Talking Heads Lecture 8.0

May 20, 2008, 7:00pm @ B.A.S.E.

FEI WANG, Chinese Archi-Image Phenomena

Fei Wang is the co-founder of Chinese Archi-Image Phenomena [CAIP], a consortium of urban image theorists and architects speculating on architecture and image culture in contemporary China. The practice of CAIP exists in a world of extreme simulacra, as historical footnotes are shuffled and image realities are becoming perversely pervasive. Fei Wang is a practicing architect and an emerging architectural theorist working between Western visuality and its representation as it encounters the high-speed urbanization of China through the lens types of 18th-Century Chinese perspective, architectural simulacra and phenomenology.
Fei Wang is currently a Teaching Fellow at School of Architecture, North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. He received a B.Arch. from Tongji University in Shanghai, China, and a M.Arch. from Virginia Tech at Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, and a second M.Arch. in History and Theory from McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

He has practiced architecture in Shanghai, Alexandria, Virginia and Princeton, New Jersey. His work has been recognized with numerous academic student awards and competition entries. His design and research projects have been exhibited in China, Germany, the United States and Canada, including Shanghai Art Museum, Aedes Galerie in Berlin and McGill University. His current project Thaumatorama was exhibited this year at North Carolina State University.

Fei Wang is a translator. He has translated many contemporary theoretical English texts into Mandarin Chinese, including: "The Tell-Tale Detail" by Marco Frascari, "Is This For Real" by Robert Somol and he is currently translating "Ethics and Poetics in Architecture Education" by Alberto Perez-Gomez. He writes intensively in Chinese and has published many articles and translations in Time+Architecture in Shanghai, Domus, Chinese version in Beijing and Urbanism & Architecture in Ha’erbin, where he acts as overseas editor and book reviewer respectively. As co-editor, his forthcoming book Inter-View of Selected Western Architectural Schools will be published both in Chinese and English in October 2008, featuring 33 interviews of 12 western architectural schools and prominent architectural educators.