Weaving the Complex

Aerial view of proposed design (Background photo retrieved from Alamy)

Weaving the Complex

Name: Wang Changren
Thesis Supervisor: Prof.Rudi Stouffs
Site: BaiShiZhou Village,ShenZhen, China
Project Cluster: Performative Design

Struggling to survive, that is the current state of Chinese urban villages. These urban sprawls prospered during China’s most rapid urbanization process in the late 20^th century, mainly due to the ambiguous landownership in China’s shifting from planned economy to market economy.

Although the urban canyons result in undesirable living conditions, street market reeks of fishy odor,  we can still see the opposite, in a metropolis where land comes at a premium, the high density nature of urban villages turned them into low-rent housing enclaves which allow people with various backgrounds to reside and earn their living. Majority of them are migrant workers, we also see students, self-employed and poor families. All these people together with urban village’s unique sense of place and the metropolis backdrop shaped an utopian ideal that is impossible to be replicated. But now the municipalities reckon these urban villages’ land as fertile grounds for private speculations.

Design picked one piece of typical urban fabric as the testbed for a series of design methodologies

Known as “first station for shenzhen migrant workers”, BaiShiZhou occupied a considerable proportion of  the downtown area. More than 150,000 people were living within this 7.3 square kilometres large labyrinth. Though the village was demolished for future development, the design still would like to propose an alternative future for this urban sprawl. We tried to seek for balances between preservation of urban fabric and tabla-rasa planning mode, high population density and better living condition. Hopefully to realize its commercial potential while maintaining its positive tole as a low-rent housing enclave.

The design process could be summarized into two stages. To maintain the urban fabric while upgrade the living quality ,a straightforward way is partial demolition, so in sem1, we tried to work out an evolutionary algorithm to establish iterative simulation driven methodologies for generating bottom-up urban regeneration strategies. A Palimpsest was cleared out for further design. In sem2, a piece of urban fabric was selected as a testbed for the further detailed design, which could eventually be implemented to the whole urban village.

The design results could be listed as follows: 1. Capsule units added on remaining structures as a compensation of the area lost. 2. Insert pencil towers as an acupuncture therapy to counter the community’s lack of focusing nodes in a repetitive urban fabric. 3. DIY community centers that could utilize the site’s commercial potential while reshaping the disadvantaged community.

The increasing of buildings’ height also urges us to excavates the sites potential to grow vertically within a three dimensional circulation network. Hence the communal tower inserted also stands as a transportation hub, receiving and delivering residents through the elevated walkway.

A 3D network with central tower also serves as a transportation hub (Background photo retrieved from 123RF)

Reconceptualize remnants of demolished structures to maintain a multifarious urban experience

Section of a proposed tower and its relations with neighbor buildings

We would very much like to see copious events happen inside the tower, so rather than limiting it’s underlying spatial ingenuity with fixed walls, the tower is structurally divided into two parts, a concrete container. and various replaceable steel-timber units. By leasing the empty slots, developers can gain profit and the tower would be turned into a vertical mimic of the old village’s inner streets packed with shops, grocery stores and various service outlets.

Every certain period, the developer could start a new round of bid, followed by a partial replacement of the removable units

A typology study was done to further investigate possibilities to fit various programs into the concrete container.

Plan&section