In my speech, Thinking the Unthinkable', for the opening of 'Cities on the Move' at Secession in Vienna, 1997, l treated the expanding high-density development fuelled by advanced technology in a new generation of booming mega-cities as the signal for a historically unprecedented urban condition capable of drawing the attention of the art and architecture vanguard. I suggested a way of thinking that went beyond the existing planning methods today. Karl-Heinz Klopf, an artist based in Vienna whom I met in 1995, was especially impressed by the dazzling effect of lights and projection of spaces in Tokyo. We have been working together under the banner of Urban Flashes ever since. The first Urban Flashes' workshop was realised in 1999 in Taipei, when15 architects and artists from Europe and Asia were invited to work on strategies to revitalise the use of the abandoned sites in the Hwa-Shan area for art and cultural purposes, via proposals for encouraging public awareness and the process of negotiation with the city's formal institutional sectors. The results of the workshop were widely publicised and later triggered the development of the Hwa-Shan area into a visionary urban park in conjunction with information technology, a project that is now being officially implemented.
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