capped mountains and terraces and other natural landscapes, health centers, sports venues all over the planet, and drinking water sources. The Olympic Center here can land in the host city every four years, without the need to repeat the construction of expensive sports facilities. There is also an electronic cemetery to commemorate the world's citizens who have passed away on this planet. <Superstar---Future Chinatown> is a dream home, where there is no hierarchy, no upper and lower relationships, but a mixture of technology and nature, future and humanity.

<Superstar---Future Chinatown>'s first stop is the suburbs of Rome. It will bring this eternal past an unpredictable and ever-changing future. After that, it will land in New York, Dubai, Los Angeles or an unknown island, jungle, and grassland.

Welcome to the "superstar", today's Chinatown.

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