Opening Ceremony for Team Shanghai!

On Thursday May 27th, the Shixi HS students crowded into the workroom to kick off the opening ceremony for the construction of their maquettes.  They were excited to look through the boxes of supplies, and talked with supervising architect Li Ye about their preliminary designs.

After they fleshed out their ideas, we pinned the info up on the dry erase board for everyone to see, and the students continued to consult the University students and professionals on the next step of the project.

Below you will find a selection of photos from the day! A separate post of the preliminary ideas for the maquettes (of both the high school and academic students) will follow this one.

Research from Shixi high school Group 2

Team members: HUANG YIQUN, LAO ZEDONG, YIN WENQING, SHEN WENQI, SHI SIYUN, ZHANG NAIDONG

Research:

The Team 2 students sees the problem of the current city , that the daily activities are separated from the nature. They are from the beginning trying to propose an “ideal city” in which the different functions like commercial, industry, government are distributed with linear green belt.

They have looked at various techniques for introducing nature into the urban space or apply green onto buildings. Including aeroponics – this process grows plants with no soil and extremely little water. The­ burgeoning popularity of aeroponics is emblematic of mankind’s desire to shape the planet to suit our needs, just as those first plants did 700 million years ago.

Research from Shixi high school Group 1

Team members: ZHAI WEITONG, ZHANG CHENGJIA, WANG JIAYI, JIANG NAIXIN, LINA, CAI HANSEN

Research:

The Team 1 students are interested in the city space and especially how it has been shaped by constraints from it’s surrounding context. As we all experienced that unlike in the rural area , any urban development is inevitably located within complicated constraints both from nature and culture: sunlight/ventilation/connection/height limit/set back…, They students take one project by Denish Architecture Firm – BIG for example.

In this project, the architect asked how could we go beyond the traditional perimeter block but still stay within the letter of the building code? By inflating a block of apartments to the limit of the maximum urban volume, we can generate a cathedral like architecture of sloping roofs and spires. Too deep to be inhabited, the prismatic volume contains a public cavity – the courtyard as a collective living room. The volume is deformed as to liberate spaces for plazas at both sides and slanted in order to let light flow unimpeded to the neighboring buildings.

The second project they are looking at is an urban park, renovated from a previous factory; the park featured all sorts of bean related plants. The use of organic material provide a natural feel for the visitors, which are mostly from the neighboring district.

Articles

Here you can find articles that were used for the research topics. Maybe they inspire you while doing your research.

• Sustainable and Green Architecture

Assessing

• Responsive Architecture

Intelligent buildings

Responsive architecture

TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTALLY-RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE

• Identity and Integration & Architecture

Cohesion text UK

Urban spaces and integration

• Demographic Changes

Novi Sad

Reurbanisation

• Other

Article Asie-Europe

Greetings,

Sanne

Skype Meeting 25th of May

Dear all,

That was a nice and fruitful Skype meeting today (25th).

Let’s now all define our plan and set our scale so I can set up the total floor in a Sketchup animation.
So please load up your ideas for the ground plan where we see 18 model areas roughly.
Load up a set of very raw sketches so I can model them roughly for each plan.
That means a layout (top view) and two side views, front and right view.

When we all agree on the floor plan we can start building the maquettes

Maarten

Research from Shan Jin, Artist in Shanghai

Key words: sounds from all over Shanghai, buddha machine, freezing water column…

Collect sounds from all over Shanghai, and record each of them into one buddha machine (a small speaker which could keep repeating simple sound recordings). Then combine those boxes in the form of  a ” freezing water column.”

by JIN Shan (artist)

Research by Shixi High School Students on Shanghai

The Shanghai workshop had a warm-up session on May 9th, and afterwards we gave the students some homework topics for them to start researching on their city.

- My Hometown (across generations)
- The History of Shanghai’s Architecture
- Eco-Friendly Buildings

Here are their research results:

Intro to Shanghai / Intro to Jing’an District

The students are asked to look into the past, present of their city, as well as the close vicinity of their district.  Questions were posed to them to get them to think about the city’s problems and how to improve it in the future:

- – - – -

City of Shanghai:

History

-    How did Shanghai start to grow as a big city?  How did it evolve to what it is now?

-    Which were the most important phases in the development of Shanghai?

-    Why do you think that these phases are the most important?

Present

-    What makes Shanghai special compared to other Chinese cities?

-    Is there any place in the city that give you distinct feeling of the space? Describe the space and why it makes you feel special.

-    What do you think are the most important developments in Shanghai, and how have they taken shape?

Future

-    Do you think new transportation technology will change the urban planning of Shanghai?  How?

-    In the future, how do you think climate change will affect Shanghai?  How could buildings adapt to new climates?

-    How would urban planning adapt to new demographic changes in the city?  Will it become more “international” or more “local”?

 

- – - – - -

District of Jing’an:

History

-    The history of Jing’an is closely related to one building that still exists, and it could be termed “The origin of Jing’an”?  Why do you think so?

-    In which way did this original building activate the surrounding environment?

-    Are there any urban features (street, square, bridge, building compound, etc.) that have originated from the Jing’an district?

-    What is the historical development of this/these urban feature/s?

Present

-    What makes Jing’an special compared to other districts in Shanghai?

-    What type of programs do the urban features (if they exist) include, and what kind of urban experience do they provide?

Research from Wang Qing, Architect in Shanghai

I have done some research on the Shanghai water system, and below are some diagrams that further explain it.

“Shanghai” in Chinese translates to ”the place by the ocean.” In reality, the city is never separated from the water. It derives from the water. It sits at the outlet of Yan Zi River (Chang Jiang River) as it connects to the East Sea. Yet, the city of Shanghai is one of the 32 most lacking of drinkable water because of the level of pollution.

The government is working on getting clean drinkable water from other sources far away from the city, such as Chang Jiang River. My research and project interest is not just about how to deal with the water pollution problem. Beyond that, I am interested in looking back at the history of how Shanghai people lived with their water supply and it’s role in the future of the city. I think that the water will become the key image and play a significant role in Shanghai within this post-industrial era, our so-called “information society.”

Research: academic student Kang Yan

Shanghai research