Advanced Design Studio, Plattus

China Studio

This studio will be the ninth year of a three-way collaboration between architecture students and faculty at Hong Kong University and Tongji University in Shanghai. While past studios have focused on a variety of waterfront sites, especially along the Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River, the site for this year’s studio will be, like the 2007 site, a block in the heart of the historic, but rapidly developing, French Concession. Once occupied mainly by the characteristic Lilong-style housing of the early twentieth century that covered so much of the city of Shanghai, the block is targeted for the sort of large-scale mixed-use redevelopment that has spread through the French Concession, especially along major corridors such as Nanjing and Weihai Roads. Although the only historic building actually remaining on the cleared site is one of Mao Tse-Tung’s several Shanghai residences, the studio will provide an opportunity to analyze and evaluate the character of both historic and contemporary urban fabric in Shanghai, and their collision.. At a more detailed level of design, the studio will also consider the relationship between historic and contemporary architectural and landscape vocabularies, and the ideological questions these entail. Also, given the enormous size of the typical Shanghai block, the urban design issue of the superblock will be studied in relation to this specific site.

As in past studios, Yale students will travel to Hong Kong, tour that exemplary modern city and meet the University of Hong Kong students and faculty. We will then travel together to Shanghai, where we will explore the site and its urban context, and work together with Tongji students, using their studio facilities, to develop site analysis and preliminary design proposals. Final reviews will be held at Yale, including the Hong Kong students and possibly the Tongji students.