Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Deng Cheng-hong's ''Polar Cities of the Future''

Deng Cheng-hong's current exhibition at a major musem in Taipei, titled ''Polar Cities of the Future'', is a selection of the Chiayi artist’s architectural proposals for polar cities in the distant future for climate refugees fleeing a warming world and migrating north to Alaska, Canada and Russia.

Mr Deng was heavily influenced by the ideas of British scientist James Lovelock and worked with American climate activist Dan Bloom in Taiwan to come up with these pioneering images -- the first of their kind anywhere in the world, and written up in the New York Times climate blog Dot Earth, too.

Deng has made every effort to promote his polar cities architectural proposals over the last two years, but they have continued to drift between the imagination and professional world of actual architecture, ultimately remaining only on paper.

If we understand these unrealized architectural proposals as a means of constructing a future world, where survivors of global warming might have to seek refuge in polar cities, then these meditations on the constructed connection between architecture and society will be extremely fascinating.

CURATOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE EXHIBIT
http://www.tfam.museum/00.2015_WhatOn/Default.aspx

IMAGES
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/

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