Archive for the ‘Chinese Design’ tag
Aric Chen
Above: Tim Groen, Aric Chen, New York, 2010
Aric Chen
Journalist / Design Critic
“What’s good about moving to Beijing for me is that the shopping’s not great,” jokes Aric Chen, who recently relocated from New York to China ‘indefinitely’—which, he hastens to point out, is not the same as ‘permanently’.
After having served as the 2008 and 2009 Creative Director of 100% Design Shanghai—a co-directorship shared with Tobias Wong, the New York-based artist/designer—Aric felt that a change in perspective would do him good. Beijing had been one of the Asian cities he had visited several times. “Some cities you immediately get, but Beijing was not like that for me,” he says to explain his city of choice. “I could feel that I liked it a lot, but that the only way to really get to know it required living there”.
Beijing, with its “intense moments of beauty, surrounded by vast swaths of grittiness,” reminds Aric of Berlin, another one of those cities that requires visitors to dig a little deeper.
Taking full advantage of his new location, his frequent contributions to the New York Times lately have been about such China-centric topics as hip hotels in Beijing, gay life in Shanghai (‘Panda Bears’!), and a variety of other local finger-on-the-pulse topics.
”It’s interesting, because living in New York, you get used to the idea that our narrative is everyone’s narrative. But now that I’m in China, I’m starting to see how the world is increasingly about multiple narratives. For example, there was no recession there.”
A recent writing assignment gave Aric the chance to talk to Ole Scheeren—the architect working on a number of new projects throughout Asia, including the CCTV tower in Beijing, under Rem Koolhaas’ OMA umbrella—who, Aric says, is very interested in a new model, in which Beijing becomes a center from which new ideas might radiate. And Aric agrees with the architect that it makes sense to think of Beijing as a cultural hub, “in a more poly-nuclear situation.”
Obviously one of these alternative narratives Aric mentions is China’s recent-ish ascendance in the contemporary art world; just think of the media attention for artists like Yue Minjun, Ai Weiwei and Zhang Huan. So could ‘design’ be China’s next Big Thing? Aric believes so. “People are talking about design like they were talking about contemporary art seven, eight years ago.”
Which is why the city of Beijing has approached Aric with the request to help them develop a Design Week of their own. This, he predicts, will be very interesting; “There are values in design and architecture which are pretty universal, but because Chinese culture has such strong roots of its own, I have to learn how to evaluate things on their own terms, and from different angles.”
“This is a city where everything happens behind closed doors; it’s a city of walls, and behind each wall you’ll find more walls,” says Aric, so it only makes sense to learn that he lives and works out of a courtyard house he rents on one of Beijing’s old hutongs, or alleyways, near the Lama Temple. He warns me though, not to picture anything too romantic. “When I say ‘courtyard in a hutong’, people expect to find me in some kind of Raise The Red Lantern setting”. The reality, he says, is a little different. “It was decorated by the landlady. So rather than resembling a concubine’s quarters,” Aric laughs , “The house looks like someone’s grandmother’s bedroom.”
In his downtime, Aric likes to stroll along the moat of the Forbidden City—which he fears may sound touristy and quaint—and is generally enjoying the sensation of discovery and surprise that comes with cross-continental relocation.
“I left New York partially to get away from hipness, the latest shops and restaurants, away from nightlife,” he says when we talk about the fact that he’s returning to Beijing in a week, via Milan, and he continues, “I really enjoy the distance, but at the same time I miss all of those things a lot.”
Paradoxically, it is the real New Yorker in him that brought Aric to Beijing, he philosophizes: “It’s that hunger for new things, and for new challenges.”