Mega-block housing developments, at a rate of over 10 new superblocks completed each day, are taking over the fabric of Chinese cities. China’s dominant mandate for the built environment—that all new housing developments must be self-contained gated communities—embodies potential benefits for integrating commerce and services, maintaining density, and localizing infrastructure and governance, but induces consequences for transit connectivity, resource consumption, civic participation, and adaptive growth. Moreover, the image of generic housing blocks repeating across the landscape raises serious questions about the role of architecture and aesthetics in the production of the city. As China expands its exports from manufactured goods to the export of culture and construction paradigms, shifts in policy and design of the Mega-Block today may have massive long-term impacts on global development.
How can designers and planners partner with developers to create housing blocks that are both energy-conscious and profitable? What are the alternatives to Mega-Block development? How can we re-imagine the Mega-Block development by intensifying its efficiency while increasing connectivity to the larger urban network?
Join the Global Charrette Weekend, with participating teams from Columbia University, USC, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and other institutions, in this collaborative investigation of the urban typologies of China and beyond. Submissions will be judged by a jury including Qingyun Ma (Dean, USC School of Architecture) (invited), Jeffrey Inaba (Columbia University GSAPP), sciSKEW Collaborative (Shanghai) (invited), and Doreen Heng Liu (Principal, NODE Architecture, Guangzhou) (invited), for inclusion in an online exhibition and forthcoming publication of the China Lab @ GSAPP. (to find out more..)
passage from: http://china-lab.org/?p=27
image from: http://china-lab.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charrette-flyer.pdf
posted by afterrabbit
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