Study of the village of Dafen

image

Title: Study of the village of Dafen
Directors: Eric DAYRE & Penghan WU 
Discipline: Architecture and Literature
Status: Developing Project
Starting date: 2020

Supervision

Summary

 

The Centre d’études et de recherches comparées sur la création (CERCC) at Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, the Ecole nationale supérieure d’architecture de Saint Etienne and the School of design at ECNU are joining forces in this collaborative research project to promote further interdisciplinary research in combining the study of art, poetry and « artistic prospects » and even « science fiction » with urban designing.

In what sense can architecture produce the integration of a reality that is only revealed in the marginal experimenting of art forms ? That which art can do for architecture, may be architecture can achieve for the people in return. When art remains confined and reserved for a small sophisticated public, it loses itself in complication, enigma and calculation. Time perhaps has come to understand that art forms are real forms in the sense that they redefine reality and experience— be it natural or inherited. Art makes reality more complex and abstract than what is generally thought, precisely as it reintroduces the suspension of man's open feeling for its own reality. Art's reality is more abstract than what is generally meant by reality, because the problematics of obscurity, intimacy, mystery, the question of sentiment, solitude, silence and the incommunicable are made active again. Art does not so much offer solutions but rather keeps questioning active within ideological solidifications and efficacy that falsely define and enclose reality. The deconstructive and allegorical proposals of art are human proposals to achieve some kind of different reality. Suffice to remark here that the most abstract of physicists have changed our daily lives in modern times. In the same way, it is time to make it possible for our less public or «easy» artists to exchange, and discuss the definition and social function of architecture as a social art, in order to reach a new definition of «art for the people», which implies that what we mean by «people» does not limit itself to its basic and pragmatic meaning.

In 2021, the project targets specific areas of architectural positive actions. The first one is Dafen, « village of the painters » near Shenzen, with a study of organization and economics as well as development of activities. The second one targets micro-regeneration of some old communities in Lujiazui, the financial center of Shanghai where the shanghai Tower is located. It not only focuses on the regeneration of physical space, but also on the study of the social system to empower the residents and social organizations with the aim of co-governance. The topic is also of a great concern on the with TPCaU projects(for further information, see Pierre-Albert Perillat-Charlaz, « EaTcAp : pour une Sub-Architecture », in Eric Dayre & David Gauthier (ed.), L’art de Chercher : la recherche-création dans l’enseignement supérieur, Paris : Hermann, 2019, p. 93-98. ) at ENSASE, where a multi-disciplinary tem of ENSASE in collaboration with CERCC at ENS de Lyon devotes research to the impact of artistic practices inside architectural projects, especially devoted to suburban « undefined » spaces. « EaTcAp : Espaces aberrants, Temps de crises, Architectures paradoxales » figures out architectural practices that are first defined as experiments in the representation of contemporary spaces in which art practices are considered as creative and legitimate modes of enquiry and study of suburban spaces. The 2020-2021 period will conduct discussions and exchange on the topics on both sides of the partnership. A field study will be conducted in Dafen and Shangai, and a multidisciplinary publication on « Dafen, the village of painters » is scheduled for 2023.