Shenzhen Biennale

This Saturday, Urbanus hosted a little shindig for some young architects participating at the HK/Shenzhen Biennale, coming up in January. It is a fantastic group of people, from Ma Yansong to Liang Jingyu. Although I cannot reveal specific ideas, I was intrigued by a comment that Laurence Liauw made about the current relationship between architecture and planning in Hong Kong. The key diagram for urban planners in HK is a colored plan that shows land value for each parcel of land. This plan drives development and dictates the type of architecture that will be built. The city (and the architectural profession) is a kind of a slave to this system, as architecture is produced with a certain degree of inevitability. But, Laurence remarks, architecture is not inert. Design can subsequently affect land value in the area in a positive (and negative) way. Sometimes, it can dramatically affect land value (ie. Bilbao effect). If there is this very obvious feedback loop, why is it, then, that planning and architecture continue to be mutually exclusive?