Frank Lloyd Wrightproposed the revolutionary suburban utopiaBroadacre Cityin the 1930s. He could not have expected it to inspire artists designing the campus of an online shopping website inChinamore than eighty years later. China-basedDrawing Architecture Studioexhibited a series of panoramic drawings calledTaobao Village – Smallacre Cityat theVenice Architecture Biennalethis year, which is a speculative design for the headquarters ofTaobao, a Chinese consumer-to-consumer retail platform that garners 580 million monthly active users. Drawing Architecture Studio is a Beijing-based art, architecture and urban research practice cofounded by architect Han Li and designer Yan Hu.
InBroadacre City, Wright envisioned that American cities would no longer be centralized and limited to a central business district. Instead, families, each given a one-acre plot of land, would be self-sufficient households commuting mostly with the automobile. His concepts are especially relevant today in China where the rural and urban divide highlights many problems of inequality and inefficiency.
The Chinese drawing studio combines Wright’s ideals and a fresh perspective from modern China. The masterplan ofBroadacreis used as the basis on which the village of Taobao, the Alibaba-owned, popular e-commerce website, is imagined. According to the architects, their proposal tries to speculate how Taobao and the Internet will contribute to China’s goal to integrate urban and rural economies.
The village consists of transport infrastructure and distribution networks of the online shopping empire. Bridges, roads and conveyer belts cross over and intersect each other, constructing a layered, lively cityscape enclosing both the enterprise and the rural-urban complex.
The illustrations employ elements from both the East and the West. The composition of the village is symmetrical and organized along a straight axis, recalling the organization ofBeijing’sForbidden City. Eclectic, Western-classical building motifs used in rural Chinese villages alongside traditional Buddhist statues and Chinoiserie columns are depicted in the illustrations.
The drawings are part of the exhibition titledBuilding a future countrysidein the Pavilion of China at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
