An Illustrated Journey: From Art Installations to Landscape
Watch an interview featuring the BAM designer, Z-dawg!
THE INSTALLATION ROOM at BAM’s 10 Years of Dumb” Retrospective
The Installation Room at BAM’s “10 Years of Dumb” retrospective exhibition is a cacophony of models, physical tests, videos, images, and drawings. The process by which BAM creates it’s so called ‘art’ is highly iterative and non-linear. Models of all kinds hang from a shelf suspended from the ceiling, among other placed on Astro Turf displays the installation room is a maze of objects and images. BAM has always had a hard time calling these works ‘art’ and prefers the term installation as these projects are much more a realm for design exploration, as opposed to the creation of art, although they are marketed as such.
From Trash Bags to Forested Urban Plans: An Illustrated Journey
BAM started as a group of like-minded individuals in architecture school interested in installation art and publication as a means to create and activate community. This in part was a rejection of traditional methods by which architecture is taught, the implication that architecture is the center of the world and the highest of art forms.
^ BAM rejects traditional methods by which artchitecture is taught. Architecture is not at the center of the design world.
Our initial interest in installation work lead us to gravitate away from traditional architecture towards the field of landscape, which inherently deals with a more social agenda and less controllable conditions. However BAM’s evolution towards landscape was not a straight line.
^ BAM’s evolution toward landscape was not a straight line. BAM began by making many small installations such as Pingyao Flowers which existed for no more than a handful of minutes.
In our initial years starting out in a hutong in Beijing, we had no clients and no money. At this time we did many small interventions, funded and installed by ourselves. Eventually these interventions allowed us to land more significant art installation commissions. These installations were often associated with indoor or outdoor public or semi-public retail space, commissioned by developers.
^ Construction of Cloud, commissioned by a real estate developer.
The work led us to the realm of designed “art.” While this type of work cannot be considered “art,” as a place for design exploration and developing technical know-how in large construction and fabrication, this evolutionary stage of BAM was critical to laying the foundation for our future.
^ Most recently BAM designed and built a public plaza fountain in Shenyang. Beautifully crafted out of 5mm 304 stainless steel, the Rain Ring is one of BAM's highest quality China constructions.
Always aiming towards working large-scale in the public realm, exposure to Chinese retail environments and clients guided BAM’s evolution towards the ephemeral, fast-paced world of seasonal installations. The world of seasonal installation exposed BAM to a side of Chinese culture that in no way may be gained through the lens of design or art. Designing huge environments, objects, and graphics meant to conjure associations with customary national holidays such as Mid-Autumn Festival, Spring Festival, and western Christmas, allowed us to tap story-telling aspects of Chinese culture—the stories a culture tells itself to maintain continuity, all expressed through the mechanism of shopping. This seemingly short-lived phase of BAM’s evolution was highly prolific, resulting in a wide variety of bizarre, blasphemous works, created in a condition completely free of restraint from historic typological art forms. The strangest of these works was the design of parade floats for a small mountain town in the south of China, Wuyishan.
^ Retail landscape projects snowballed into larger-scale works such as Daxing Central Park in Beijing.
Continued exposure to the world of retail allowed BAM to access more developer clients. With the completion of BAM’s first landscape project, a collaboration on a garden for a Beijing Exposition, BAM was able to push more deeply into the realm of public landscape. This project, combined with our learned knowledge of retail, provided opportunity to capture retail landscape projects. These opportunities snowballed into landscape projects of all kinds: hotels, resorts, malls, and eventually larger-scale works such as parks.
^ Unsatisfied with approaches to creating retail environments, BAM pushes a design agenda at the urban scale.
Unsatisfied with cookie-cutter methods that developers employ to create retail environments, BAM pushed into even larger-scale work through our agenda at the urban design scale. Yet even as BAM is poised to evolve into one of China’s leading landscape and public-oriented design firms, the field that we find ourselves in is beginning to reveal boundaries and constraints. Boundaries are not something BAM is comfortable with, and by virtue of this, BAM is also not comfortable being defined by any given field of art or design.
As an advocate for the public realm and urban spaces, the boundaries of design professions cannot be manipulated by those dependent upon the status-quo to survive. Meaning that if one’s livelihood and work-pattern depends on the current way in which work is perceived and executed, then it is not necessarily in the ‘professional’s’ best interest to innovate or disrupt that system. Thus the academic realm becomes a critical tool for imparting change.
BAM’s “10 Years of Dumb” retrospective exhibition is a springboard for defining BAM’s future direction: away from the purely professional, away from purely survival, into more academic realms of exhibition, representation, and writing.
^ BAM’s project to re-imagine as landscape a traffic intersection in the Central Business District of Beijing. CLICK HERE to read more about this project, "Re-Imagining Guomao." For BAM research in this academic realm is a critical tool for imparting change.
点击这里观看关于BAM安装的视频采访，采用神话般的BAM designer，Z-dawg！
BAM“愚蠢的10年” 回顾展之装置展厅
装置展厅是一个充满了模型、实体样品、视频、图片及图纸的混杂空间。BAM创造的所谓的“艺术”过程是不断迭代而且并非一蹴而就的。所有不同类型的模型都被悬挂在天花板上吊挂的架子上。在人造草坪上，装置展厅更像是一个由各类作品组成的迷宫。比起将这些作品称为“艺术”， BAM更倾向于“装置”这个术语——尽管这些作品确实是靠“艺术”来推销的。然而，它们更像是一个设计探索的领域，并非艺术的创作。
从垃圾袋到森林城市规划：一份历程图鉴
最初，BAM是由一群建筑学院里志趣相投的年轻人所建立的团队，我们对装置艺术和展示充满兴趣，并将其作为创造和激活社区功能的工具。这在一定程度上是对传统建筑教学方式的摒弃——传统观点认为建筑是世界的中心，并在各种艺术形式中占据最高的位置。
^ BAM's numerous, early temporary installations included this circle of trunks made using segments of a felled tree found on Cornell University's campus.
BAM早期对艺术装置的兴趣引导我们逐渐远离传统建筑并朝向景观领域进发。然而，这在本质上需要面对更复杂的社会变革（social agenda），并且可控因素变得更少。因此，迈向景观的路途并不是一帆风顺的。
^ BAM's many small installations also included this canopy of trash bags, made when BAM lived and worked in a Beijing hutong.
刚到北京的前几年，BAM就在一条胡同里开始办公。那时，我们既没有客户，也没有钱。后来我们自己在筹资和组建工作中做了一些小范围的介入（intervention），最终，这些介入让我们获得更多重要的、大型的艺术装置项目。这些装置通常与开发商委托的室内或室外、公共或半公共商业空间相关联。
^ Installations became more significant in scale and quality, and often were associated with public or semi-public retail space.
这项工作使我们进入了“艺术”设计的领域。尽管这种类型的工作不能被视为真正的“艺术”，然而，为了使设计探索和技术窍门的研发在大型建筑制造行业中占据一席之，BAM的这一进化阶段是非常关键的，并为我们的未来奠定了坚实的基础。
一直以来，我们始终致力于在公共领域实现一些大型的作品，与此同时，中国的商业环境和客户也引导着BAM向临时性、快节奏的季节性装置领域迈进。随处可见的季节性装置将BAM置于满是中国文化的环境中，而这是无法通过设计或艺术的角度去领会的一面。例如中秋节、春节、圣诞节等节日，与其相关的环境设计及对象使我们可以通过其内在的故事而深入中国文化。从人们的消费规律也可以看到，这些背景故事与文化的一致性完全可以通过自我表达来实现。BAM在这看似短暂的进化过程，创造了许多的奇特作品，而其中最为特别的要数为中国南方的武夷山小镇所设计的嘉年华游行花车。
^ Making large-scale work for the public realm guided BAM toward the ephemeral, fast-paced world of seasonal installations. Above, a temporary lantern installation for Mid-Autumn Festival.
^ Spinning”flowers” for Chinese New Year at Hong Kong Landmark retail center.
^ Sets for Chinese national holidays like this Christmas Party (with a Renaissance theme) allow BAM to tap story-telling aspects of design which connect more deeply to culture.
^ At one bizarre point in BAM’s evolution, BAM designed eight unique parade floats.
在商业领域的不断工作，使BAM接触到更多的开发商客户。而随着BAM第一个景观项目的实施——北京博览园中一个合作的花园项目——BAM得以深入到公共景观的设计领域。该项目结合我们已有的商业经验，为我们获得了更多商业景观项目的机会。随之，各种类型的景观项目接踵而来：酒店，度假村，商场甚至大到整个公园的设计。
不满足于其他开发商千篇一律的设计方法（BAM将其称为“cookie-cutter”），我们始终在沿着各种不同道路，将工作推进到城市设计领域的更深处。然而，即使BAM已经准备好发展成中国领先的景观设计公司和公共设计公司，我们所处的领域也开始显露出边界和限制。BAM不该有边界，同样，BAM也不适合被任何特定的艺术或设计领域所定义。
^ With the Finite/Infinite garden, BAM pushed more deeply into the realm of public landscape.
作为公共领域和城市空间的先锋队，设计专业的边界不能被那些满足与现状的人所操纵。也就是说，如果一个人的生活和工作模式取决于目前工作的执行方式和认同感，那么创新或破坏该系统并不一定符合“专业人员”的最佳利益。因此，学术领域就成为了实现变革的重要工具。
BAM“愚蠢的10年”回顾展是定义BAM未来发展方向的跳板：远离纯粹的专业人士，远离纯粹的生存，更深入到展览、表现和写作的学术领域中去。
^ In reference to this Beijing retail landscape, BAM blogs about how “culture is a tricky thing.”