YEARBOOK 2015 - 2016 | XJTLU DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE

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74
ARC205
Design Studio
Design and Building Typology
2015-2016 YEARBOOK Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Department of Architecture 西 交 利 物 浦 大 学 建 筑 系
Level 2
( Year 3 | Semester 1 )
Module Credits
10
Module Leader
Aleksandra Raonic
Teaching Team
Ganna Andrianova
Yiping Dong
Edward Farrell
Austin Williams
Number of Students
55
Guest Critics
Lin Bing
( OLI Architecture
Shanghai | New York )
Living in a Dense City: High-Density Living =
High-Quality Living
This studio asks students to generate new models and typologies for collective
housing for people that are currently being relocated from their
original living environments (rural or suburban areas) to the city. In
short, it calls for new models of Relocation Housing, set on a site located
on the south side of the dense and vibrant old Suzhou centre.
The studio brief is user-focused, and anticipates a user-driven design
process that requires the students to clearly define a user group typology,
according to which different relocation housing types will be developed
to fit the users’ specific needs. A detailed portrayal of users, their activities,
needs and desires will help envision scenarios which can be both
visionary and realistic.
Students begin with the development of a ‘basic living unit’ that can be
adapted to a variety of different users’ demands and living scenarios.
Using different spatial operations (multiplying, clustering, scaling), students
achieve variability of spatial configurations on both architectural
scale as on the scale of an urban block configuration. By operating on a
range of scales, while exploiting issues of grounding, verticality and site
constraints, students are able to achieve higher levels of programmatic
and social diversity, and to test issues of proximity, accessibility, light,
and connectivity on a single unit as well as on the larger number of units
(assemblies), or on parts of the block configuration.
This studio invites students to use experimental and innovative design
approaches in developing new models for high-quality, high-density
living in a relocation housing development that successfully negotiates
between collective and individual interests, between public and private.
Final designs seek to offer a new urban form that has the capacity to
catalyse vibrant and exciting opportunities for dense and intensive city
life in a contemporary Chinese context.
Level 02 – Year 3
B Eng Architecture Programme