YEARBOOK 2018 - 2019 | XJTLU DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE

121
122
ARC305
Design Studio
Small and Medium Scale Buildings
2018-2019 YEARBOOK Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Department of Architecture 西 交 利 物 浦 大 学 建 筑 系
Level 3
( Year 4 | Semester 1 )
Module Credits
10
Module Leader
Glen Wash Ivanovic
Teaching Team
Glen Wash Ivanovic
Sofía Quiroga
Tordis Berstrand
José Á. Hidalgo
Richard Hay
Paco Mejias Villatoro
Technology Tutors
Zayad Motlib
Moon Kim
Number of Students
74
Mending the Block:
Exploring New Units for Shanghai
Blocks are one of the most essential elements of any built environment.
Surrounded by streets, their morphology, sizes and characteristics play
a fundamental role in defining the relationship between ratios of inside
and outside, open and closed space, public and private, new and old, close
and far.
In China, however, blocks seem to be subordinated to a more unique and
somehow rigorous form of urban organization: the gated communities.
Initially understood and planned as the communist urban equivalent
of the Chinese traditional courtyard house, gated communities are
groups of blocks designed and implemented in order to create a sense
of larger, neighborhood community with their own yards, security and
sharing spaces. Yet, their scale, layout and top-down implementation
seems to have created the opposite, and their sense of neighborhood and
community are far lower than those found in more traditional Chinese
ways of planning like the ones seen in Beijing's Hutong or Suzhou’s old
town.
In Shanghai, we see large portions of city blocks being demolished and
replace by new gated communities. Can we find a different way in which
to think some of Shanghai’s blocks? Can we propose buildings that, in
their inner logic and interaction with buildings around them generate
new alternatives for urban interlacing? Through six different briefs, this
studio explores new possible dynamics between the block and buildings
in Shanghai’s Jing'an District.
Level 03 – Year 4
B Eng Architecture Programme