Blueprint Beijing

Blueprint Beijing, the concluding exhibition of the first Beijing Biennial (2022) – curated by Ma Yansong and executed by MAD Architects – officially opened on January 13, 2023. As the architecture section of the Beijing Biennial, the exhibition invites 20 main participating architects/artists from around the globe, presenting their ideas in a variety of media including architectural models, installations, photography and video.

The exhibition also presents 8 architects and collectives showcasing visionary ideas through historic archives, as well as presenting 4 Chinese science fiction films with historic significance. Architects from different regions and generations responded to the curator's questions about the future and the city of Beijing, ultimately presenting their unique vision on the topic. The exhibition is a collective creation with the vast majority of works created as site-specific commissions or adapted reproductions. The works in the exhibition transcend geography and age so as to collide, dialogue and resonate with ideas and emotions in order to stimulate the viewer’s imagination about the future of the city.

The blueprint, as an architect’s tool, refers to both the archive of history and the imagination of the future. Great architects transform reality through visionary thinking. Buildings are the largest and longest-lasting public medium in human society, and it is crucial to continuously push forward their pioneering nature, to be able to inspire and contrast with the ethos and culture of a city, a region and a nation. History is formed by our imagination of the future throughout the past. Through this exhibition, a key selection of inspiring movements is presented that developed in Beijing and around the globe, all envisioning the future. Progress in urbanism and architecture comes forth from the imagination of a better life. An architect's creative task is to find a new direction through the constant confrontation and pull between tradition and innovation, local and global, individual and group, preservation and development — it is an experiment that never ends.