The Media Landscape: How Culture and Politics Affect Building Facades in China

The Media Landscape: How Culture and Politics Affect Building Facades in China

Outside of China, media facades often look like separate elements claiming attention. However, in China, one can find large groups of facades with a common message in several metropolitan areas. These facades visually unite many skyscrapers into a single panoramic whole. But what are the reasons why this phenomenon is unique to China? How did it all start? V Biennale of Media Architecture combined culture and politics to respond to the emergence media landscapes in China.

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With China’s growing desire to be a major player in the international community, the government is looking for a representative stage to host important events. In this way, panoramic shows seem to be the ideal platform for conveying cultural identity and technological leadership, sending this message to the global media. The introduction of light shows, such as for the G20 Summit in Hangzhou in 2016, the BRICS Summit in Xiamen in 2017 or the 40th anniversary of Shenzhen in 2018, clearly underscores political ambition. In Shenzhen, more than 40 interconnected buildings provide a colorful, dynamic panorama of the city’s glorious history over the past few decades, including landscapes and technical innovations.

Philosophical concepts such as Confucianism, yin and yang have given rise to the concepts of harmony and balance in urban design. Further Christopher K.M. Lee in his book “General framework: rethinking an emerging city in China“suggests viewing the Chinese city as a monument as a whole. However, modern China has adopted a large-scale concept of maximum quantities in urban planning. The panoramic facades of new media seem to combine the traditional concept of the object with large-scale and high technology for vibrant nightlife.

The combination of panorama with many signs and movements can be seen in traditional Chinese landscape paintings such as Wang Ximen’s masterpiece “Are there a thousand rivers and mountains“When the parchment is unfolded horizontally. However, the forms and texts in modern urban light shows are more expressive than in historical paintings.

From a technical point of view, it is noticeable that the former dominance of large-scale entertainment lighting installations in the United States is declining. New York, with its billboards in Times Square and Las Vegas, with its colorful screens / covers in the Fremont Street casinos, has gained cult status. However, thanks to connected smart skyscrapers, China seems to dominate high-tech urban nightlife experimentation. The country is also showing great interest in a single image rather than a multitude of smaller topics. Comparing these nocturnal imagery seems to epitomize two opposing political views: an individual capitalist staging versus a unified PR story led by the rigid organization of the Chinese Communist Party.

The storytelling of façade animation is complex. The video sequence with nature, architecture, people, text and sound symbolizes the optimistic future of megacities. Thus, two structurally distant worlds merge: urbanization with high-tech skyscrapers contrasts sharply with the views of the romantic and unspoiled landscapes that the construction industry has pushed aside. In addition to political significance, light shows are also important for tourism as a catalyst for the nightlife economy. For economic reasons, investment costs should not be overlooked: Big shows sometimes cost around $ 100 million, which is arguably a problem for a state with growing social inequality. What’s more, some environmentalists and lighting designers say the brightness of Chinese shows is spiraling out of control. The Chinese government is aware of the negative effects of lighting and has issued a warning against extravagant landscape lighting installations in 2020. This has led to a cautious assessment of new large-scale media façade projects in China.

This unique cultural and political development in China created a situation where the government was given the power to control night city design in terms of light shows. Heavy investment, strategic planning and political ambition demonstrate that China considers this urban form of media interface to be an important tool. Opening a bright and colorful window to the world, China is trying to quietly but effectively convey its national identity and technological leadership within the country and the global audience.

For further reading:
Thomas T.S., Schilke & Lin L.M., Ma. 2021. Media landscapes in China: The empire of numbers transforms into connected media facades. At the 20th Biennial of Media Architecture (MAB20), June 28 – July 2, 2021, Amsterdam and Utrecht, The Netherlands. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3469410.3469436

Light Matters is a column on light and space by Dr. Thomas Schilke. Living in Germany, he is passionate about architectural lighting and works as an editor for the ERCO lighting company. He has published numerous articles and is the co-author of Perspectives of Light and Deluxe Suite. For more information visit www.erco.com, www.arclighting.de or subscribe @arcspaces.