Paradoxical Green
(this article will be published in <306090 Books> Sustain and Develop)
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The lawn represents social commonwealth, an urban substitute for the productive soil of the rural environment. An ambiguous surface, infill for urban designer’s master plans, palliative for the scourge of urban development. Green looks great filling the spaces between buildings on all those drawings, but once those lawns are seeded do we all have to “Keep Off!” Lawns are benign, hygienic, and controlled; they cover all the horror, squalor and uncertainty of the ground. Lawns are a tactic on the battlefield between power and democracy—occupying and sometimes, also inhabitable!
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Lawns are a visual representation of nature in an urban context; but they are anything but natural. is the lawn is an engineered product genetically enhanced, mass produced in rolls, cut into uniform strips, transported in a truck, and installed on site by hard human labor.
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Lawns are little like urbanism in China; they consume little material, and cover large areas in a short time.
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Floating Green, a public art installation located in Shanghai Pudong Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, detaches the flat lawn from the earth it covers, folds it and structures it to form inhabitable urban furniture. Instead of “Keep Off!” we are encouraged to “Hop On!” and touch it, smell it, use it and sense it however we please. The thin structure shakes gently when people sitting on it burst into laughter. An architectural artifact is usually singular and monumental, while a city emphasizes density and multiplicity. Floating Green rejects sculptural iconography in favor of an urban surface articulated in diverse parts.
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范凌的作品关注的是城市公共空间，城市家具与人的休闲方式的问题。 艺术想像绿地是城市的肌肤，也是城市限定自身范围的方式。在这个基础上，艺术家将现代设计史上经典的座椅设计归纳出不同的要素，然后以树立模数的方式将他 们集合成几种造型组合。这些造型集合通过一种特殊的技术，成为绿地上的“植物座椅”。这样，作为城市家具的座椅就不再是城市绿地上一种异质材料的植入，而 是绿色植物的延伸。这种独特的观念，无疑扩大了我们对于城市公共空间及其质感的想像。作为年轻的建筑师，范凌的作品体现出特有的建筑的理性和对城市思考的 深入。
(http://www.z-artcenter.org/LivingWorksInfo.asp?id=86)
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