Advanced Design Studio, Plattus

This studio will be the eleventh year of a three-way collaboration between architecture students and faculty at the Yale School of Architecture, Hong Kong University and Tongji University in Shanghai. Past studios have focused on the recent trend to redevelop sites related to the heavy industry that drove the Shanghai economy during much of the twentieth century. As that industry has been relocated to the urban periphery, large and often dramatic sites, particularly along the Suzhou Creek and Huangpu River, have become available for the sort of large-scale, high profile, commercial and residential development that has replaced industry as the major component of the city’s economy and image. These developments typically have been organized as superblocks or enclaves set apart from, and of a very different scale, fabric and architectural character than the industrial or residential fabric they have replaced. This year’s site is just such a large-scale, waterfront development opportunity, for which preliminary plans project a loose collection of colorful and dramatic high-rise and horizontal architectural forms, with fairly general commercial and institutional uses. However this 18 hectare (44.5 acre) site is the major portion of the waterfront of the rapidly developing Yangpu district, one of Shanghai’s largest, with a population of over 1.25 million, and home, at its northern end, to Shanghai’s two major universities, Fudan and Tongji. This studio will reconsider the the program and design of this major site with these and other issues in mind, in consultation with our colleagues at HKU and Tongji, and with Yangpu District planning officials.

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 the Tongji students.