AQSO arquitectos office, exhibition, urban development, hutopolis, green, density, mobility, social, hyperbolic paraboloid, ceiling feature, tridimensional infographics, ultraviolet light, cool exhibition design

Located in a traditional Hutong, this exhibition space develops as a dark environment where the public can be engaged by a three-dimensional graphic, multi-media installations, and a 2 sqm interactive touch-screen with an urban videogame.

Luis Aguirre
Graham Baldwin
Giannantonio Bongiorno
Djulus Diodorov
Anouchka van Driel
Lv Jin Huan
Eugenia Murialdo
Vladimir Popov
Sun Wei
Peter Wilkinson

Area: 100 sqm
Location: Beijing, China
Client: BJDW and Guangan holding co.

AQSO arquitectos office. The exhibition hall has four illuminated tables with infographics and illustrations explaining the four fundamentals of urban planning.

“Next stop: Hutopolis” was a retrospective, at the 2011 Beijing Design Week, on the urban condition of the Chinese capital, and specifically of its old hutongs. The exhibition sought to establish a relationship with the audience, starting a dialogue before the presentation of the research program organised by our practice.

AQSO arquitectos office. The exhibition shows an infographic with the characteristics of low-density neighbourhoods. A bar chart represents the values of mobility, urban greenery or social diversity among others.
AQSO arquitectos office. Detail of the illustrations and infographics used to explain the four urban principles on which the research project is based.

The discourse took off from a broad picture of the old town, then continued with a more specific analysis of the relevant architectonic factors, and concluded with a virtual re-composition of the city’s ideal image.
A series of boards raised questions about the values that pervade the old and the current urban planning model, following four basic principles: green areas, social interaction, density and mobility.

AQSO arquitectos office. The main exhibition hall is a dark space with four illuminated tables corresponding to the principles of urban research.

The main room, a suggestive cubic space, housed a three-dimensional info-graphic where many data and facts from these two colliding urban models were connected by white wires. These lit, straight lines unfolded as a ruled surface covering the ceiling and connecting both walls.

AQSO arquitectos office. The elongated tables are tall and allow you to comfortably read the information contained in the catalogues of each project.
AQSO arquitectos office. A large touch screen allows visitors to the exhibition to interact with the urban parameters of the Hutong and to understand the balance and diversity of the neighbourhood.

This thematic discourse was finally complemented by a series of movies, which offered a close and rich approach on the hutongs topic: the way of living and the most personal portraits of their urban and social conditions. The video installation was displayed in small personal plasma screens, so that the visitors could get emotionally closer to the narration, and intimately watch and listen to the stories of the people interviewed.

AQSO arquitectos office. Each project in the exhibition is displayed on a table with a book containing graphic content and a screen with a documentary video.

The tour ended with a touch-screen application, that allowed the audience to interact with a hutong map, and to understand their morphology and functions with a special urban game. Here, visitors could drag on the screen different building typologies on an empty canvas, and thus create their own hutong map and understand how the above-mentioned principles (green areas, social interaction, density and mobility) work in the virtual model.

AQSO arquitectos office. The exhibition space is a dark room featuring long tables with interactive rotating panels, books and video screens.
AQSO arquitectos office. The exhibition tables have rotating panels that allow the public to interact with the content and discover information and images of the projects.

One year later, when the research program was concluded, the exhibition was re-opened under the title “City Visions”, showcasing this time the work developed by the students that had been involved. Eleven projects were featured, and eventually sorted in four categories: proposals for increasing urban density, soft-urbanism interventions, new residential typologies, and other strategies.

AQSO arquitectos office. The spatial planning of the exhibition space allows several groups of people to enjoy the content simultaneously in a calm and evocative atmosphere.

All the graphic material obtained in this way was arranged on long tables where rotating panels, screens and booklets were integrated. This disposition was intended to offer a first, quick image of each project and the concept behind it, with the possibility to continue and provide the visitors with a deeper theory in the project’s publications.