Design Studio: Intensive Design Workshop
Intensive Design Workshop
Recycling the edges: the Campus as an urban device
Tutors：
Asso.Prof. Paola Pellegrini
Dr.Jinliu Chen
Oversea Postgraduate Coordinator：
Dr.Xiaoxin Zhao
Review Guests:
Asso.Prof.Xiaoning Hua
Dr.Xiaoxin Zhao
Dr.Xin Li
Participants:
Yixuan Cui、Xiaochang Chu、Minghui Jiang、Xiao Wen、Jiahui He、Wen Chen、Qiang Sun、Luxi Chen、Xinlu Shao、Zhuocheng Lu、Baihui Zhang、Youmei Peng、Shanshan Hu、Yunjian Gao、Xiangning Zhao、Hanyu lei、Guangying、Priyanka Khatri、Billy Pa
Date:
May 8th 2023 to May 18th 2023.
Background
The UN Habitat recommends actions of recycling, reusing, reducing for a sustainable development and for tackling climate change. These actions should impact the way the city is planned and designed, because cities are both part of the problem and part of the solution.
Worldwide designers are reconsidering what is already built, to improve its performance and quality while saving money, energy, land and natural resources. This approach is usually called “regeneration”- where the built environment is transformed to a better or more valuable condition. Sustainable regeneration – one that reduces as much as possible the negative impacts on the environment – is a challenge that requires careful observation and creativity, with which new opportunities and design approaches in the existing city can be found.
Design Themes
The exercise of the Workshop targets the University Campus and its edges of the surrounding urban spaces. The students must observe the spaces along the edges of the Campus - both inside and outside the Campus, both the existing buildings and the open spaces. Students must imagine where and how the edges can be transformed, and what new uses and built structures can be added to make the space more efficient. The challenge is to understand how the Campus can become an urban device, meaning how it can offer space and structures for activities which can benefit to the university students and staff, as well as the residents of the surrounding areas.
The edges of the Campus are relevant because they serve as a symbolic landmark to the university - especially the entrance. The aim of the exercise is to rethink and redesign, to diverse the places,, and to improve their visual quality. Target space can be unused space, low performing structures, in-between open space, neglected buffer areas, useless roofs, nonessential roads, low FAR lots.
Large-scale demolition is not preferred due to greenhouse gas emission，thus the students are encouraged to work mainly with changes: adapting, upcycling, adding, subtracting. As the Commissioner of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2012 - entitled Reduce/Reuse/Recycle – notes: “the quality of the projects lies also in the intelligence of its strategies; in the long run, the ability of architects to study and identify potentialities in what exists counts more than confronting with something new”.
Students must identify a small space, understand why it is unused, define a program of its new usage and target groups (i.e. what is it going to be used for? who will use the space?), and improve its performance. Urban design pays special[1] attention to open public spaces, so there must also be an open area in the proposal.
The main challenge of this exercise is to integrate the old and the new, the Campus and urban life to enhance both the Campus and the surrounding urban environment. Students should consider the place as an agent of regeneration for the surrounding areas.
The design exercise is connected to a phase of investigation of the urban edges of the Campus and is an opportunity to practice research-by-design.
Investigation
Picture citation method：
Participants in filling out the questionnaire: Participants who used their mobile phones for filming and recording on that day.
Procedure：
1) Summarize the photos taken with the mobile phones on that day using a computer (electronic photos with latitude and longitude information)
2a） classify the captured photos based on the quality of the urban landscape, including quality of the architecture, quality of the street design, quantity and behaviour of people, green canopy, the intensity of the use of the space... it can be good or bad issues in the interpretation of the photographer.
2b) 10 photos must be selected every 1 kilometer along the edge, rank each photo according to the indicator, number them 1- for good examples, and rank them from 1 to 5, 5 being the highest good or bad; number them 2- for bad examples.
3) Select 5 representative images from the ranked images, 5 examples of good quality and 5 of bad quality and explain the reasons for choosing each photo. At the end each group will present 10 photos.
Pathways for data collection
Questionnaire investigation
Results and Presentation
The students will work in groups of 3 or 4.
Each group must produce 1 or more A1 vertical posters.
Minimum content:
-Photos of the existing conditions,
-Ground floor plan in the existing urban context,
-Any other relevant level plans,
-2 sections across the Campus edge,
-3D digital model (at least 2 views),
-Before and after situation (can be a collage, a sketch).
The scale of representation must be defined according to the selected area.
Group 1：Yixuan Cui、Xiaochang Chu、Minghui Jiang、Xiao Wen、Billy Pa
Jinyin Street is an important road on the western border of the North Campus of Nanjing University, where two historic buildings and the Nanjing University Observatory are located. The scheme aims to use the site at the campus boundary to raise the memory of Jinyin Street.
Open the western boundary between Yifu Building and Jianliang Building to widen the sidewalk and divert pedestrians and vehicles. Landscape and exhibition space are created by using the greening and open space at the campus, and functions such as self-study, reading and sightseeing are added by using the roof space. Each function is guided and connected through the ground color painting, which solves the traffic issues and realizes the linkage with the historical buildings of Jinyin Street.
Group 2：Youmei Peng、Shanshan Hu、Yunjian Gao、Xiangning Zhao、Hanyu lei
The site is located on the east edge of the North Campus of Nanjing University and the sidewalk of Tianjin Road. The low utilization of the campus edge space and the narrow, congested sidewalk are the two major issues of the site. We aim to energize the street by moving the wall back while connecting the street interface with a three-dimensional curved strip. The shape of this strip is free and changeable, and the location is also created based on the local situation. Combined with the brick wall partition, a series of external or internal U-shaped Spaces are enclosed, so that the campus edge space can be used as an open and inclusive installation of the city.
Group 3：Luxi Chen、Xinlu Shao、Zhuocheng Lu、Baihui Zhang、Priyanka Khatri
The site of our design is the west gate of Nanjing University. Our design concept is to thicken and bend the wall that symbolizes isolation and closure, make the boundary invisible, become a space and implant a variety of functions, open to the city, provide the city with a window to observe, integrate into and use the campus. In the design process, we use the roof space to add a multi-level walkway system, so that people outside the campus can observe the historic buildings and feel the campus atmosphere from the height; At the same time, we changed the road inside the site into a sidewalk to close the traffic flow and create more possibilities for crowd movement in the space.
Group 4：Jiahui He、Wen Chen、Qiang Sun、Guangying
Our design selects the intersection of the northwest gate of Nanjing University Gulou Campus and the north side of Jinyin Road. We propose the concept of "Claim the Space" to emphasize the priority of walking. Initially, the site is prioritized for walking, and then the road for vehicles is re-planned. The lanes are moved to the edge, and the useless plots on both sides of the road are concentrated in the middle to form a roundabout. Using the original height difference of the site, the campus on both sides of Jinyin Road is connected through the "arch bridge", and the bridge is used as the new school gate to enhance the identification.
