CRAC

CRAC

China's cities tell us what the future could be like.

CRAC - Crosscultural Research on Architecture in China is a collective of scholars, architects, and artists engaging in research on China’s places, and the complexities of relations these places embody between modernisation and tradition, local, regional and global, the rural and the urban. CRAC aims at developing a platform for cross-cultural discourse and collaborative research on contemporary architectural issues and knowledge exchange that situates China within an unfolding global narrative.

CRAC is linked to the Yangtze River Delta and the cities of Suzhou and Shanghai in China. The research collective came together as an informal network and is now a new organisation. The formation of the collective was a response to the pandemic when its members found themselves located in positions all around the world while meeting in virtual space to discuss research on architecture in China.

CRAC UK engages in this discourse with a focus on cultural exchanges between China and the UK.

Public Space Forum

New public space is central to government policy in China. But how do architects create vibrant and innovative public space?

The Public Space Forum held on January 8, 2021, provided a cross-cultural discourse with invited practitioners and theorists from China and the West addressing some of the themes that are central to its production.

Amongst the themes were heritage art / performativity, ritual, the commons and resilience. The forum streamed live and framed as a set of conversations with invited experts discussing some of the key issues that underpin the production of vibrant and high-quality public space.

The Public Space Forum received funding from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University within the framework of The Vibrancy of Public Space, a project for which Teresa Hoskyns, now director of CRAC UK, was the PI. 

PARADISE ON EARTH IN EIGHT FRAMES

Open Access: Paradise on Earth

Once called paradise on earth, famous for its gardens and its exquisite silk garments, historic Suzhou is kept alive in poetry and painting. Famous examples include the 18th-century scroll Prosperous Suzhou originally entitled Burgeoning Life in a Resplendent Age. The painting, commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor, records life crossing the threshold into the modern age, in a traditional Chinese style that incorporates the Western perspective.

Today, Suzhou is one of China’s most dynamic and rapidly developing cities. Suzhou is part of the Yangtze River Delta megalopolis, which accounts for a fifth of China’s GDP. Once known as the city of silk it has become the centre of wedding dress production, selling paradise on earth for one day, including copies of the last royal wedding dress, out of shops at the foot of mythic Tiger Hill.

Suzhou is also the host of what is known as the Silicon Valley of the East. It has attracted millions of migrants searching for a better future; millions of tourists visit every year to experience the past, strolling through the gardens and courtyards of its Old Town. The contrasts could hardly be more apparent. Slow time, and fast time, and the time of the in-between, are woven into the city’s complex spatial fabric.

Each of us embodies a real/virtual pandemic position in relation to Suzhou. At the same time, there, not there, never there, no longer there. While speaking from a position there, in the real/virtual city that is Suzhou past/present/future. This is a dialogue on a city that connects us. From the extra-large (planetary urbanisation) to the small (the garden). From the real to the imagined, and back again.

`A Conversation on a Paradise on Earth in Eight Frames' has been published in a special Philosophy of the City issue of the East Asian Journal of Philosophy (open access).

CONTACT

CRAC UK LTD is registered as a non-profit organisation in London, UK.

20-22 Wenlock Road, London N1 7GU, United Kingdom