After re-reading the Lefebvre text, I took some time to relate it to my practice, and it has afforded me a useful period of reflection – I’m becoming more aware that it will be difficult to re-make Watermark here in Shanghai, but I’m not so bothered about that. It’s good to understand when a piece works well and why it wouldn’t work somewhere else so I can move on.
Lefebvre talks about the ‘Architecture of Stairs’ in relation to mediterranean cities built on escarpments. Shanghai isn’t built on escarpments, but it’s definitely got an architecture of different levels, linked by stairs and escalators. A lot of time spent above or below ground, a product of the need to accommodate so many people in a space.
It’s started me thinking about making a work that involves stairs, escalators etc. I’ve taken some smartphone videos and I’m going to play with them and see if an idea that I’ve got will work. I might need to return to the museum of urban planning to link it up with a statistic that I remember seeing there – it was about how the living area per capita has increased from 1979 to today – that’s got to be because of the increase in high-rise living in the last 20 years.
