Guangzhou Dragons

We both took loads of photos of intersections in Guangzhou in 2003. They are still pretty cool and inspiring now.

Some text we wrote at the time:
The elevated intersections in Guangzhou have a unique spatial, material and scalar quality in the city. The intersections are of the ground; they are grounded. They sinuously push and pull the surface of the earth, spread-out along its crust and interlaced into the city’s fabric. In some examples they have become the city, with buildings swallowed at first floor level, markets gathered around their feet, and advertising hung from their bellies.

The spatial complexities of each intersection have an almost loose or playful quality. Slipways curve and inflect around adjacent buildings, elevated motorways bifurcate and join, and intersections offer potential continuations of a road user’s journey than seem to be possible or necessary. Some seem impossibly knotted, others are flayed out in the city. Some arch 7 stories into the sky, others hug the ground leaving only the barest of headroom for speeding delivery cycles. They all resolve the same distinct problem of maintaining traffic flow and easing congestion, by the most diverse and seemingly playful means. It is as if the city has become the playground of these, the most pragmatic of infrastructural devices, and in turn, each intersection has become the playground for the whims of their creators.

We ‘read’ the intersections as an embryonic nursery – a culture of self similar dragons in early growth, grafted into the course urban fabric. The creatures writhe and twitch, like slain beasts, inscribing inflected lines in the air and earth. Their flayed remains spill back into the ruptured earth upon which their fate was sealed. Each, like a brooding reptile, leaves the ground scarred. The scratch marks of a forgotten beast, now returned to the bowels of the earth.

Their scale can be understood as massive by proximity, or as microscopic when understood in the context of the city. We enjoy this scalar shift in comparison to the colonies and cities of the insect world. The intersections are constructed from insitu concrete and concrete frames. The material power, robustness, and weight of each structure is overwhelming. The concrete is cast and finished in a number of ways, affecting the play of light, dirt, and sound across its surfaces. In some their cranked columns appear to cower with fear, and in other their smooth legs stand tall, with the spatial dignity of a nave.