Very Friend Neville Mars and his colleagues at the Dynamic City Foundation have just released an amazing new book called The Chinese Dream. Neville is an architect from Holland. We met in New York in ‘99 when he was working with a couple friends on a film called NYNTEEN NYNTY NYNE, and over the years I’ve come to deeply admire his commitment to quality and overall flip mode ethic.

He moved to China four or five years ago, lured by an announcement that China planned to build 400 new cities of 1 million inhabitants each by 2020, or 20 new cities a year for 20 years. He co-founded DCF, a kind of amorphous collective of sociologists, planners, researchers and designers, and got to work. In 2003 they launched the Urban China 2020 project, an in-depth study of the effects of China’s flash-urbanization and what designers could do in response. To expand the pool of participants, observers, critics, etc. a couple of years ago DCF established an online collaboration platform called BURB for open-source research and design.

The Chinese Dream (010, 2008) is the culmination of these efforts, a 784-page opus that I can honestly say is the most beautiful book on China I’ve ever seen. Besides that I can’t say much more, though, because I haven’t actually read it yet. Neville showed it to me last month between drinks and in poor lighting conditions, but I was honestly blow away by it. So I’m riding with that emotion. (Nev holla)

Here are some sample spreads, in case you think I’m exaggerating. Click to enlarge…

To view many more and read the book’s introduction, check out the Chinese Dream fact sheet here.

I don’t think it’s arrived in western stores yet, but you can order the book from the publisher’s site here.

For all the Beijing heads, here are a few places where you can pick it up…

FakeSpace www.fakedesign.co.uk
Bookworm www.beijingbookworm.com
Timezone8 timezone8.com
Onewaystreet Library, Yuanmingyuan www.onewaystreet.cn

Popularity: 4% [?]

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « The depths of happiness
• » Simon’s Cat

• BROWSE / IN la vida china very friend
• « Chinese Gvt: Don’t be a spastic - get drastic about plastic
• » Favela Update