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Architecture can bring about better living conditions in older neighborhoods in China while preserving the history, culture, and heritage of that place through acceptable social and economical means.
Residential blocks of historical and traditional architecture are being torn down in center of my hometown of Yangzhou, being replaced by commercial buildings as the city tries to market itself towards comteporary tourists in an attempt to increase revenue, while residents are forcibly relocated to newly developed satellite cities.

These residential blocks must be protected and renovated, using sustainable methods that are able to increase the living comfort of residents at minimal costs, to preserve the rich culture of Yangzhou and allow tourists to experience the true culture of the city, not an artificial facade created by the government.

In addition to renovation, housing units themselves should be spatially and programmatically modified to provide safety, comfort, and accessibility to the elderly residents, who make up most the occupants and are growing in number in recent years, and in the future, encourage younger generations to live there.

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Architecture can bring about better living conditions in older neighborhoods in China while preserving the history, culture, and heritage of that place through acceptable social and economical means.

Demolition of older residential blocks is common place in many smaller Chinese cities today. Although these residential blocks have historical and cultural value, they are seldom maintained well by residents. The government has no qualms about tearing down these housing blocks in the city core and replacing them with commercial buildings as the city slowly loses its residents as well as its culture.

Occupants of these older neighborhoods are relocated to newer residential areas, far away from the city and its amenities. Resistance leads to force, as older members of the residents are forced to leave houses they have lived in for their entire lives. The government has the resources and manpower to renovate these older housing blocks. Most of these residential blocks can be reprogrammed and reorganized to suit the modern lifestyle of the occupants. Handicap accessbility, stormwater drainage, and fire-resistance are just a few things that can be improved.

Sustainable passive and active strategies can increase the living comfort of residents at minimal costs. Most of the people living in these older blocks are the elderly, and not enough is provided for them in these housing conditions. Renovations to these blocks are also encourage younger generations to live there. These housing blocks are capable of becoming self-sustaining communities public amenities and small commercial areas within them.

The Impact of Urban Development

The image above is a diagram of the map of my hometown. The development mentioned in the previous post is located near center of the map. As a result of massive developments happening in the past decade, a number of areas surrounding the city have become new residential developments converted from abandoned or exhausted farmlands. The aim of the government is to relocate people living within the old city core to the new developmental areas, providing new public services and accomodations (schools, hospitals, etc. ) in these new areas. The city core is transformed into an entertainment and commercial district, resulting in actual residents of Yangzhou living in satellite communities around the city, while the "old town" begins to be dominated by tourists. This "deurbanization" also affects the transporational routes, as the roads surrounding the old town become more prominant than the interior streets.

Site Matters: Behind the promises of a new development, lies a disturbing reality

I have decided to choose the site beforehand for my thesis project. This decisions was made with the knowledge that the focus of my project will be to work within a very defined and culturally-rich urban context. Looking at the article "Site Matters", I am struck by the two starkly different images of Leonardo da Vinci's map of Milan, and the plan for Palmanuova. Although the author goes on to express the stark contrast of the "site boundries" as defined in both maps, I see more clearly the differentiation between a planned city and a growing one. Palmanuova is a planned city, the map features clear defining lines and overlaying symmetry, order, and centralized composition. The center is clearly emphasized, denoting it as the origin out of which the city sprouted from. Da Vinci's map has no emphasis on an origin, as if the city could have sprouted from anywhere, or it may have been the coalesence of several growing settlements. Da Vinci's depicition is more applicable to today's cities, past the days of walled cities, protected from the "wilderness" between them. There are few "wildernesses" between cities nowadays and developments within the urban core begins to have impact on the surrounding rural or suburban contexts. The author defines the urban boundary as dynamic and porous, impacting environments beyond the property line. This I completely agree.

In my hometown of Yangzhou, China, on the very block that I grew up, a major commercial development has just finished. This new commercial sector featured a cluster of two-storey mixed-use buildings with retail and entertainment on the first level and offices on the upper-storeys, built as an attempt to attract more tourists to Yangzhou to increase the city's revenue. The architecture of these buildings attempted to apply some of the local features with limited success. However, the development had a HUGE impact on the people and neighborhoods around the area. A residential area of "hutong" small alleyways with traditional-styled housing, was completely torn down before the development. Thousands of people had to be relocated to other residential areas. Although the government offered full monetary compensation, or housing of similar value, many people refused to leave their homes, many of which were built prior to the twentieth century. Families have lived in these houses for generations, and refused to move somewhere else far away from friends, family, and their familiar neighborhoods. The extent of civilian resistance was seen on November 21, 2008, when two elderly women, as a form of protest, decided to live in a cage on the street where demolition was about to take place:

They lived in this cage until the afternoon of December 3, 2008, when the government construction company charged with the demolition, out of desperation, enlisted the help of a local gang. A group of gang members approached the cage and sprayed the two elderly women with an acidic mixture of sodium-bicarbonate, ammonium dihydrogen phosphate, and barium sulfate:

The two elderly women received severe burns to their skin and damage to their eyes, and were immediately rushed to the hospital:

Such a horrible type of acts have been committed before, to a lesser degree, in my hometown. These type of unethical and heinous acts have left helpless citizens living under the manipulation of the government.

The American Dream, the Chinese Reality

The Muses are Not Amused

This reading hits on a very important point and grave problem for architects (especially today), the effect of the architect's intuition on design. Silvetti describes this through the eyes of architects as a "necessity, interest, or irrepressible desire" to create a certain form.

Out of the four cases Silvetti defines that he believes heavily affects the form-making of architecture today, 2 of them (programism + thematization) I believe have a connection with the development of my thesis topic.

Program vs function:
In most studio projects, we were given a program beforehand and we interpreted the function. The program stays the same, while the function changes due to environment, society, culture and time. Predicted function is not always the actual function (if it functions) when constructed. Time and place are the most important aspects when talking about function. A park in 1940 functions much differently than one today, and a park in China functions much differently than a park in the US. Although the program is the same, the type of actions occurring in each one in different. Focusing solely on the program and disregarding place and time has the danger of succumbing to the idea that the form of such a program supposedly "induced the ‘actions’ promoted by the program."

Thematization
Silvetti defines "thematization for living" as the "operation of mimicking a well known architecture and the promise that such architecture will deliver a predetermined, good way of life." This idea is prevalent in the misconceptions of Chinese people today. Because of centuries of crowed living environments and substandardized living conditions due to the enormous population, Chinese people today view the Western single-family house or villa as the ideal home. As a result, not only is the housing typology seen as a symbol for better life, but the architectural style itself. A prime example is in the city of Changsha, in the Hunan province, where a huge residential development has started in the summer of this year.

This beast of a project, covering 612904.76 sq meters with an estimated 1.2 billion RMB (171 million USD) in project cost, features a cluster of luxury Spanish-styled villas, generously spaced within a park-like landscape. The symbol of Western architecture, represented through Spanish architecture, is the marketing strategy employed by the developers of such an area that would scream of luxurious living and promise of a better life to the potential Chinese buyers. There are examples of mimicking Chinese architecture in Western world as well, but those are found in places like Disney World, Epcot Center, the Chinese restaurant across the street. While Western societies have mimicked Chinese architecture as well, but only as a "Thematization for entertainment" while Chinese people have made Western architecture a symbol for their homes.

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1. What is the effect of globalization on architecture in developing countries and what changes will it bring in the future?

a. Is globalization really the integration of regional economies, societies, and cultures, or the force-feeding of corporate America’s culture and ideals into the unsuspecting bellies of developing nations?

b. Western culture is spreading: while Americans see the societies, practices, and traditions of other cultures as mere factual information through the eyes of tourists, developing countries are applying aspects of American culture directly into their lives, replacing aspects of their own culture.

c. How much of their own culture will third-world countries retain after this corporate cultural attack?

1. Streetscapes of developing countries are being invaded by the architecture of corporate America

2. Traditional buildings, dwellings, and marketplaces are being replaced by the symbols of corporate giants (McDonalds, KFC, Walmart, etc.)

3. Skylines of these cities are drastically transforming, with the generic architecture of the “international style” rising above traditional cityscapes which once defined the place

4. People’s ideals are being mutilated by the “globalizing” American commercial image: what is not Western is outdated and quite frankly, not the right way to do things.

5. Change in ideas eventually leads to a change in lifestyle, as Western products and practices begin to replace local ones.

6. In some countries, China for example, the government is tearing down older buildings, especially in residential neighborhoods, in favor of building Western corporate inventions (supermarkets, shopping malls, etc.)

7. The government offers monetary compensation or housing of a similar value for demolishing people’s homes, but people are forced to live in unfamiliar neighborhoods, faraway from family, friends, and places they used to visit at a daily basis.

8. Will this transformation (especially in architecture) of developing countries eventually lead to the destruction of any physical reminisce of their cultures?

9. What a bleak future for architecture would it be if one day, one could no longer distinguish where a city was just by looking at its buildings?

In Jose Luis Mateo’s “How to Draw Up a Project,” he defines the beginnings of the process as a collection of abstract and loose forms that eventually begin to take on rigidity and vigor as the process continues. However, I believe the beginnings of a project should be the act of identifying problems, and once the problems have been identified, designate or set of goals that the project should meet. The rest of the process should be continuous and relentless form-finding, so that the “direction” of the project is more focused on meeting the goals rather than becoming so form-based, allowing the goals of the project to dictate the form.

Mateo stresses that useful ideas at the beginnings of a project are the ones with least specified form. If that is the case, why begin with an abstract or loose form for as the basis of a project? Mateo calls the loose formal beginnings of a project the “phantom.” However, I believe the beginnings of a project, although loose formally, should be quite detailed at the conceptual level. Ideas at the start should not be about the project’s appearance (form, shape, color, materiality, etc.), but instead about what the project is trying to achieve, and what architecture can achieve through this project. These goals and benchmarks should be the driver of the project’s form and development.

Mateo goes on to describe the next step of drawing up a project, the implementation of the structure. In both a conceptual sense and an architectural sense, a project’s structure is made of many layers which give it a level of complexity as well as depth. The introduction of layers brings about hierarchies. The architectural aspect of these hierarchies is found in the physical structure of the project, the “skin and bones.” At the conceptual level, hierarchies represent the different goals the project is striving to achieve, and the importance of those goals relative to each other. I believe successful projects are ones that achieve more goals than originally conceived, and solve non-architectural problems with architectural solutions.