In a future architecture design project, what aspects of site should we respond to? And how could we respond to site as well as users?

Transcription

1 In a future architecture design project, what aspects of site should we respond to? And how could we respond to site as well as users? Name: Jiachuan Qi Student no.: Course: maad Tutor: Carolyn Butterworth

2 Introduction: Is future architecture design different from normal one in terms of design process? According to what I have learned from the ARC6989, the architecture design process could be divided into three steps including site, response and make. While we are doing a regular architecture design, we usually do some site surveys first, in order to comprehensively understand the site both physically (such as the environment, the surrounding buildings etc.) and socially (such as clients requirements and users needs). After that, we will make a response to the information we got and then develop it to make architecture. But how about designing a future conceptual architecture? Is the process different from a normal one? My answer to this question is yes and no. In general, I think the site response make process is quite logical even for a future architecture design; we definitely could follow this process to design our future architecture. But at the same time, we do need to change the way we consider the site and response since we face completely different situations while doing a future architecture design. In order to improve the design process for future architecture design, this essay will explain and discuss, in a future architecture design, what aspects of site should we research and respond to, and how could we respond to. Question 1: Site: What aspects of the site should we focus on? It is obvious that the regular way of researching the site, by finding out small physical and social rules and limitations from the site to respond to, is not appropriate for a future architecture design, firstly because the site of a future architecture does not exist actually; architects cannot know what the site would look like in the future, secondly, we usually do not have a client while we are doing a future architecture design, and thirdly, for us, it is also not worth designing a future conceptual architecture if we only want to solve small site problems which could be easily coped with by normal buildings. In my opinion,

3 in a future architecture design, we should consider the site in a much bigger scale. We should focus on big social problems existing in the site area which keep affecting people s life and can hardly be solved by traditional regular architecture, and should attempt to find out the root causes of these problems which are hidden behind the phenomenon. The following are some examples of the big social problems worth responding to while we are doing a future architecture design. 1 food shortage: In recent years, because of increasing demands from an expanding population, restrictive national policies, and our low productivity, the food shortage has become a serious social problem to humans (CJ Lim, 2010). 2 city expansion and land shortage: Since the process of industrialization and the dramatic population growth during the post second world war time, many cities around the world expanded at an unprecedented pace. To meet increasing demands, empty place is quickly filled by new buildings, which makes the city really crowded and uncomfortable for people (Zhongjie Lin, 2010). Figure 1 crowded Tokyo 3 high unemployment rates: Currently, a variety of cities are experiencing an industrial transformation; the place of traditional industry is being superseded by new industry. This process does make many cities vital again but at the same time also has brought several social problems to the city, such as high unemployment rate; many workers cannot get a job anymore. Take Liverpool which used to be a big industrial city as an example, the rate of unemployment has reached 24% already in 2009 (Liverpool City Council, 2010).

4 Figure 2, unemployment rate in Liverpool and Anfield (Liverpool City Council, 2010) 4 unsustainable: Problems such as global warming, pollution, depletion of the resources, and health now affect our entire world. In the early 1990s, a warning was issued by thousands of scientists from all over the world, in order to urge a quick response from all the people including architects to these environmental problems (Henry Kendall, 1992). 5: unhealthy community Due to the rapid growth of the cities, the architecture becomes no longer an eternal thing; demolition happens everywhere and at the same time people move in and out of the communities more frequently than ever before. In such a case, the city is gradually losing its vitality and becoming like cancers in the whole society. Question 2: Making response: How could we respond to these issues? A ruin may be the future of our city -- Arata Isozaki As we discussed above, while we are doing a future architecture design, we should be ambitious enough to deal with the big social issues existing in site. But at the same time, we also should bear in mind that all these problems are too broad and complicated, caused by a lot of factors including political, economy or things like that. It is impossible for us to solve these problems only by making simple architectural responses like one single building, one small scale landscape etc. In contrast, I think a future architecture should be radical and creative, should be beyond architecture or represents a new definition of architecture, and, should be totally different. So, how exactly could we respond to those social issues? What response did former architects make?

5 1 megastructure and artificial land Megastructure architecture could be seen as a new way of organizing cities. In many future urban design cases, architects just completely denied the original urban text and made megastructure architecture and new artificial land where a new city is built. This new city will develop in another way which would not be influenced by the original one. By doing this, architects hope to rebuilt the sense of communities which do not exist anymore in our society as well as to solve the problem of land shortage. Precedents: In 1960s, Japanese architect Arata Isozaki did a project called city in the air in response to the land shortage problem in Tokyo. In his project, instead of using a large area of urban lands, he made all the housings completely in the sky and the cores which used to support these housings only occupy 10 square meters of urban lands each. Figure 3, Arata Isozaki, Future Tokyo--City in the air, Similarly, another example is my project future Anfield. Rather than erasing the old Anfield, which has had a lot of social problems and for me is hopeless, I made a New Anfield soar into the air to reorganize the urban formation and the community. In this new district which contains living houses, working places, leisure facilities and energy devices, people s urban life is totally redefined.

6 Figure 4, Jiachuan Qi, New Anfield, (personal owned) 2 agricultural city and urban agriculture Urban agriculture, a concept of harmonious co-existence between food, people and architecture, is an innovative response to the food shortage and the jobs decrease problems of our society (CJ Lim, 2010).It is a redefinition of the farm and farming. In an agriculture city, farming becomes another kind of job choice for urban people, and unemployed persons could farm on their own lands to gain food to feed themselves as well as other citizens. Precedents: Chinese society is currently suffering food shortage and a high unemployment rate. To deal with these issues, CJ Lim did a future agriculture city project called Guangming Smart City in Shenzhen China which provides a new urban typology. Farms could be seen in every corner of this city and farming will become an essential part of people s daily life. In the short term, this city will basically solve the food and job problem in Shenzhen, and in the long term, the Guangming Smart City will form a new food industrial chain, which will continue boosting the Chinese national economy. Figure 5, CJ Lim, Guangming Smart City,

7 3 eco-architecture The idea of sustainability recently becomes quite prevalent in architecture design area and most architects will consider it while designing their buildings such as trying to prevent heat lost or gather more sunlight. But I think it may not be enough to respond to the eco-problems of our society by only designing these self-sustainable building --- the proper way in my opinion is designing entire eco-architecture which not only produces less pollution and consumes less energy but also could generate new types of energy itself contributing to the whole city by its specially designed shapes, functions and energy generating processes. Precedents: Julien Combes and Gael Brule did a concept urban design project called Delhi Loop recently, aim to create more living place for India s increasing population as well as to solve the serious eco-problems existing in Delhi. This building is not only an artificial living district for inhabitants, but also has lots more eco-functions. For instance, the main function of this architecture, besides living flats, is a recycling centre, which produces biofuels by recycling waste materials. At the same time, the loop can turn co2 into fresh o2 by itself so that the polluted air will be cleaned up. What s more, the huge wind turbine in between and the solar panels in the building also can generate new energy serving the whole Delhi City. Figure 6, Julien Combes and Gael Brule, LO2P building

8 Extra question: What about users? How we could respond to users? Beside the big social problems, users are another key point for us to consider in our future architecture design. After all, architecture finally will be used and examined by people, and I am sure the one that does not respond to the users will not be a successful architecture. So, how can we make response to users while we are doing a future architecture design? Because the scale of a future architecture is always enormous, often containing regional or national restructuring, it is indeed hard for architects to respond to every individual user (Zhongjie Lin). Unlike designing a regular single house, what architects face is thousands of inhabitants who have different living behaviors and predilections; there is no doubt that we cannot satisfy every person just by ourselves. As a consequence, while doing a future architecture design, rather than trying to respond separately to every user, architects mainly prefer to consider all the users as a whole and advocate macroscopical new life styles such as flexibility or freedom to people which can benefit them all. For instance, in Peter Cook s project plug in city, People are no longer living in a particular site but a steel movable component which can travel to another place at anytime. In this design, the notion of land, house, street, city and nation disappeared and people would get a real flexible life (Peter Cook, 1991). Figure 7, Peter Cook, Plug-in City, (Peter Cook, 2011) But, completely ignoring individual user s need could be very dangerous for a future architecture design to some extent. A mechanical, monotonous city will

9 only exist on the paper and won t be accepted by most of people. Like the plug-in city design, I don't think that many people would like to live in that kind of steel module which looks all the same. It seems that few architects are concerned about this problem while designing future architecture. In order to solve that, in my opinion, architects should play a less important role in future architecture design; rather than taking all the responsibilities, we should let users themselves join in the design process and create their own buildings. Like in my project New Anfield, an architect is no longer responsible for every building design and what the architect should do is just to make a prototype living unit as an example and train people to build their own. Figure 8, Jiachuan Qi, New Anfield, (personal owned) Conclusion: The future urban/architecture design, in my opinion, is an opportunity for architects to criticize on the society, explain our social ideals to the society, and is the manifesto of our architects responsibility for the society. Thus, in the design process, I think we should be more critical about the site; finding out acute social problems to work on, we should be more confident about what architects can do; making radical and creative architectural response to solve these problems, we also should be more careful about the users; creating a real utopia for human beings.

10 Bibliography: Cook, Peter. (1991), Archigram, New ed., Basel, Switzerland Kendall, Henry. (1992), World scientist s warning to humanity Lim, CJ (2010), Smartcities + eco-warriors, Routledge, Oxfordshire Lin, Zhongjie (2010), Kenzo Tange and the metabolist movement --- urban utopias of modern Japan, Routledge, Oxfordshire Liverpool City Council (2010), Ward profile --- Anfield, Issue7 Website: Evolo Competition : Website: Huffpost Green, Website: Wikipedia --- eco-city :