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Some may find it surprising that for a profession purposed with studying, designing and creating spaces, there is very little research into the spaces and buildings within which architects are educated. This is not to say that architecture schools have been designed without regard for the education being received within their walls. In fact there are countless examples of architecture schools which have been designed to specifically reflect and support the architectural ideologies of the school. This paper selects individual cases of schools from around the world and illustrates how the typologies and interior arrangement of architectural school buildings can be found to be reflected in the type of architectural education being taught at the time.

Introducing a Chinese perspective

This article serves as a brief introduction to a way of thinking that I assume to be foreign and new to most of the readers. It is based on some observations I’ve made during the past 5 years as part of my PhD research into the comparison between two traditions of architectural representation, between China and Europe, under guidance of prof. Li Xiaodong at Tsinghua University in Beijing. With that in mind this article has no pretension, nor the proper length, to fully convey the complexity of the representations of architectural space in drawings from China, but should be seen as a first try to communicate some of these ideas to a wider audience. For anyone that likes to know more about this topic I’ve listed some recommended reading at the end and welcome any feedback or questions you might have in the comment section below.

An interview by WA/ World Architecture with Martijn de Geus

As a practicing architect I believe that you should create a space for yourself as you would want to create for other, to try to integrate theoretical ideas with contemporary real-life conditions, and so the choice to live and work in this type of space is an embodiment of what we stand for.

Originally published as part of WA/ World Architecture's special issue on Beijing Hutongs.

From Public to Civic Spaces. On the development of collaborative community design in China.

This is an article that reviews the development of collaborative community design in China. It aims to interpret the evolution in local co-design methodologies, the planning and process tools used in this and it’s recent history in relation to the cultural framework and planning directives.

The starting point is how in the past decade in China the conception on developing communities has changed. From a process embedded in a public-private duality in which responsibilities were top-down implemented, merely focused on ‘producing space’, toward a renewed concept on civic spatial processes that opens up new directions for urban planning interventions, based on collaborative community design that also considers a component of spatial negotiation through time. No longer merely about the pure production of space, but changing toward a long-term process of growing communities.

This article provides a critical review of the 2017 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture (hereafter: UABB), which opened to the public inside the Nantou Historic Urban Village in Shenzhen on December 15^th 2017. The UABB has been taking place since 2005, and was originally conceived by the urban planning department of the Shenzhen Municipal Government, with a changing curatorial team each two years. This year marked the 7^th edition, curated by locally based architects Xiaodu LIU and Yan MENG with artist/critic Hanru HOU.

 

What if Western methods of knowledge categorization, were not primary in the formation of a large number of cities in the world?

  Unfortunately, contemporary concepts of urban and architectural discourse mostly stem from Western educational models. A more holistic, overarching concept of understanding the Chinese city is required. A concept that does not try to understand the Chinese city by dissecting its various components according to Western methods of knowledge categorization, or by comparing it to Western modes of city development.

This paper provides insights into sustainable urban regeneration of historic city districts in Beijing as an alternative for the tabula-rasa towers that sprout up everywhere in contemporary urban outskirts. At the base of the research lies the resilient ecological system as a leading metaphor for creating sustainable living environments in which a resilient urban ecology forms a balanced dwelling habitat.

The environment we experience around us, is increasingly evolving around the swift and the undeclared. "A fuzzy empire of blur, it fuses high and low, public and private, straight and bent, bloated and starved to offer a seamless patchwork of the permanently disjointed. Seemingly an apotheosis, spatially grandiose, the effect of its richness is a terminal hollowness, a vicious parody of ambition that systematically erodes the credibility of building, possibly forever..."  - Rem Koolhaas

This paper is a site visit report as part of the EPMA degree at Tsinghua University. The goal is to gain a better understanding of a freely chosen topic concerning the field of architecture in China. This report is based on visits to three significant mountain sites, and one river. Huangshan and Jiuhuashan, Anhui Province in August 2011, Huashan, Shaanxi Province in October 2010, and Yongding He, Beijing in November 2010.