Knowledge as
Infrastructure: The 20 Kilometer University
Exhibition and Symposium at the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture Urbanism, Shenzhen, 2009
Li Shiqiao, Esther Lorenz, and Urbanus with Andrew Benjamin, Ryan Bishop, Scott Lash, and John Phillips
This proposal rethinks the fundamental relationship between knowledge and the city. An alternatively conceived infrastructure of knowledge provides a chance to reformulate knowledge and the city, as well as relieves a tremendous pressure for education at all levels in Shenzhen. This proposal also addresses the increasing fragmentation of the city which could be seen to be a result of “technoscience”, a mode of knowledge production driven by “effectiveness” rather than by “knowing”. By engaging architecturally with a section of the Shenzhen Underground Railway System, we rescue “moving” as a form of socialization from its condemnation as zero-degree experience in isolation chambers, with its last possible opportunity of socialization taken away by personalized television screens. Here, we reconsider moving as learning, and learning through moving, as a fundamental social form in cities.
Exhibition and Symposium at the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture Urbanism, Shenzhen, 2009
Li Shiqiao, Esther Lorenz, and Urbanus with Andrew Benjamin, Ryan Bishop, Scott Lash, and John Phillips
This proposal rethinks the fundamental relationship between knowledge and the city. An alternatively conceived infrastructure of knowledge provides a chance to reformulate knowledge and the city, as well as relieves a tremendous pressure for education at all levels in Shenzhen. This proposal also addresses the increasing fragmentation of the city which could be seen to be a result of “technoscience”, a mode of knowledge production driven by “effectiveness” rather than by “knowing”. By engaging architecturally with a section of the Shenzhen Underground Railway System, we rescue “moving” as a form of socialization from its condemnation as zero-degree experience in isolation chambers, with its last possible opportunity of socialization taken away by personalized television screens. Here, we reconsider moving as learning, and learning through moving, as a fundamental social form in cities.