public archipelago

Tittle: public archipelago

The thesis will try to examine the potential of small-scale spaces in terms of creating public spaces.

Why

The scale of architecture and city has been dramatically enlarged in the last century, due to the invention of electricity, elevator, air-conditioning, as well as internet. The size of a building alone embodies an ideological program, and only bigness instigates the regime of complexity, according to Koolhaas. However, paradoxically, bigness is also used as a tool to eliminate complexity: it does not perplexes the certainties, what you see is what you get; it is not uncontrollable, every corner and every behavior is under strict control; and it does not have the ability to reorganize the richer social world.

Here, the hypothesis is that, the potential of Bigness should base on its counterpart, the Smallness. Furthermore, the art of architecture still works here, in exploring how people can use small spaces to create public spaces, with complexity.

Contemporarily, in terms of scale, Junya Ishigami, a Japanese architect, claims that changing scales means changing the atmosphere – scale and proportion can make a space. Another precedent on “Scale” is Koolhaas. From his Seattle Library, to the West Kowloon Cultural District. From an absolute architecture to an intimate urban village. Particularly, the informal settlements give a prominent example of how scale can be re-defined and what a 700mm-wide space can do.

What

Through comparing a demolished village and the new proposal in Shenzhen, this project hopes to find out how “bigness” impacts public space on different scales. And it will then try to test “smallness” as a strategy to help create public spaces on the site.

The Gangxia village, located in the central business district of Shenzhen, is famous for its high density and its complexity in the process of re-development. The west part of the village has been demolished. The new proposal for it is a complex of shopping malls, hotels, and residential towers, housing 10,000 people at most, while almost 70,000 people lived here before.

Around 10 versions of plans have been developed during its re-development, which did not start until arriving its first decade. From the geopolitical ambition to signal an international modernized metropolis, to the urban ambition to improve the efficiency of infrastructure and land, a series of distinct scalar problems faced the re-development. The result is that, the continuous public ground has been divided into big isolated islands, the small shops and compartments reappeared in the form of shopping mall and residential tower, and spaces like that under staircases have been merged.

Smallness is missing in the new proposal, and this project aims to reintroduce it.

How

Phase 04 Pre-thesis Development of Artifact and Statement:

1:500 Nolli Plan and analysis

Developed Thesis Statement

Phase 05 Pre-thesis Final Research and Prep:

Update artifact

Information collection of the west part of Gangxia village

1:200 Nolli Plan and analysis

Thesis Experiment 1.0

Test site: the west part of Gangxia village

1:500 Massing studies of architectural intervention and site massing

1:50 Sectional Perspective studies of public space condition

Programmatic Studies

Thesis Experiment 2.0

1:500 design advancement

1:50 Sectional Perspective studies of public space condition

1:50 Plan organization

Thesis Experiment 3.0

1:10 Detail experiments Plan Perspectives

1:20 Modelling

1:1000 Mapping in greater context, application on other sites and relationship

Finalizing design

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Historical Theory:

Richard Sennett, 1992, the Fall of Public Man, W. W. Norton.

Johan Huizinga, 1949, Homo Ludens, Taylor & Francis.

Florian Hertweck, Sébastien Marot, 2013, the City in the City: Berlin: a Green Archipelago, Lars Müller Publishers.

Sennett, Richard. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

Contemporary Theory:

Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New Ed. New York: Monacelli Press, 1994.

Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.

Adler, Gerald. Scale: Imagination, Perception, and Practice in Architecture. London: Routledge, 2012.

Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.

Koolhaas, Rem. “Bigness.” In S M L XL: OMA. S.l.: S.n., 1993.

Rowe, Colin, and Fred Koetter. Collage City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1971.

Ishigami, Junya. Junya Ishigami: Another Scale of Architecture. Kyoto: Seigensha Art Publishing, 2010.

Ishigami, Junya. Junya Ishigami How Small? How Vast? How Architecture Grows. 1. Aufl., Neue Ausg. ed. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2014.

Contemporary projects:

Ryue Nishizawa: Moriyama house

Junya Ishigami: KAIT Kanagawa institute of technology

Junya Ishigami: the table

Junya Ishigami: Project for the cafeteria on the campus of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology

Junya Ishigami: 天空的居住

Koolhaas: Seattle Library

Koolhaas: West Kowloon Cultural District