#floornaturelive at the Chinese pavilion of the 2014 Biennale in Venice

Mountains beyond Mountains is the title of the Chinese pavilion at the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice. Plunging into the world of Chinese architecture, supported by the thousand-year old Tao philosophy. An exhibition that embraces 100 years of architecture in China.



A number of Chinese architecture firms worked together to create the Chinese pavilion at the 2014 Biennale in Venice. Their proposal is a blend of elements and disciplines – graphic design, art, lighting design and more.
“Mountains beyond Mountains” gives an overview of 100 years of Chinese architecture history, leaving visitors free to explore and examine the cottages that almost seem to form a village to collect information about each piece of architecture.





It’s as if the Chinese pavilion were offering hands-on experience with “Yi Xiang” (form and meaning, imagery and scope – a metaphorical landscape). All of this in a space that is arranged as a kind of village, with spaces for community life and socialising, alluding to the very close relationship between the exhibition itself and real life, namely social interaction . In any case, “Mountains beyond Mountains” is not a showcase for individual architects, it’s an event for architecture, exactly what Rem Koolhaas wanted.





The “Fundamentals” theme from the Chinese point of view gets visitors involved and gives them plenty of ideas, with fundamentals becoming roots. in Chinese. Something organic, more of a holistic approach that you can see and feel as you move through the outdoor installation, where elasticised bandages are used to create walls, spaces, drawings that reproduce the typical Chinese mats embellished with red ideograms. They sway in the wind, they vibrate with energy. An analogy with the wide world of Chinese architecture that with “Mountains beyond Mountains” invites us to explore it through its architectural history and philosophy.

Christiane Bürklein

14^th International Architecture Exhibition - Fundamentals
dates: 7 June - 23 November 2014
location: Venice (Italy)
http://www.labiennale.org/
Images: © Gianluca Giordano

Organizational Structure of Chinese Pavilion:  
Commissioner: China Arts and Entertainment Group (CAEG)
Support: Ministry of Culture of the P. R. of China
Organized: China International Exhibition Agency
Deputy Commissioner: Yu Zhang 
Collaborator: Dong Yan
Assistant Collaborators: Zhenlin Liu, Yi Sun, Yanyi Xie, Xin Yang
Thanks: Aiping Zhang, Di Zhu, Di’an Fan, Xiaodi Zhu, Mingxian Wang, Huangsheng Wang
 
Curator: Jun Jiang 
Curator Assistants: Xueqian Nan, Shuyu Liu, Bochao Zhang, Erica Zhung
Exhibitors-Architect:
●▪▪URBANUS Architecture & Design  --- Xiaodu Liu, Yan Meng, Hui Wang,
●▪▪Duoxiang Studio --- Xiang Lu, Lianna Jia, Long Chen, Xian Hu
●▪▪OPEN Architecture --- Hu Li, Wenjing Huang
Exhibitors-Artist_Jian Zhang
Visual Design- Tomeetyou --- Zhizhi Liu, Yu Guang, Nod Young
Lighting Design: Xin Zhang, Xiaowei Han
Research Team: Stanislaus Fung, Yan Gao, Chun Dai, Yang Shi, Fred Chen
 
Strategy Partners： UABB（Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture） Excellence Group
Partners：VAS Lighting  Tiertimes  TCA Thinktank  JNBY
Chief Web Media Partner：arts.sohu.com
Strategic Media Partner：Domus、The Outlook Magazine、Time+Architecture 、Urban Flux、Architecture Creation