International Workshop in China

Shanghai in Transition

Students in the studio at Tongji University, International workshop 2003.

International network and the China experience

In September 2003, Professor Zhenyu Li (of Tongji University) and I conducted a Global Design Studio in Shanghai, entitled 'Shanghai in Transition'. With the participation of 16 architecture students from QUT, 6 students from TU Berlin and 25 students from Tongji University, we worked collaboratively in eight international teams on a particular Shanghai site. The brief was to design a master plan for a 6 hectare, high-density area in Pudong, Shanghai's booming Special Economic Zone (SEZ), accommodating mixed functions including housing, ateliers, offices and retail spaces. The collaboration between Chinese, Australian and German architecture students marked something extraordinary: Aside from the conventional questions of planning, all sides needed to address different cultural backgrounds, different languages, and the particularities of the Chinese building industry. Step by step, similarities and differences were revealed.

Global Studio with Tongji-University, Shanghai 2003: SL with Professor Li Zhenyu

The Rebirth of a Metropolis

After forty years of stagnation, the great metropolis of Shanghai is currently undergoing a rapid economic expansion to recapture its position as East Asia 's leading business city, a status it last held before the Cultural Revolution. Generally, the biggest attraction of design projects in China today lies in their extraordinary scope, size and unusual programs, making it the great architectural marketplace of the 21 st century. But this is not just because of the sheer volume of work currently underway, it is also because the Chinese people are determined to use the best designers in the world and to make a quantum step forward in urban form. However, in China 's hyperactive construction market, we can observe a lack of coordinated town planning, which understands the urban area as an integrated whole and guides development. By disregarding the overall interest of the city, public spaces, such as streets, squares, and parks, are not attributed enough importance as factors of urban quality and as space-defining elements. Currently, uncoordinated development of individual sites tends to create disjointed, heterogeneous urban structures, which neither clearly define street spaces nor achieve unity in terms of building heights. In the ravaged Chinese city, vast riches of architectural and cultural heritage have been destroyed in a rush to modernise, where single lots are developed by developers with little regard for the immediate context.

'Green City Shanghai' by Michael Drescher and Sarah Rush, workshop September 2003.

'Tabula rasa' urbanism

There are no historical precedents for the speed and extent that Chinese cities today are changing and extending. In this process the city structure which was once characteristic of the entire cultural identity is increasingly lost. I refer not only to the loss of some quarters of the typical courtyard houses, the Lilong house for example, but also to the loss of the entire communicative quality of the city. The great promise of Modernism, the transformation of quantity into quality through abstraction and repetition, has turned out to be wrong and the same mistakes are being repeated even now in China . Interestingly, the most difficult conversations with our Chinese colleagues concerned the definition of the notion of 'public space'. The groups seemed to talk about the same thing, but clearly had different notions in mind. We discovered there is a fundamental difference in the tradition of 'public space' in the Chinese city, as well as a different role of the individual in society.

Which vision?

Such an extreme, accelerated urbanisation process simulates the idea of seemingly unlimited growth. China today boasts 650 large metropolitan centres, cities with a population of more than one million people. A third of the population is now estimated to live in these so-called 'new towns'. However problems are created by a growing mobility and the transformation of one billion users of bicycles and public transport to individual car drivers. Too little thought has been given to the environmental effects of modernization and China has eight of the top ten most polluted cities in the world. It is difficult to formulate the right categories and urban planning instruments for such growth. Many past examples demonstrate linear approaches that were focused on solving a single problem rather than dealing with the entire complexity. These limited compositional patterns do not reflect the fascinating and complex nature of a metropolis. But which vision can be developed? For example, 'small is beautiful' do es not help in this context, as decisions need to be made daily out of basic needs, not out of aesthetics.

Green City Shanghai' by Michael Drescher and Sarah Rush, workshop September 2003.

Start formulating a strategy

At the end of the workshop we started to formulate eight requirements for the future of the Pudong site, and for similar Chinese conditions:

The historical and cultural identity of the site cannot be ignored but should be expressed in the scheme. The identity of a city is characterised through its memorable spaces. Existing traces of former buildings, path structures and vegetation should be recognised and incorporated in design decisions.
The structure of the city should be oriented on the principles of multi-functionality, as a mix of different functions allows a richer diversity in building.
Particular concern needs to be given to the re-structuring and renewal of the existing quarters. The quarters should be sub-divided into smaller units of one Li (a Li is equivalent to 500 square metres), and further subdivided to meet the human scale. Large master plans need to be sub-divided in several project stages with a scope of 5 to 10 years for implementation.
The main traffic flow should not cut the basic city pattern into separate pieces. Pedestrians and bikes should be given the same importance as motorised traffic.
The limited concept of a strict North-South orientation for all housing should be relinquished for a wider diversity of housing typologies.
The site is part of a larger urban and functional context and this influences the degree of urban density of the project.
The public space is the fundamental basic order of the city, and the city administration is responsible for the quality of these spaces. Public space consists of the streets, squares and green spaces.
The development of different parts of the city requires transparent, democratic processes, in which alternatives are developed, presented and discussed.

Outcomes

The unique benefit of international collaboration is that the students began to think in terms of a global network, and were enriched by these new insights and the experience of architecture and urbanism within the Chinese context. At the end of the workshop the various proposals were presented and discussed in a Final Review, engaging several Chinese teachers and Leigh Shutter from QUT. All participants expressed their interest in further workshops with our Chinese partner university. In China a large number of architectural questions will still need to be answered in the near future.

Steffen Lehmann, PhD, is Professor of Architecture, Head of the Architecture Program at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and Director of s_Lab Space Laboratory for Architectural Research and Design. Recent books include: "Rethinking: Space, Time and Architecture" (Jovis Verlag, Berlin 2002), and "Brazilliance! Der Weg Brasiliens in die Moderne, 1930-1955" (LIT-Verlag, Muenster 2003).