Week 3 - Thirty-six killed in Shanghai stampede

People unable to contact friends and relatives streamed into Shanghai’s hospitals yesterday, anxious for information after a stampede during New Year’s celebrations in the city’s historic waterfront area killed 36 people in the worst disaster to hit one of China’s showcase cities in recent years.

The Shanghai government said 47 others received hospital treatment, including 13 who were seriously injured, after the chaos about a half an hour before midnight. Seven of the injured people had left hospitals by yesterday afternoon.

The Shanghai government information office said one Taiwanese was among the dead, and two Taiwanese and one Malaysian were among the injured.

The three Taiwanese work for the same accounting firm and were visiting China, Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation said.

One sustained minor injuries, while the other was still hospitalized for further observation, foundation spokesperson Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) said.

The foundation contacted China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Shanghai City Government’s Taiwan Affairs Office yesterday morning when it learned of the incident, Maa said.

Taiwan hopes the Shanghai government will look into the situation and offer aid as soon as possible if it receives any more reports of Taiwanese being injured, Maa said.

The deaths and injuries occurred at Chen Yi Square in Shanghai’s popular riverfront Bund area, an avenue lined with art deco buildings from the 1920s and 1930s when the city was home to international banks and trading houses. The area is often jammed with people during major events.

At one of the hospitals where the injured were being treated, police brought out photos of unidentified dead victims, causing dozens of waiting relatives to crowd around. Not everyone could see, and young women who looked at the photos broke into tears when they recognized someone.

A saleswoman in her 20s who declined to give her name said she had been celebrating with three friends.

“I heard people screaming, someone fell, people shouted: ‘Don’t rush,”’ she said. “There were so many people and I couldn’t stand properly.”

Xinhua news agency quoted a woman with the surname Yin who was caught with her 12-year-old son in the middle of crowds of people pushing to go up and down steps leading from the square.

“Then people started to fall down, row by row,” Yin said.

Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital vice president Xia Shujie told reporters that some of the victims had suffocated.

Relatives desperately seeking information earlier tried to push past hospital guards, who used a bench to hold them back. Police later allowed family members into the hospital.

CCTV America, the US version of state broadcaster China Central Television, posted a video of Shanghai streets after the stampede showing piles of discarded shoes amid the debris.

Yesterday morning, dozens of police officers were in the area and tourists continued to wander by the square, a small patch of grass dominated by a statue of Chen Yi, the city’s first communist mayor.

Steps lead down from the square to a road across from several buildings.

“We were down the stairs and wanted to move up and those who were upstairs wanted to move down, so we were pushed down by the people coming from upstairs,” an injured man told Shanghai TV.

“All those trying to move up fell down on the stairs,” the man said.

Xinhua quoted witness Wu Tao as saying some people had scrambled for coupons that looked like dollar bills bearing the name of a bar that were being thrown out of a third-floor window. It said the cause of the stampede was still under investigation.

Who: people in Shanghai

What: 36 people stampeded to die

When: Fri, Jan 01, 2015

Why: so many people crowed in Shanghai and made chaos there when they were leaving

Where: Shanghai, China

How: stampeded by people in chaos

stampede 踩踏

chaos 混亂

riverfront Bund area 濱河外灘地區

Week 2 - Toyo Ito's National Taichung Theater on Display

Displaying architecture in a gallery is always a challenge. This is especially true with a building still under construction. And even more so when that building is Taiwan’s National Taichung Theater—unarguably Tokyo architect Toyo Ito’s most ambitious project to date. Taking Ito’s structural know-how and spatial ingenuity to new limits, this extraordinary complex appears as a rectangular block. But contained within is a spectacular 3D grid of tubular voids hinted at by the hourglass-shaped cutouts that define the elevations. Expanding and contracting, the hollows accommodate the various programmatic pieces, including a 2014-seat theater, an 800-seat theater, and a 200-seat black box. Slated for a grand opening in November 2015, the design and construction of this important work is the subject of TOTO Gallery MA’s latest exhibition titled The Making of the Taichung Metropolitan Opera House 2005-2014. (Built by the Taichung City Government, Republic of China (Taiwan), the building was renamed the National Taichung Theater shortly before the exhibit opened.)

The building began in 2005 when Ito was awarded its commission after winning an international competition. But the exhibition opens with Ito’s earlier competition entry for the Forum for Music, Dance and Visual Culture in Ghent, Belgium. In response to the medieval city’s poche-style urbanism, he proposed a boxy volume and carved out the needed spaces. Though his idea did not succeed in Belgium, it wooed the jury overseeing the Taiwanese competition and is the starting point of the Gallery MA show.

Mounted chronologically on the walls of the gallery’s lower level, drawings and photos document the complex’s initial development, while study models in the middle of the room are evidence of the trial and error approach necessitated by Ito’s unique architecture. Upstairs, the gallery turns its attention to construction via video commentaries and photo essays. But the most of effective means of explaining Ito’s architecture is the 360-degree, virtual site visit.

Donning a programmed headset transports the viewer to the heart of the building as it is taking shape. A tilt of the head in one direction orients the eye towards a shadowy recess, while leaning in another unveils a cavernous room. Here skin and structure become one and floors, walls, and ceiling merge into a single, but complexly, curving surface. Both primordial and futuristic, the interior morphs continuously, like a dreamscape come to life.

Unsurprisingly, the nuts and bolts construction is one of the most curious aspects of this building. Offering a behind-the-scenes look is the full-scale mock up of a wall section displayed in Gallery MA’s exterior terrace. It illustrates the walls’ assembly by revealing an elaborate web of rebar bent by hand that functions as a three-dimensional truss. This is covered with metal mesh and finally topped with a smooth coating of concrete, completely concealing all of these intricate underpinnings. On its own, the fragment resembles an abstract sculpture, but its bold shape enables the viewer to imagine how the walls’ irregular geometry will mold the interior space.

Considering the theater’s unconventional form and construction, the displays are pretty conventional by and large. But they succeed in building expectation and excitement for what shows signs of becoming a masterpiece.

structural know-how: 結構知識

spatial ingenuity: 空間智慧

3D grid of tubular voids : 3D網狀格子(網格

hourglass-shaped: 沙漏狀

programmatic: 綱領性

Belgium: 比利時

Woo: 拉攏

nuts and bolts construction: 螺母和螺栓建設

exterior: 外觀

terrace: 陽台

What:  National Taichung Theater

When: 23 November 2014

Who: Toyo Ito

Where: Taichung City

Why:

How: