all images above taken from the blog of the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism There are some interesting discussions on the table of late, as the preparations for the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism are underway, and looking at the blog and various hearsay, the impression is more telling than ever that the age of data is now takes precedent over the built environment. What is local in a Bi-City Biennale so proud of its cosmopolitanism? Hmm… how the guanxi system works in such marvelous ways… Anyhow, on a less cynical note, a friend of mine is working on a project between Athens/Hong Kong, and though I am still trying to piece these two together (ultra classic, ultra future?), he begins from the point of view of the outmoded nature of museums and zoos, whereby “because there is free flow of information and people(?) and goods around the world, there is no need to have everything at our doorstep. That’s why we may be witnessing a flourishing of the local, local conceived on the scale of nations: not as a reaction to globalization, but on the grounds thereof.” I found this to be parallel to the discussion on cosmopolitanism, wondering if the Acropolis in Athens, the Pergamon in Berlin, or Disneyland in Hong Kong are not evolutionary stages of one larger theme park. Better yet, the last version of the Bi-City Biennale seems to be our most ‘sophisticated’ rendition yet. “Built-ness” erodes, giving way to the concreteness of virtuality and the supremacy of networks. Identity and representation of a city may still rely on its iconic architectures, but as he says, “differentiating characteristics”, may be a more accurate term than “identity”. Another postmodernism. Another pluralism. Is this a kind of bottom-up globalization he is referring to? Do we all become do-it-yourselfers then? And what then becomes the role of the institution? As we watch the increasing privatization of our institutions, is there anymore a possibility for the local?