MAD in China - DAC

‘MAD IN CHINA’, the solo design exhibition of MAD, opened in the Danish Architecture Centre (DAC), Copenhagen on November 2, 2007. This is the second exhibition of MAD in Europe following their 2006 Venice show. The exhibition is on view through January 2008.

Over the last 20 years, China has become known as the factory of the world. “Made in China” is globally recognised as symbolising cheap products and low quality. However, in the post-globalization era, the whole world has set its eyes on China, a country that is advancing rapidly in economy, culture, and art as well as in other realms. A new generation of architects and designers is in the middle of creating a multi-layered social identity, transforming the economic strength and individual dreams into a new kaleidoscope of size, height, space, and shape.

Kent Martinussen, the director of DAC, remarked that MAD IN CHINA is not merely an exhibition of an emerging new firm. Rather, the firm’s controversial social dimension brings a new perspective on China to the West. China begins to make its own rules, no longer subject to the taste of foreign countries.
The show features arresting design proposals from the socially conscious architecture firm. In MAD’s most visionary, politically daring design, “Beijing 2050,” the studio has quite literally gone mad with futuristic visions for a densely populated city in the year 2050, including a blueprint for transforming Tiananmen Square into a sprawling, forested parkland.

The show also includes other major works of MAD: The 800-metre Guangzhou Twin Towers take a humorous and critical look at the tradition of skyscraper as architectural icon while referencing Chinese pop culture; ‘Fish Tank’ is a reflection on mass-produced housing in an industrialized society. Visionary projects currently headed towards construction, such as Toronto’s highly-publicized Absolute Tower, and Tianjin, China’s culturally significant Sinosteel International Plaza, are examples of the office’s forward-thinking spaces that are quickly becoming reality. One item in the exhibition, the Denmark Pavilion, confronts the associations with ‘Made in China’, and features materials produced and refined in China, but later shipped to Europe for assembly. With each project, an idiosyncratic voice rises with the boldness and creativity to confidently step forward among the global architecture scene.