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(What?)
The thesis will explore how architecture can respond to Xenophobia issues and foster racial cohesion through new architectural interventions. Globalization is fueling increased international migration worldwide. The immigrants are displaced as the other in new territories. The imbalanced notion between the self and the other, and the lack of belonging to a place are usually the causes for the racial conflicts. Guangzhou, Mainland China, has become the most popular migrated destination for West Africans since a decade ago. With the different cultural backgrounds, Guangzhou people have conflicted with the Africans. There has been large-scale protests by Africans in Guangzhou for complaining being discriminated and treated unfairly. It is urgent for architecture
to intervene the problem spatially and provide platform for social association
between the races in order to mediate the conflict.
The thesis is going to question on the validity of architecture into transforming the psychological state of its users. Xenophobia is the psychological state of irrational fear toward foreigners and the unfamiliar. Suggested by psychologist Philip Zimbardo: “People are the actors on the stage (architectural intervention), their thought can be transformed through environmental-psychological processes.” This thesis will be an opportunity to reconstitute the relationship between architecture and psychological state, for creating architectural intervention for the races to encounter, and reconstructing the irrational fear into understanding.
WHY?
The project will propose a housing complex, accommodating both the African diasporas and the Guangzhou citizens, merging into an theatre, locating at the periphery of XiaTang Village (廣州下塘村), the urban village where is the major African community in Guangzhou. The complex will be the major encounter between the Africans and the Guangzhou citizens in the area.
The project will focus on 2 design strategies. The first strategy will focus on circulations and living units arrangement referenced to “Contact hypothesis effect” and “Mere exposure effect”. These 2 psychological phenomena implies
the appropriate degree of segregation and congregation is effective to increase mutual recognition between races. Hence, designated circulation systems will be designed respectively for the African immigrants and the Guangzhou residents, that will be important narratives to control how and where they meet and interact with each other. What’s more, living units will be strategically compose around the theatre to ensure appropriate proximity between the units. The second strategy will focus on invoking the perception state of distraction at the open theatre for the residents through programmatic
and architectural means. Coined by Walter Benjamin, state of distraction prompts ones’ collective perception states. The open theatre will become the center of the complex that the Africans and the Cantonese would interact without personal bias. Last but not least, the project will be designed to integrate into the neighboring urban village for improving the existing problem such as circulation of the village.
HOW?
There will be three stages for the project. The first stage will be inception study of the project. Precedent study of Chungking Mansion (Hong Kong) will be carried out to analyze the building mechanism for being the most popular building for other races in Hong Kong. Site visits will be useful for choosing the project location. By considering the existing condition of the urban village, the expected capacity of the shopping mall/market programme can be known, as well as other programmes in the project. Circulation of the project will also be studied by making draft models in this stage. The second stage will be the design stage. The draft models in the first phase will be developed and improved. Also, key features in the project will be started. The final stage will be refinement stage that will modify the discrepancy of the project.
Bibliography
- Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and other writings on media (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2008)
- Michel Foucault, “Panopticism,” in Alan Sheridan, trans. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 195-209
- Louis Althusee, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in Hazard Adams and Leory Serle, eds. Critical Theory Since 1965 (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1986), 239 – 250
- Sylvia Lavin, Form follows libido: architecture and Richard Neutra in a psychoanalytic culture (MIT Press, 2004)
- David Grahame Shane, “Transcending type: designing for urban complexity” in Architectural Design, 128-134, January 2011
- Meng Yan, “Urban Villages” in Architectural Design, 56-59, September 2008
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