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Urban
China Bootlegged by C-Lab for Volume, edited
by Jeffrey Inaba
C-Lab, 2009
Paperback, 156 pages
Volume
is an independent quarterly magazine started by Archis,
AMO and C-Lab.
Urban
China is a magazine exploring the process of urbanism
in China today. These two platforms are "bootlegged"
by C-Lab, merging the east and the west under the theme
Crisis. The merger is an uneasy one, or at least it has
that appearance, as content is cut from one page to the
next, as if the two magazines each occupied large sheets
of paper that were then arbitrarily trimmed into its final
shape and order. Of course all the content was plugged into
a computer and laid out on a desktop publishing program
before printing, so the splitting of photographs and text
where such normally wouldn't happen, or the interspersing
of white Urban China pages within the black Volume
pages, don't not carry the weight of literal cuts or bootlegs.
The end-product is polished architectural media production
with merely the aesthetics of a 'zine, but for the careful
reader this takes a backseat to the varied content tackling
the theme.
From Jeffrey Inaba's introduction
and Mark Wigley's essay on designing for crises at the beginning
of the issue, it is clear that crisis is being considered
as diverse and ongoing. Crises can be environmental, financial,
natural, of our own doing, etc. What they have in common,
as Wigley points out, is how they mark change, as they give
cause for revisions to typologies. What worked before a
particular crisis occurred must be revisited and modified
to work again after the crisis is over. And repeat and repeat...
This scenario sounds disheartening, but these bootlegged
pages acknowledge the reality of crisis and instill the
reader with ammunition for reconsidering how architects
can address crises, perhaps even before they happen. The
variety of the contributions is particularly laudable, be
it the destruction of cultural heritages, the rethinking
of infrastructure, or the failure of Biosphere 2. On the
heels of this bootlegged issue comes Volume's 19th
issue, titled "Architecture
of Hope." Apparently after crisis, even architects
need hope.
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