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20 September 2014, 9am–6:30pm

Center for Architecture and Urbanism, Ponte 9, 3/F, Rua das Lorchas, Macau SAR

With its unique hybridization of ethnicities, identities, histories, cultures, and traditions, all being transformed at an accelerating rate by overwhelming quantities of tourists, money, and new construction, Macau is a city rife with incongruities and anachronisms. The urban spaces are suffused with mixtures of natural or artificial sounds and images, of coexisting historical and contemporary activities. Long-term exposure to these sensory phenomena affects our aesthetic standards, our behavioral patterns, and our perceptions of the division between the real and the virtual. Macau has a rich, multilevel soundscape, encompassing the labyrinthine old streets, the new high-rise housing projects, and the extensive waterfront. The entertainment and gaming complexes are clad with sophisticated media facades and video projections. Vestiges of traditional lifestyles coexist with the most contemporary globalized activities. The city is now a multi-sensorial experience that transcends conventional attempts to fully document it using two-dimensional drawings, or fully respond to it with physical interventions. This symposium will examine some of the ways that architects and artists have developed to document or engage the complexity and volatility of the contemporary city.