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CCS 2009 Noon Lecture Series: "Caochangdi : Beijing Inside Out"
December 01, 2009
12:00 PM - 01:00 PM,
Room 1636 School of Social Work Building,
1080 South University
Host Department: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
Mary Ann Ray, Taubman Centennial Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan
Further Information
Caochangdi : Beijing Inside Out - Farmers, Floaters, Taxi Drivers, Artists, and the International Art Mob Challenge and Remake the City is a recently published book focusing on Caochangdi - one of nearly 500 urban villages in the city of Beijing. Caochangdi tells a specific story about itself and its 4,000 to 7,000 mostly illegal residents, but it also has embedded within it both the problems and the possibilities of a new urban space redefining the city of Beijing (and other Asian cities) at the pivotal point in human history where cities make up 50% of the population of the world. The range of inhabitants includes an illegal rural migrant cook for a sewer construction crew to world renowned contemporary artist Ai Weiwei.
Mary-Ann Ray is the Taubman Centennial Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan. Together with Robert Mangurian, she is a Principal of Studio Works Architects in Los Angeles, a co-founder of BASE Beijing in the Urban Village of Caochangdi in Beijing. Mangurian and Ray are architects, authors, and designers, and were awarded the Chrysler Design Award in 2001 for Excellence and Innovation in an ongoing body of work in a design field. In 2008, they were awarded the Stirling Prize for the Memorial Lecture on the City by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the London School of Economics. Mangurian and Ray’s current interests have led them to work on urban change in China, especially as seen in Urban Villages such as Caochangdi and the potential for change in the New Socialist Countryside and Villages.
