Thresholds: Space, Time and Practice
Auditorium, UCCA Edge, Shanghai
Neri&Hu’s second monograph Thresholds: Space, Time and Practice published by Thames&Hudson has just been released. Following the first monograph published by Park Books in 2017, the new book captures a diverse collection of critically acclaimed projects, exemplifying both recurrent themes and an extended conceptual framework.
Terence Hawkes once said, “The true nature of things may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in the relationships which we construct and then perceive, between them.” The title of the book, “thresholds,” is a word that has long been embedded in Neri&Hu’s architectural practice. It can be roughly translated to the Chinese notion of “jian,” which means “gap,” “space,” or “pause.” In an architectural sense, this term is often used to describe the physical mediation between two contrasting spatial environments.
Like rooms in a building, the traversal of space is given meaning by the manner in which the sequence of pages generates content progressively. Thresholds: Space, Time and Practice is structured in six main chapters: Reflective Nostalgia, Nomadic Voyeurism, Dwelling, Inhabitable Strata, Recasting Vernacular, and Future Artefact, documenting more than 30 architecture and interior design works by Neri&Hu, in Asia and beyond. The monograph culminates in a seventh section dedicated to product design and graphic design, Objects, which accentuates Neri&Hu’s interdisciplinary strength.
Starting with Reflective Nostalgia and culminating with Objects, the monograph starts and closes on themes of temporal continuity and history. The monograph examines a series of contemporary issues in various global contexts and aims to shed light on how the firm grounds its work while maintaining an intellectual inquiry into adaptive reuse and the role of history, reimagined spatial legibility associated with voyeurism, tectonics and the use of poché, a search for a connection back to the vernacular, and the role of collective memory and fragments.
In addition to a meditative introduction by the founders, Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, the works are accompanied by two essays from Rafael Moneo and Sarah M. Whiting. Moneo, recipient of numerous distinctions among them the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, has written on the precision and juxtaposition, the clarity and craft exemplified by Neri&Hu’s body of work. In turn, Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, offers her reflections on the firm’s holistic approach and contemporary insights.
Moderator: Kim Deng (Editorial Director of Wallpaper* China and Guest Researcher at Southeast University)
Panelists: Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu, Founding Partners of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, Shanghai; Domitilla Dardi, Design Curator at MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome; Li Xiangning, Dean of Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shanghai; Philip Tinari, Director & CEO of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing; Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge; Zhang Ke, Founder of ZAO/standardarchitecture, Beijing
This event is co-organized by Neri&Hu Design and Research Office and JuanZong Books.
