LOW-RISE, HIGH-DENSITY - Research and design on Shanghai housing

LOW-RISE, HIGH-DENSITY Research and design on Shanghai housing

LILONG PROTOTYPE

BASIC SCHEME

FULL / VOID

CIRCULATION

Master thesis School of Architecture and Society A.Y. 2013/2014 Politecnico di Milano Tongji University Alice Pontiggia prof. Remo Dorigati prof. Zhi Wenjun

LOW-RISE, HIGH-DENSITY Research and design on Shanghai housing

Master thesis School of Architecture and Society Politecnico di Milano Tongji University Alice Pontiggia prof. Remo Dorigati prof. Zhi Wenjun

Acknowledgments This thesis is one of the first products of the new born double degree exchange program instituted between Politecnico di Milano and Tongji University. I am deeply grateful to this two institutes who made me possible to discover new places and cultures enlarging my knowledge.

I wish to thank my supervisor prof. Remo Dorigati for his constant push to move forward and for the reflections shared with me. I am also grateful to him for its commitment to cultivate the exchange agreement with the Chinese faculty.

I thank my tutor prof. Zhi Wenjun for the hospitality and kindness shown to me during my stay in Shanghai and for the precious suggestions that let me able to clarify my investigation. A special thanks to prof. Lorenzo Consalez who supported my departure and still encourage my choices.

Thanks to Serena and Ettore, precious counselors for the hardest choices.

Thanks to Leonardo, Chiara, Giulia and Serena for the discussions and the goals achieved together. Thanks to Laura, for the time spent in revise my drafts and for the heart shared despite the distance. Thanks to Nicoletta and Irene, for the fights and games that keep us together.

Finally I want to thank Irma and Walter, my milestones and examples, who silentrly shown me the passion in doing ordinary and extraordinary things and who never stop believing in the person I am. This work is dedicated to them.

Ringraziamenti Questa tesi rappresenta uno dei primo prodotti del nuovo programma internazionale di doppia laurea istituito tra Politecnico di Milano e Tongji University. Sono enormemente grata a questi due istituti che mi hanno dato la possibilità di scoprire nuovi posti e culture accrescendo le mie conoscenze.

Vorrei ringraziare il mio relatore prof. Remo Dorigati per il suo costante incoraggiamento a migliorare e per l’esperienza e le riflessioni condivise con me. Gli sono grata anche per il suo impegno nel coltivare l’accordo di scambio con la facoltà cinese. Ringrazio il mio tutor prof. Zhi Wenjun per l’ospitalità e la gentilezza dimostratami durante il mio soggiorno a Shanghai e per i preziosi suggerimenti che mi hanno permesso di chiarire la mia indagine. Un ringraziamento speciale va al prof. Lorenzo Consalez che ha supportato la mia partenza e ancora incoraggia le mie scelte.

Grazie a Serena ed Ettore, preziosi consiglieri nelle scelte più difficili. Grazie a Leonardo, Chiara, Giulia e Serena per i confronti e i traguardi raggiunti insieme.

Grazie a Laura, per il tempo speso nel visionare le mie bozze e per l’affetto condiviso nonostante la distanza. Grazie a Nicoletta e Irene, per le lotte e i giochi che ci tengono unite.

Voglio infine ringraziare Irma e Walter, i miei punti fermi ed esempi, che mi hanno tacitamente mostrato la passione nelle cose ordinarie e straordinarie e che non smettono mai di credere nella persona che sono. A loro è dedicato questo lavoro.

Abstract

Sommario

The efficient use of residential space in a rapidly changing metropolis, such as Shanghai, is nowadays a real problem. The overcrowded situation, the unruly development of the city, and, on top of that, the increasing pressure of the investors to attain a larger economic profit, require the study of a new housing model. Throughout history, we can trace an evolution in the entire Chinese system that, depending on social, economic and cultural factors, has resulted in the birth of different types of houses: the one-storey traditional siheyuan dwelling widespread throughout the country; the two-floor lilong building reflecting the assimilation of the English worker-house in Shanghai area; the hundred meters high-rise complex diffused in the present time. Among all of them, the housing type that seems to work the best, and is recognized by the local population as the “real shape of the city”, is actually the second one, the lilong. In fact, compared to other solutions, the lilong embodies some qualities that can not be traced in other modern dwelling models: community cohesion of citizens, continuity in the traditional relationship between the indoor and outdoor space, effective use of the land, successful example of mixeduse development. Thanks to some urban indexes, this thesis will compared different residential types, with the aim to trace their positive features and propose them in a new development strategy for the city. Applying These guidelines will be later applied to a development project for a urban block.

The purpose is to explore how the qualities of lilong space can be translated in a new urban shape that respect the contemporary social and economic needs of the city.

L’uso efficiente degli spazi residenziali in una metropoli in rapida evoluzione come Shanghai è oggi un problema di primaria importanza. Il sovraffollamento, lo sviluppo sregolato della città, e, inoltre, la crescente pressione degli investitori ad ottenere una sempre maggiore profitto economico, richiedono lo studio di un nuovo modello abitativo. Nel corso della storia possiamo tracciare una evoluzione del sistema cinese ne suo complesso che, sotto l’influsso di fattori sociali, economici e culturali, ha portato alla nascita di diversi tipi di abitazione: la siheyuan, la casa tradizionale su un unico livello, diffusa in tutto il paese; il lilong, edificio a due piani che riflette l’assimilazione della casa operaia inglese nell’area di Shanghai; il complesso di edifici high-rise diffusi attualmente. Tra tutti, il tipo di alloggio che sembra funzionare meglio, e che è riconosciuto dalla popolazione locale come “vera forma della città”, è in realtà il secondo, il lilong. Rispetto alle altre soluzioni infatti, il lilong incarna alcune qualità che non possono essere rintracciate negli altri modelli abitativi moderni: coesione della comunità dei cittadini, continuità nel tradizionale rapporto tra lo spazio interno ed esterno, uso efficace della superficie a disposizione, buon esempio di complesso multi-funzionale. Grazie ad alcuni indici urbani, questa tesi andrà a confrontare diversi tipi residenziali, con l’obiettivo di tracciare le loro caratteristiche positive e proporre una nuova strategia di sviluppo per la città.

Queste linee guida verranno poi applicate in un progetto di sviluppo per un isolato urbano. Lo scopo è quello di esplorare come le qualità spaziali del lilong possano essere tradotte in una nuova forma urbana che rispetti le esigenze sociali ed economiche della città contemporanea.

Key words: high-density, urban housing, Shanghai, lilong, design project, lowrise

Parole chiave: alta densità, residenza urbana, Shanghai, lilong, design, lowrise

LOW-RISE, HIGH-DENSITY Research and design on Shanghai housing PART 4. CASE STUDY

PART 1. INTRODUCTION 11 13

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1.1 1.2

Problem statement Investigation methodology and key-words > thesis structure > criteria for the selection of housing types > definition of the comparison tools > criteria for the calculation of the indexes > reflections on density 1.3 Research aims and goals PART 2. CHINESE CONTEXT

23 28 33 36 42

2.1 A growing population > Chinese population > Shanghai population 2.2 Real estate trend > Chinese economy > Shanghai real estate market 2.3 Housing policies 2.4 Preservation of the architectural heritage 2.5 Architectural history > Ancient era > Pre-modern era > Maoism era > 1980s > 1990s till now > Foreign influence and contemporary situation PART 3. SHANGHAI HOUSING

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3.1 Siheyuan traditional dwelling 3.2 Lilong neighborhood > old shikumen lilong > new shikumen lilong > new type lilong > garden lilong > apartment lilong 3.3 High-rise compound 3.4 Tendencies of contemporary housing design 3.5 Common features in Shanghai housing > repeated principles > evolution trends > comparison with the western culture

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102 114 121 140

4.1 Shanghai urban history > A favorable condition > The city origin > Establishment of foreign concessions > Pre-modern era > The Communist power > From 1980s till now 4.2 Project area 4.3 Design strategies 4.4 Prototype solution 4.5 Final comparison

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PART 5. CONCLUSION

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Bibliography

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List of figures

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APPENDIX A - References

PART 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1

Problem statement

The primary function of a building is typically to house people, and our cities are mostly made up of this intimate architecture. In the last century the housing system in China has been in a complete state of transformation.

The residential asset has been continuously growing, but the rapidity of the accretion times and the restrictions imposed by the central government, did not permit its complete and conscious development. Even nowadays, dwellings are still forced to follow a rigid set of rules that define standards and shapes, leaving very little space to the research work of architects.

Compounding the situation there is also the demolition of a large part of the historical heritage of the city; an operation of routine in Chinese history, made of cycles of destruction and reconstruction, but that now does not seem to find a satisfying substitute. In Chinese cities in fact, the contemporary housing development has lost some of the cultural heritage, which should reflect the evolution of the traditional dwellings. Some basic principles on which all kind of vernacular residential architecture were founded, cannot be perceived anymore in the recent residential buildings. Looking at the prevalent typology proposed nowadays, the high-rise apartment, we see an improved solution in terms of quality compared to the previous constructions, but we cannot feel any relation with the context and the local habits.

Changing Shanghai, demolition of lilong block

In Shanghai there is a type of dwelling, the shikumen lilong, which is widely recognized as the real texture of the city and started to attract growing attention from institutions, professionals and citizens. These buildings were born free from any formal restriction and indeed strictly connected to the city needs. In fact, they were the result of the economic power of foreign investors meeting the cultural knowledge of local constructors, in a place where the 11

government impositions could not be applied and in a time of astonishing urbanization. Unfortunately the lilong is now losing its original character. Over time the situation of overcrowding caused by the economic development of the city, had increasingly worsened the life conditions within the neighborhood and forced the institutions to remodel or replace the old blocks. The main strategy adopted by the institutions has actually been to move the inhabitants in an outer area with higher comforts and replace the old constructions with residential compounds. Nowadays, the only way the traditional structure could be preserved is to convert the area into an attractive node with a cultural or commercial function, as for example the cases of Xintiandi and Tianziafang.

In light of this compromised situation, it is now the perfect time to conduct a thorough investigation about the shikumen lilong house, with the aim to identify its original characteristics and reformulate them in a new residential system which could be fully integrated into the culture and the form of the city.

Lilong inner lane

1.2 Investigation methodology and key-words > thesis structure The following research include a one-year experience in Shanghai, including the urban and architectural courses attended at Tongji University and a direct investigation on the city, and an academic year at Politecnico di Milano, during which the literature review and the design work were carried out. Over both these periods I discussed these issues with professors and colleagues and I depth the topic with movie viewing, background readings and cultural researches.

The first part of this research project wants to give some background information about Chinese economy trends, real estate market, population growth, and more specific notions about housing policies and architectural evolution. The principles here collected and described will serve as the bases to define the subsequent design strategies.

In the second part some relevant housing typologies will be analyzed both at the neighborhood and at the housing level, with greater attention to the lilong one, with the intent to discover the volume relations and to understand the evolution of the lifestyle of the inhabitants. These types will be compared with respect to three main parameters: the density of the residential plot, the average capita living space, and the floor area ratio, with a final summary to synthesize their principles. These parameters will be helpful to trace and understand the evolution of the Chinese, and especially the Shanghainese, housing development.

In the third part of this work will be defined the standards and the strategies for a new sustainable residential solution in term of density and quality. The proposed guidelines will be applied to a lilong area in Hongkou district, one of the central neighborhood of Shanghai. We will consider a block beside the neighborhoods of Ruikangli, Ruiqingli and Ruiyuanli, which are in a crucial position favored by the public transportation system, next to an inner canals of Huangpu river, and near to the renewed area of 1933 slaughterhouse. This would be a perfect location for a regeneration intervention. > criteria for the selection of housing types In the last 150 years, a lot of dwelling solutions have been adopted in Shanghai, depending on the policies of the central government, the economic needs of the society, and the social and cultural background of the inhabitants. Among them, have been selected three main evolution phases that, in the framework of this research project, represent the history of Shanghai housing in the most effective way. Are considered in fact the siheyuan configuration, the main spread traditional housing solution spread all over the country, the starting point, the lilong, expressing the change at the beginning of the modernization era with the meet of foreign solutions, the evolution trend, and the highrise layout, the contemporary proposal regardless used in this developing situation, the arrival point. Great importance is given to the second type as in its history is enclosed a summary of a more general trend occurring in the all housing assets. The selection was based on the study of the bibliography, on a direct investigation of Shanghai, and after the collection of data on city’s construction composition. Focusing only on three dwelling solutions will allow us to better understand the dwelling development and easily find out its actual problems and possible alternatives. In all case studies is report an historical background on the typology birth and evolution, the description of the neighborhood functioning, and a study on the interior layout system

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and development. To better compare these and other types is elaborated a table that include all the parameters and the main features of each solution and in which some specific entries will be disposed to focus on the quality of common spaces and indoor-outdoor relation.

The decision to focus on Shanghai was dictated in part by the need to streamline the research operations, but mainly by the uniqueness of the city; a place influenced by foreign cultures and where the incredible economic growth pushed the design of the residential buildings to a continue modification.

In this research have been considered only collective housing typologies because I believe that high density is the most effective response for a sustainable development of the city. Moreover, it reflects the original structure of the Chinese society, which was made of big enlarged families living together in the same house. This type of organization was never abandoned by the Chinese social structure and gave birth to a collective way of enjoying the residential place. When families started to separate themselves in smaller cores, the original lifestyle was replaced by a new way to perceive the neighborhood.

The solutions excluded from the main line of research, are still considered in the broader perspective on the development of housing type and are listed in Appendix A, at the end of this volume. In this section are also discussed other housing projects that are considered useful for the development of the final prototype. > definition of the comparison tools In order to develop an effective solution, we need to identify criteria and indexes that will be used to describe and compare the different typologies of housing. The first four indexes presented here describe the density of a built area with respect to four different aspects and their combination will represent the morphology of the city (a character especially defined by the FAR). Finally, the last two criteria will give us some information about the quality of life.

NUMBER OF FLOORS – pure number It is an indicator that describes both an architectural and an urban feature.

It represents the height of a building and the relation that it has with the ground, the streets and the open-air functions. It is also useful to understand the generic volume covering a specific area. It can be used both in an analysis phase and in a design process and it is related to the shape of the building.

DWELLINGS/SURFACE - dwelling/km2 Spanish and Americans scholars in the urban planning field typically use this index. If employed for an existing project, in order to be correctly interpreted, the function of the building has to be known, and this can be a difficult information to find. For this reason, it is best used as a design or analysis tool.

It is an important parameter if used in combination with the each-person living space data for the definition of life-quality standards.

This criteria does not influence the shape of the building because the same number of dwellings on a defined area does not change in relation to the apartment layout or the distributing criteria.

This parameter is related to the height of the building, to the cover index, to the distance between the constructions and the number of roads needed.

PEOPLE/SURFACE - people/km2 This is the index that is mainly used in Italy and by landscape architects, 14

geographers or technicians on sizing the infrastructure networks. It is used to understand the settlement load on a specific territory and also as an investigative tool on an existing area of the city to obtain the number of inhabitants and the density of a specific area. The resulting value will be more accurate, larger is the area considered, because it is based on average data and because its error is related to the number of unused apartments, offices, or oversized housing layout.

FAR Floor Area Ratio = gross floor area/buildable area – pure number This index was initially used in North Europe, Netherland and United States, for example for the New York building regulation, and subsequently introduced in the design phase because of its highest grade of flexibility, precision, connection with economic factors and relation with bioclimatic objective.

This number represents “the ratio of the total floor space of a built area to the total size of its lot”1. This is the definition given by MVRDV in their 90s study Farmax, a publication that investigated the density issue and in which great importance is attributed to this parameter. This index will not give us a description about the functional organization of the area, but it is quite useful to give us an indication about the volumes, representing the relation between density and built shape. It is, in fact, its distance from the social and demographic aspect that make this data so useful in the design phase. This index can be used as a tool to experiment with the shaping of the city starting from the urban planning, from a general and shared plan, and not from the architectural features of the single building, as it was done in the past.

LIVING SPACE/PERSON – m2/person This is an index used in Italy to describe a living condition in terms of the indoor space reserved to each individual. In fact, in this country there is a regulation defining the minimum living space for each dwelling layout, or even the minimum space for each function in the house. The parameter is useful in the design phase to define a standard that has to be kept, meanwhile, when it is calculated for an existing neighborhood, it describes the actual living situation of the area. Usually, the highest the index, better is the lifestyle of the inhabitants, even if it cannot fully describe the life situation because it does not take into account quality factors that can influence the everyday life of a person. The presence of some comforts may, in fact, compensate, in an excellent manner, the loss of space.

VOID RATIO - % of outdoor space This percentage describes the quantity of ground surface free of buildings.

Only recently it had been added to the Italian regulation and it is related with the index of permeability, which indicates the percentage of land capable of absorbing rainwater without any canalization. High density and compactness are necessary conditions to maintain a high portion of free surface. The index is here used as an indicator of a standard; a minimum level of outdoor livable space will be in fact guaranteed in the design solution because related to a traditional quality feature. > criteria for the calculation of the indexes The first three indexes (dwellings/surface, people/surface, FAR) can be calculated using as denominator of the ratio either the buildable area, comprising the area of the single block, or the land area, including the buildable surface and the area used for the primary and secondary urban works. In this

MVRDV. FARMAX. Excursions on density. (Rotterdam : 010 Publishers, 1998), back cover.

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“Shanghai Statistic -上海统计” www.stats-sh.gov.cn. Last modified February 26, 2014.

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“Density atlas” Density atlas. Last modified 2011. http://www.densityatlas.org/ 3

MVRDV. FARMAX. Excursions on density. (Rotterdam : 010 Publishers, 1998), 126.

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Reale, Luca. Densità, città, residenza : tecniche di densificazione e strategie antisprawl. (Roma: Gangemi Editore spa, 2008), 111.

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study will be used the buildable area, since we are investigating the relationship between building shape and urban morphology at a neighborhood level and not at a more wide urban scale that includes the welfare buildings. The ratio will be the one between gross floor area and buildable area.

The analyzed neighborhoods for lilong typology are the one presented in the master thesis “Lilong housing, a traditional settlement form” of the Canadian McGill University and the ones directly investigated in Shanghai. In these last cases the number of dwelling units per plot will be obtained counting the civic number of residences, while the number of inhabitants will be calculated multiplying the number of units by the average number of household members, as given in the 2012 Shanghai Statistic Bureau (calculated as 2.7 persons per family)2. For the final report of the data, only the values of old shikumen, new shikumen and new type lilong neighborhoods are considered, wanted to be report the original situation of the residential plant. For the siheyuan the data are based on an author’s simulation and its comparison with the Wu Liangyong publication on Ju’er Hutong neighborhood, keeping in mind that that block was subjected to an overcrowded situation, and with the aim to obtain the values of a block made by the traditional siheyuan dwelling. For the calculation of high-rise compound values it was made a direct detection in the city and the examples found in the bibliography. For each of them the comparison with the Density Atlas website3, developed by a team of MIT faculty, it has been a good verification.

The considered urban blocks will be mostly or exclusively occupied by residential buildings and the other functions considered in the study will be the one spontaneously born to satisfy the needs of inhabitants. Commercial and service functions will never exceed the 50% of the buildable area.

The delimitation of the buildable area will be defined by the external profile of the buildings but will also include the internal distribution, since that is a crucial element in our investigation. Therefore, the void ratio will consider as outdoor spaces, both alleys and courtyards.

The procedure to calculate the FAR is the following: find the delimitation of the footprint of the buildings, multiply by the number of floors, sum the gross floor areas, and finally divide the value obtained by the buildable area. We will obtain a pure number strictly related to the neighborhood and not translatable in a parameter for the city structure. The average capita living space will be calculated dividing the gross floor areas by the number of inhabitants.

The void ratio will be calculated as distribution space and building coverage at the neighborhood scale, and so without considering the courtyards of the house, meanwhile it will express the comparison between the indoor and outdoor space in the residential unit.

high density FAR 1-3 very high density FAR > 3 But this classification would work in a developing situation in which are present examples like the Hong Kong compound having an average FAR of 10? And in a non-stop worldwide trend of increasing density, especially in the urban context?

In the context of this work is not set a scale of density value, while the notion of high density is here used with a positive accent, under the presumption that a compact city will be a more effective model for the future development, saving our countries and their landscape from an unregulated and unjustified abuse caused by the sprawl.

In this research we do not fix a-priori a value of density to be reached, but the elaboration of a model that have a FAR value comparable with the contemporary housing development will be desirable. This is made in order to avoid the risk of lost in quality life only to obtain an higher profit.

These are some example of FAR values relative to housing typologies relevant for the study. They are selected because of the context or historical relation, the study on the typology, as a comparison to understand the scale of intervention.

1. Sprawl in the USA – FAR=0.15

2. Patio house project by M. van der Rohe – FAR=0.33

3. English working-class dwelling, 1875 - FAR=0.58

4. Beijing Hutong - FAR=0.6

> reflections on density “Density is the city’s third dimension and a vehicle for provocative statements.

Stronger means than just housing are required to produce a truly compact city with a density comparable to that of New York or Hong Kong. […] Urban density, then, is more than simply upping the Floor Area Ratio. It also entails densifying and stacking functional, social and economic systems and levels in the city.”4 In a perspective of densification and modernization is necessary to define what do we mean by high density, at least in this research. Luca Reale5 in his volume define low density FAR < 0.5 medium density FAR 0.5-1 17

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5. Horizontal city project by G. Pagano, I. Diotallevi, F. Marescotti – FAR=0.77

6. Superquadras Brasilia, 1960 – FAR=0.8

11. Karl Marx-Hof by K. Ehn, Vienna, 1927 – FAR=1.87

12. Gallaratese quarter by C. Aymonino & A. Rossi, Milano, 1967-73 – FAR=2.42

7. Robin Hood Gardens by A. & P. Smithson, 1966-70 – FAR=0.86

8. Cite des Fleurs, Paris, 1847-1890 – FAR=1.1

13. Dushixinyuan residential village, Beijing, 2003-2011 – FAR=2.7

14. Plan Cerdà, Barcelona, 19th century – FAR=2.88

9. Jing-An Villa, new-type lilongneighborhood, Shanghai, 1932 – FAR=1.5

10. Mirador by MVRDV, Madrid, 20012005 - FAR=1.75

15. Historical center of Milan – FAR=2.96

16. Manhattan, New York, 19th century – FAR=3.5

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17. Linked Hybrid by S. Holl, Beijing, 2004 – FAR=3.82

18. Historic center of Genova – FAR=5.18

23. Design proposal for Philadelphia city center by L. Kahn, 1956 – FAR=13.6

1.2 Research aims and goals

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19. Plan Voisin project by Le Corbusier, Paris, 1922-1925 – FAR=7.2

20. Hong Kong residential tower - FAR=10

21. Bridge-building project for Tokio by K.Tange, 1960 – FAR=11.35

22. Kowloon walled city, Hong Kong – FAR=12

The aims of this research are the improvement of the actual knowledge on lilong typology and the dynamics that involve it during its history and today, to improve the knowledge about traditional and contemporary Chinese architecture in an increasingly interested western academic world, to develop some reflections on the high-density issue, and to propose the guidelines of a developing solution for areas in critical situations.

Beyond these secondary objectives, my principal research question will be: it is possible to study a new residential typology that reflects the positive features of traditional housing, and especially the ones of the lilong neighborhood, in respect of the contemporary social and economic needs?

Therefore the main goal of this thesis, both for the research and the design components, will be to discover the constant values within the residential typologies, deemed to be positive and functional, and to incorporate them into a housing prototype that embodies the positive legacy of the Chinese tradition but also meets the current economic and livable needs. The proposed solution will then be validated by comparing its parameters to the high-rise ones, which will guarantee a practical response about the feasibility of the design strategy.

Despite the dedication to the architectural project, is the methodology, more than any specific design outcome, that I hope will be appreciate.

As the professor Wu Liangyong said in its research, “one conclusion that can be drawn from the theoretical debates and actual experiences of this century of urban development is that the negation of traditional city form is part of the inevitable process of development, but it does not signify its end. Establishing a new city form is often more difficult than destroying the old. It suggests that now we need to reconsider the traditional relationship between building form and urban space”6.

Under the conviction that the good planning of the city will improve its livability, there is a need to study an alternative way to develop high-density urban housing that will respect the commune culture while responding to contemporary trend and needs. The proposed solution wants to represent not an external imposition, elaborated with impartial standards and a profit purpose, but instead an accurately studied set of suggestions developed in the consciousness of local heritage in combination with a critical foreign point of view.

Liangyong, Wu. Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing. A Project in the Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood.

(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999), 92.

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PART 2. CHINESE CONTEXT

2.1 A growing population

> Chinese population

The population of China reported in the last China Statistical Yearbook 2013 was reported as 1 354 040 000 people. This data has reported to have a positive growth since the reported value of 1949 of 541 670 000, when the population was less than an half. The number of Chinese people is still increase even if the growth rate has followed a decreasing trend since the 1980s, when the central government started to apply the family plan and birth control policies. After this the household size decrease, and if in 2000 an average family was made by 3.58 people, in 2012 was of 3.02, with the lowest data are registered in cities (in 2012 Shanghai 2.35, Beijing 2.53, Chongqing 2.67 people per household).

The national data of population density is 140 people over square kilometer, a number that is very different in the principal cities. In Beijing for example the data is of 1231 people over square kilometer, almost ten times higher, but in the national data we have to consider the large portions of uninhabitable territory and that half of the people live in the countryside.

Considering the composition of the population at the national level, the rural percentage has always been higher than the urban one, but due to the central policies that from the 1980s favoring the urbanization, in the last few years this proportion changed. It happened in fact that between 2010 and 2011 there was a change in trend accounting more than half of Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s total population as urban citizens, and precisely with the percentage of 51.27 in 2011 and 52.57 in 2012.

In 2012 the provinces host the higher portion of the population are Guangdong, Shandong and Henan with respectively 105 940 000, 96 850 000 and

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94 060 000 people, and the region with less inhabitants are Qinghai, Hainan and Tibet. Compared with the density data however we discover that the more densely populated areas are the urban ones, starting with the autonomous provinces of Macau and Hong Kong and report later the municipality of Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin. After the urban areas the denser provinces are Jiangsu, Shandong and Guangdong, that with the major cities going to constitute a coastal strip of high population density, a condition that decrease moving to the inner part of the country. The people’s living conditions improved during time, as shown by the data of life expectancy that in 1990 was 66.84 for male and 70.47 for female while after the census data of 2010 it was calculated as 72.39 for male and 77.37 for female, with an appreciable increase. In 2010 the data about the educational attainment were of 5 466 illiterate people (who are unable or have difficulties in reading) over 10 000, while only 893 people over 10 000 had a Junior College or higher qualification.

These data have to be read with a view to the China’s condition of developing country and knowing that in the urbanized area the proportions change in a favorable manner. In the National Population Census of 1964 in fact the illiterate people were 23 327 over 10 000 and the high qualified one only 416.

In 2010 the population was composed for the 91.51% of the Han ethnicity, even if the percentage people belong to a minority increased during time.9

For all the data: State Statistical Bureau. China statistical yearbook 2013. Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 2013. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ ndsj/2013/indexeh.htm 9

> Shanghai population The most recent estimate for the population of the city of Shanghai is about 24 151 500 people (which is 347,200 more than in 2012), with a population density estimated to be 3 754 people per square kilometer.

The average number of people per family is 2.7 with an household number of 5 243 100.

During its history, Shanghai’s population has continuously grown and decreased, due to political and economic reasons. The national influx was caused first by the political and war problems that originated around 1850s, followed by the increasing work opportunities created by the industrial and shipping activities development, and again between 1937 and 1941 because of the Sino-Japanese War, during which a lot of Chinese took advantage of the extraterritoriality principle in the foreign concessions. During the 1970s, due to a strong population control policy that was forbidding people to move from the country to the city, there was a light decrease in the number of Shanghai’s inhabitants and for a decade the number stationed around 10 700 000 people.

After that period, with the economic boom and the open door policy, the population started increasing again and it is still growing nowadays.

The number of inhabitants with a permanent residence permit in 2012 was around 14.27 million, while the number of migrant residents reached 9.9 million. These figures combined represents the city’s resident population.

The number of migrant residents, or floating population, increased in 2012, accounting for 85.7% of the total increase in population, but the growth has slowed down compared to previous years. An important aspect for this research is the data of agricultural and urban percentage of population. In line with the national trend, also in Shanghai the agricultural population is decreasing, in favor of the urban one, that in 2012 reached the 89.3% of the total population, the highest of whole China.

About the population density in the city, calculated as people per square

Shanghai total population

Chinese rural-urban population 1949-2012 Year-end urban Population

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employees at foreign ventures or experts or overseas students and relatives.

These international expatriates brought with themselves their own social background, cultural values and religious beliefs influencing irreversibly the character of the city. In 2012 the foreign population in Shanghai reached 170 192 people, occupying only the one per cent of the total city population but representing a strong importance on the city life.10

Shanghai population density

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kilometer, we can register a non-stop positive trend since 1986, starting with a value of 1 995 and almost double in 2012. Exploring the city we discover that the highest densities are in the central districts of Hongkou, Huangpu and Jing’an, with a density of 36 014, 34 448 and 33 570 respectively, which is ten times higher than the average value of the whole city. The districts of new development, such as Pudong New Area and Minhang, have a density just above the average, and the outer districts are the ones with the lowest density values.

Concerning the quality of life, we highlight some positive results reporting that the life expectancy of the population of Shanghai reached 82.47 years, the highest one in the whole China, and the infant mortality rate is continuing to drop. Shanghai was the first Chinese city to experience negative natural population growth, starting in 1993, in fact only about 8% of the population is currently under the age of 14 years, while about 22.5% of the population is over the age of 60 years. The educational level increased, counting 50 660 000 people with a high school degree in 2012, compared to 1990 with only 12 130 000 people.

The population of foreigners is another important aspect in Shanghai’s history. The foreign inhabitants in fact started considering the city as their second homeland, especially after the second or third generation, and named themselves the “Shanghailanders”. Their number grew year after year since their moving to China and is not stopping even now. The foreigners came from 50 different countries, led by the Japanese and British, but also other nationalities as Americans, French, Russians and Indians had always retained a significant stake. The actual majority of the foreign population came from Japan, Republic of Korea, United States, France and Germany and are mainly

For all the data: - Shanghai Municipal Statistical Bureau. Statistical Yearbook of Shanghai 2012. Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 2013.

- “Shanghai Statistic -上海统计” www.stats-sh.gov.cn. Last modified February 26, 2014.

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Shanghai foreign population

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2.2 Real estate trend

China per capita GDP 1978-2012

> Chinese economy On the magazine “The Economist” released on 11th October 2014 reported the updated data of the International Monetary Fund that ranks for the first time China’s economy as the world’s biggest in purchasing-power-parity terms, even if the historians point out that it is merely regaining a title that it has held for much of the ancient time.11

45000 40000 35000

yuan

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“The Economist- The world’s biggest economies -China’s back”, The economist, 11th October, 2014. Access: 30th October, 2014. http://www.economist.com/news/ finance-and-economics/21623758chinas-back 11

“Industry news- Industry market trends” Thomasnet.com, 14th March, 2013. Access: 30th October, 2014. http://news.thomasnet. com/IMT/2013/03/14/chinawidens-lead-as-worlds-largestmanufacturer 12

Barnett, Steven. “China: fastest growing consumer market in the world”. iMFdirect, the International Monetary Fund’s global economy forum, December 2nd, 2013. http://blog-imfdirect.imf. org/2013/12/02/china-fastestgrowing-consumer-market-in-theworld/ 13

For all the data: Shanghai Municipal Statistical Bureau.

Statistical Yearbook of Shanghai 2012. Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 2013.

14

Economist Intelligence Unit.

“Building Rome in a day. The sustainability of China’s housing boom” The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2011, 2011.

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year

The fact that China is among the world’s fastest-growing economies is proved by the statistical data. The national Gross Domestic Product registered in 2012 was of 51 894 210 million yuan, and so about 8 488 335 USD at the current conversion rate, with an average annual growth rate between 2001 and 2012 of 10.1 percentage point. The per capita GDP data is calculated as 38 420 yuan, 6 284 USD, with a value almost five time higher than the 2000 one.

In the national economy the primary sector occupies a place of diminishing importance compared to the historical census data while the secondary and the tertiary industries have conducted a growth in parallel. In 2011 the American Enterprise Institute record China as the biggest manufacturing economy overpassed the US12 and in the same year and the following one the International Monetary Fund report China having the largest consumption increase in the world.13 From a geographical point of view, the coastal region are the most developed one, especially for their favorable location for trade operations, and have experienced in recent years a strong process of industrialization. These developing thrust was boosted by an internationalization operation including the entrance in the World Trade Organization in 2001, and having concluded a trade agreement with the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) nations in 2010.

The total investment in fixed assets in 2012 was of 37 469 400 million yuan, of which almost the 97% in urban areas. Of the previous data of total national investments, almost the 20% of them are involved in real estate development, an operation that in 2012 has led to the completion of 3 355 030 000 square meters of building floor space, and other 11 672 380 000 under construction.

The most important data for this research is that over the 7 180 378 million yuan invested in real estate, 6 441 278 million, the 90%, are reserved for residential buildings. Of the total investment in urban areas, only the 14% are involved in reconstruction and technical transformation of old buildings, while

69% are used for new constructions, with the value of its floor space growing.

The number of flats of residential buildings completed in 2012 was 7 642 379, among which only less than 2% were villas or high-grade apartments. As a quality life parameter, we can report that the per capita gross living space in Cities in 2012 increased to 32.91 square meters.14 To give an idea of the amount of construction The Economist reported that “in 2010 new residential floor space completed in China reached 1.8bn sq metres, slightly less than the entire housing stock of Spain. Likewise, it took China approximately 15 years to build the equivalent of Europe’s entire housing stock.”15 All this construction of dwelling, compared with data such as the per capita GDP, result in an housing exuberance that put China in a condition of “overhoused” country. As argued by the Economist Intelligence Unit, it can be caused by a not mature set of law on property taxation, the reduced size of urban households and the low quality of the Chinese residential building, commonly known as “tofu project”, that have an average lifespan of 30 years.

At the same time the coastal provinces, the more urbanized at the moment, are facing a period of adjustment with a lower construction rate, moving to a stable but subdued long-term perspective. This will remove real estate from the leader driver role in Chinese growth, but will keep it away from the risk of a bubble about to collapse. The increasing demand of housing in fact is the future reality in dozens of lesser-known inland cities that will develop rapidly in the next years.

Investment in fixed assets in urban areas REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT 20%

OTHER 80%

New floor space by use 2012 OTHER 11%

OFFICE 3%

BUSINESS 12%

RESIDENTIAL 74%

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Shanghai per capita GDP

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> Shanghai real estate market Shanghai has been one of the fastest developing cities in the world during the last twenty years. Its Gross Domestic Product per capita in fact it has been growing non-stop since 1991, reaching USD 14 687 in February 2014 with a 7.8 percentage point growth over the previous year.

Beneath an overall profile, the main contribution of Shanghai to the national economy comes from the trading operations, being the largest port and industrial base in China, even if the importance of the tertiary sector in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy is increasing. Import-export activities shaped the development of the city and, in fact, the financial institutions of Shanghai were a by-product of this sector. Since the 1850s, a number of foreign countries opened a lot of banks in Shanghai while local financial institutions with national origins were established only later.

Beside its historical relevance, the real estate activity has become more and more important during the last few years. This is demonstrated by the increasing amount of investments in the construction market and it is visible in the city because of the construction of a new building at almost daily speed.

The total investment in real estate development in 2000 was 566.17 million yuan, which was more than triplicated in 2010 and still growing. Also the floor area of construction increased during the past decade starting in 2000 with 55.2 million square meters, reaching about 113 million square meters in 2010 and arriving to almost 133 million square meters in 2012. In both the investment and the construction data, housing is the most important item.

In 2000 it represented over 70% of the total real estate expenditure and still occupied 60% in 2012, within which we can identify the different percentages of residential typology built in the different years. Villas had a huge increase in 2010 compared to 2000, but in the last two years stayed on a stable value.

Apartments more than doubled their floor area from 2000 to 2010 and still increasing. Another trend important to report is the clear increase in number of high-rise buildings (more than ten storey), with a rise of 10 000 buildings

between 2011 and 2012, among which the highest percentage of high-rise refers to constructions with a number of floors between 11 and 15.

About the distribution of residential buildings in the city we can report that in general the Pudong New Area is the one with the highest index of new constructions, a condition caused by to the developing plan started in 1991.

The most of the new villas and especially apartments are localized there. The other important developing area is Minhang district, in the southern part of the city, both on the east and west bank of Huangpu river, that was always a residential pole in which and beside which the new towns were erected. In the rest of the city there is an equal growth of dwelling, and so it means that we will have a higher density in the smaller central districts.

Speaking about the situation of the ancient building in Shanghai, we can report the data concerning the number of square meters of old residential blocks suffered a huge decrease between 2000 and 2010, changing from 18 960 000 to 12 370 000, and still are diminishing in the last years. The old residential blocks are here intended as the different lilong neighborhoods and are mostly located in the central part of the city, with 54% of them in the three districts of Huangpu, Hongkou and Zhabei, spreading the remaining part over the big city area. It clearly emerges that it is actually preferred to build a new residential building instead of restoring an ancient one.16

For all the data: Shanghai Municipal Statistical Bureau.

Statistical Yearbook of Shanghai 2012. Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 2013.

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Shanghai floor construction area

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2.3 Housing policies Before the foundation of Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Republic of China in 1949, most urban housing was private rental in a system governed by landlords. The usual procedure of an housing developing project in fact include the municipal government establishment on an unified plan, the subdivision of the land, the definition of requirements for housing design, made by an architectural firm, and the sale of these design projects for construction to individuals or private real estate developers. During this period one of the main objective of the city governments was the substitution of slums residential area with new housing buildings for common people.

This changed after 1949 through a socialist transformation of the country, in which the majority of properties owned by big landlords where confiscated and nationalized. From 1953 also the housing construction went under the control of public institutions and began to be built by government owned enterprises. This transformation is symbolized by the work units, a comprehensive welfare provision system for public workers included the Timeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cover, 1985

Shanghai built floor area by function

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Shanghai residential floor area by type

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house as the basic item. Other elements in this welfare system include free education, health care, and a work place inside the community wall. For the provision of private employees housing a Municipal Housing Department was instituted. The problems of this welfare housing system was the lack of public investment in housing construction because it was not seen as a primary need in the national objectives, and so there was a shortage in availability and an overcrowding and poor situation was ordinary (3 m2 floor space per person).

This condition was exacerbated by the unequal distribution between the cadres of public officers and the working class people, among which there was discontent. All these issues, and especially the shortage in social housing, will have great consequences on the future market development that tried to supply to this scarcity.

The first important housing reforms were issued in 1980s, with which the pilot trial stage began, starting from some big cities and towns for tests. The original ban on land use rights transfers was abolished opened for the first time the possibility of the private property. To encourage people to own homes, rents were increased and heavy subsidies were disposed in the selling of public housing. During the same privatization operation, also private development companies was funded to build the new housing estates with an increasing investments in real estate. A special savings system was also introduced first in Shanghai and then in the all country, the Housing Provident Fund. Employees and employers have to contribute with a portion of their salary for the housing improvement. In this way the housing investment was not burdening only on the national balance but was shared between state, employers and individual households. The house was so turning from a “free good” to a commodity in a marketization operation, bring social and economic benefits. The first nationwide plan after the trial phase was the Housing Reform Plan of 1988. table taken from the book: Jie, Zhang and Junhua, Lü and Rowe, Peter G. Modern urban housing in China, 1840-2000. (Munich: Prestel, 2001), 199.

At the end of the 1990s, the new middle class have emerged as the key player in the housing market and housing policies focused on providing support for their ownership through different financial arrangements. In the same mechanism, commercial property developers emerged as the main housing providers in cities and towns establishing new standards for housing estates.

At the end of 2010 the 80% of private homeownership was reached and in 2012 the average floor space per person come to 30 m2. This modified scheme report some segregation problems in the city organization in which grow gated community of both rich and poor groups. Are now emerging new criticisms regarding price inflation, affordability of houses for the youngest generation, urban sprawl, land shortage and environmental costs.

According to the last Five-Year Plan of 2011, new policies involving the promotion and protection of ‘Basic Housing Rights of all people’ was introduced.

Municipal governments are responsible to help and assist low income families to acquire and live in a reasonable quality housing, which construction was planned in 36 million of affordable housing units, 10 of which already started at the end of 2011 among the main cities. Because of the lack of acceptable housing caused by the precedent policies, and being urbanization one of the main goal of the national program, a huge construction of housing in cities is still a need. But if the construction system is responsibility of private investors, whom first purpose is to make profits, the main kind of dwelling development will be anyway the one based on the desire of a few, causing an unregulated and unsustainable development of the city.

Having always been under the control of the central government, the housing system could not be studied by all the professionals. The modifications and the experiments in housing typologies were in fact elaborated by the central offices or universities design institutes and nationwide spread. Furthermore, because of the rapidity in the change of needs, the most effective and profitable way to solve the lack of residential construction was investigated, however focusing only on these main purpose at the expense of the architectural research in type and forms. “Overwhelmed by the task of housing enormous urban populations, residential planning in China has continued along the path of industrialized, “standardized” apartment block types arranged in the form of large housing estate”.17 Only nowadays the private studios claim the right to deal with this major design issue and start experiment with housing.

Liangyong, Wu. Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing. A Project in the Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood.

(Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999), 92.

17

Changing Shanghai, workers in a new high-rise residential area

The housing reforms introduced in the early 1990s represent the nationwide market reform phase. They included a comprehensive implementation in all urban areas and the correction of the main problems faced during the trial part.

Housing privatization was also a main element of these reform programs and by 1992 a national real estate marked was established. Another modification was the shift from a standardized homologated socialist organization to a market-based system where housing services matched the households income level, and so incentives for medium and high-income families and a remodeled social housing for the low-income ones. This policy of subsidized rental housing never come to a satisfactory operation due to some bureaucracy problem (the hukou system), and with increasing unemployment and lack of social insurance the gap between the rich and the poor widened, especially in cities. In particular, a large fraction of poor were migrants who cannot access to state facilities and so mainly rent peripherals houses in the informal sector.

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2.4 Preservation of the architectural heritage

Poor living conditions of lilong neighborhoods

> Chinese legislative development The reasons of a such persistence of the urban morphology in China have to be found both in the value that the historical precedent assumed, becoming prescriptive as much as a law, and in the symbolism that overlapped the urban shape and the immutable social structure. Also the conservatism principle of Confucianism ethic, on which the Chinese culture is founded, had great importance among all the architectural history. This caused the repetition of the settlement forms and its more technical aspects, but also the continuous mechanism of renovation and reconstruction of the ancient building with the same identical form. Even the construction in China in fact are part of a vital process and therefore rise and fall cyclically.

The preservation issue did not attract much attention during the 1949-1978 Mao’s period, when the soviet influence push the Communist Party to look at the historic buildings as the symbol of a feudal and capitalistic past. The idea was to replace them with a new socialist city. After this period, with the problem of housing scarcity and the perception of the past as an obstacle Changing Shanghai, comparison with the historical tissue and the new constructions

for the modern evolution, the destruction of numerous historical buildings and centers was planned. Scholars, architects and planners started a propreservation campaign that in 1982 led to the redaction of the first national preservation law, the “Law of People’s Republic of China on Protection of Cultural Relics”. It was at first restricted to the protection of singular buildings, and so in the later years some other regulations were enacted at the lower levels, and especially in 1994 the city of Beijing and in 1999 the city of Shanghai promoted the protection if the respective historical areas. Economic pressure from the developers and social problems related to the inhabitants living conditions and relocation have slowed the progress on the architectural conservation issue, but in 1998 the preservation planning section became an essential requirement for a city master plan and the people started to look at the architectural heritage as a memory to preserve. > Shanghai preservation approach In the contemporary era the perpetual mechanism of reproduction and restoration of ancient building, even of the humblest, have been broken and the ancient shape have been substituted by new imported models. It happened in fact that, under the pressure of the increasing demand of housing, the local government, and especially of predominant cities, saw in the private developing operations the best way to achieve the required density and the 36

37

Anyi, Wang. La canzone dell’eterno rimpianto. (Original title: 长恨歌) (Trento: Einaudi, 2011), 428.

18

Aerial view of Fukang Li neighborhood in Shanghai

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highest economic return, in a public-private coalition system. Given that many historical lilong neighborhoods, mainly located in prime areas of Shanghai, but today considered low-density squatter unhealthy settlements, have been razed to the ground at an astonishing speed. The residents usually had not the possibility to claim their rights on their properties and had to watch their houses being demolishing. They have been subsequently relocated in outer part of the city and only few were lucky enough to afford the cost of the new apartments built on the expropriated land. Today, lilong houses stand in sharp contrast with the new construction; as descripted by the writers Wang Anyi, “Amid the forest of new skyscrapers, these old longtang neighborhoods are like a fleet of sunken ships, their battled hulls exposed as the sea dries up.”18 In Shanghai the works on preservation theme started in the late 1980s, when the government started to survey historic buildings. In the following decade, these constructions were recognized and collected in some lists, including banks, hotels, theaters and lilong neighborhoods, to be protected by the law of cultural relics. At the same time the first project for the redevelopment and reuse of the historic buildings on the Bund started. At the end of 1991, Shanghai Municipal People’s Government published the “Measures for the preservation of historic modern buildings of Shanghai City”, that divided the historical heritage in three categories: cultural relics noticeable at a national level, cultural relics of Shanghai City, and historic buildings present in the city of Shanghai. The last category of “historic building” was a new kind of distinction because included those buildings which are still in use. Then the preservation of historic heritage has been extended from individual buildings to districts.

This kind of rigid protection, that prevented the inhabitants to change even the smallest detail of their homes, while keeping the traditional architectural features and the community felling of identity, blocked the improvement of lilong construction quality, considering them as immutable as a monument and not as a place to live as actually they are. The actual living conditions in lilong neighborhoods in fact are problematic. Because of the unsolved overcrowded situation and the unsuitable conditions of old plants, the hygienic conditions doesn’t rich the common standard and, despite the pleasant community life, people desire to move to a better place because “there are cracks in the streets and along the walls, the alley lamps have been smashed by mischievous

children, the gutters are clogged, and foul water trickles down the streets.

Even the leaves of the sweet-scented oleanders are coated with grime”.19 Some adaptation project were studied and adopted in the city, but the modifications made to increase the floor area ratio, and so to be socially and economically sustainable, radically changed the original structure and scale of lilong blocks. An example is Fukang Li neighborhood (福康里), a residential block located in the Jing’An district, a central one, in which the district government and the private enterprise wanted to keep the residential function with the same number of households. It resulted in the complete destruction of old buildings and the reconstruction of three rows of terraced houses, multi-level condos, and two tower blocks, organized according to the original lilong fish-bone layout. A variety of high quality communal spaces, as gym, playground or tea house, were added, and the local residents were actively involved in the planning process. The final result was a general improvement of the residential environment, but the traditional features of lilong were lost.20 Despite this apparent efforts in the preservation field, the reality was that the Historic Preservation Law for both Beijing and Shanghai only took effect in the early 2000s. Moreover, this law only protected some areas considered as small representative gems, leaving freely pursue the destruction process in the remaining area of the city. Shanghai in fact experienced massive demolitions in the 1990s due to the 365 Plan announced in 1992 by the Sixth Communist Party Congress of Shanghai. It defined the destruction of 3.65 million square meters of old housing deemed inappropriate for living.

In 2000 this objective was achieved with 27 million square meters of housing demolished, 640 000 households relocated, and 1 billion square meters of new housing constructed.21 In parallel the municipal government identify the potential value of rehabilitating old buildings, both as economic return and as a promotional campaign of the modernization of the city. Han Zheng, the mayor of Shanghai,

Xintiandi main plaza

Anyi, Wang. La canzone dell’eterno rimpianto. (Original title: 长恨歌) (Trento: Einaudi, 2011), 299.

19

for further information: Wu, Fulong. China’s emerging cities.

The making of new urbanism.

(Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 216-220.

20

For the data: Shanghai Municipal Statistical Bureau. Statistical Yearbook of Shanghai 2004.

Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 2005.

21

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One of the exuberant and crowded Tianzifang street

Quoted from: Architecture & Design, Aug 2005 issue.

22

Bracken, Gregory. Aspects of Urbanization in China Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou.

(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 150.

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in a speech of August 2004 said that “development and new construction is one kind of progress, but preservation and adaptation is also another kind of development”.22 The lilong houses, with their uniqueness among all China, are seen as the perfect symbol of an important city not only in the present and future time, but coming also from a glorious past. Pursuing this preservation policy, the appearance of the buildings were maintained but a new series of function were introduced in them giving birth to new kinds of economic operations. The first of them was the renewal of the lilong in which took place the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China, just next the Xintiandi new project area. The entire project was promoted by the Hong Kong big investor company Shui on Group between 1999 and 2001, for the foundation of a new type of retail district based on the reproduction of that cozy feeling typical of the small European historical centers. It means there was a top-down development of the area imposed by a big power over the inhabitant’s willingness. In the project in fact there is not housing space, but only commercial and cultural activities, mainly of which are foreign brands, that transform the residential block in a famous tourist spot. “The goal of my design - said Benjamin Wood, the chief architect of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for Xintiandi project - is not to preserve the past but to bring some elements of the past to distinguish the project from other retail shopping districts of the present.”23 The case of Tianzifang neighborhood is another example of lilong redevelopment. This block is located in Luwan district, not far from Xintiandi, but reporting a different structure including lilong residences but also some small factories built there in the 1930s due to the proximity to a former river.

In late twentieth century, because of the economic change of the city, the

factories were dismissed and were left vacant, but since 1998 these spaces were used as art studios and all the block was involved in a general restyling.

Despite these operations, in 2000 the area was sold to a developer company that will demolish the ancient buildings to construct new high rises. In 2004 the city government, influenced by the positive result of the urban transformation, decided to keep the creative industrial park and the surrounded residential area. It was therefore planned a rezoning of Tianzifang with a mixed-use strategy that encourage the arrive of tourists attracted by commercial, cultural and leisure activities and causing the rent of the original residential spaces.

While the exterior aspect of the buildings did not change radically, the function was, even if the bottom-up mechanism of preservation, sprung from the local district governmental body and inhabitants, sign a modification in people’s approach to the city’s architectural heritage.

Another redevelopment case is Duolun Road community located in Hongkou district. It was a traditional Shikumen block who’s main feature was the presence of the quite residential Duolun Road that during the 1920s and 1930s attracted writers and other literates, becoming a prominent cultural center.

Despite its golden past, during the twentieth century it became a common degraded low-income residential area, and so the local government in 19981999 carried out a regeneration project based on the rule “rebuild it as the former”. To restore the original cultural life a modern art museum (Duolun MOMA), art galleries, creative studios and some cafes were located along the main road, transformed in a pedestrian way. In this operation the top-down development started by the municipal organization triggered a mechanism of regeneration even in the adjacent residential areas allowing the permanence of some residential units.

These new approaches including the infill of the residential areas with other functions promote the local economy but destroy the original urban structure.

What makes lilong such a characteristic location is not the architectural features or the community dynamism, but the combination of them. If we preserve only the first of them we will create a fictitious setting for a more pleasant walk. The conflict between preservation and development is here crucial in appreciate a threatened typology as lilong.

Duolun Lu main road with renovation interventions

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2.5 Architectural history > Ancient era In pre-modern Chinese period, architecture was seen mainly as a practice and its knowledge was diffused and shared by technical manuals and building regulations. The main Chinese features, such as the sloping roof or the wooden tangle of beams, were here descripted and explained. As a consequence, the outlook of a building did not belong to the personal character of the architect but represented the dominating culture of the period. It is in fact to underline that the Confucianism heritage of collectivism in Chinese society always hunted the peculiarity of the single architect behind the “national form”, namely the prevalent style of the period, unlike a strong sense of individuality belonging to the western countries. Due to the expansion will of foreign powers, however, in the 18th century some scholars, mainly Christian missionaries, spread their influences with the introduction of the perspective theory and the related science of descriptive geometry.

A construction detail taken from the Liang Sicheng’s rielaborated manual of Yingzao Fashi (construction norms) of 12th century

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> Pre-modern era During the period of the Nationalism power led by Chiang Kai Shek, between the Imperial fall and the Communist power, the opening of treaty port cities and the establish of foreign concessions implemented the western contamination. An exchange in building techniques, as the introduction of load-bearing brick walls, modern facilities, urban infrastructures and new types of public buildings happened. The colonialism opened also a period of eclecticism in style and especially in coastal cities new western-shaped buildings raised. Is this the period of the Bund construction and the art deco experience of László Ede Hudec in Shanghai. With the new political season, at the end of 1920s some important public operations started, as the Sun-Yat-Sen Mausoleum competition and the Nanjing and Shanghai redaction of new town plans. These works showed a growing interest in modernism issue but also an insufficient maturity in dealing with the topic, also because of the complicated cultural situation. The opening to the west caused also the emergence of new figures of mixed Chinese-foreign scholars, educated mainly in Europe, Japan and US. The main representative of this category is Liang Sicheng, who studied at the University of Pennsilvanya, that defined a “Chinese Native Style” in his posthumous manuscript “Chinese Architecture, A Pictorial History” of 1954.

He will held a central role also in the formation of a communist identity.

Park hotel designed by Lazlo Hudec in West Nanjing Road, 1932-1934

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Sun-Yat Sen mausoleum in Nanjing, 1926-1929

Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1959

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> Maoism era With the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 architects formed abroad were called upon to serve the government for the definition of a “socialist realism with national forms”. It was a mixture of Beaux Art style, preferred over the modernism seen as a symbol of capitalism, with the introduction of Chinese traditional components. This was the character diffused by the new flag and emblem but also with the design of the Ten Grand Buildings in Beijing, a series of public constructions erected for the tenth anniversary of the Republic foundation, including Beijing National Art Gallery and the Mausoleum of Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square. So meanwhile in the city important structures were on going, another important influence modified the territorial rural organization, the Soviet model. The danwei autarchic community became the basic cell of the Chinese system. These units were typically gated compounds inside which employment, housing, schools, welfare and commerce took place. They were strong controlled by the central government, who followed their evolution from the planning stage entrusted to the design institutes. The Maoism period ends with the Cultural Revolution, began in 1966 and lasting ten years, that represented a tabula rasa in Chinese cultural background and a stop in the exchange and evolution of art and architecture.

> 1980s With the Deng Xiaoping seizure of power in 1978 the “Open Door Policy” was gradually introduced in the Chinese reality. In 1982 the New Constitutions proclaimed a new freedom and modernization with a liberalized economy and in 1988 a land free market was allowed. This permitted the organization of private construction enterprises and the possibility of private clients in the architectural field. This new opening admitted also a new circulation of foreign ideas in the country that stimulated on one hand the revival of a neonational style based on the post-modernism movement of abroad, predicated by the design institutes and so the mainly spread, and on the other hand the use of the international style for high-rise building inspired principally on the American model, but never blossomed at a critical level. Another important aspect of those years of transformation was the impact of a growing industrial and commercial sector reclaiming space for their structures. Great part of old cities were demolished creating a new urban kaleidoscopic scenario made by high-rises, rural landscapes, iconic buildings.

Beijing West Railway Station, opened in 1996 but deisgned ten years before

Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing designed by I.M. Pei in 1979

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> 1990s till now Despite the eighties policies, only in the nineties the country’s structure and economy were ready for a complete boom. Internationalization and urbanization operations were planned, through which the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games intervention and the 2010 Shanghai Expo organization are the most publicized examples. Under a more markedly architectural aspect, two main tendencies are recognizable. The first one is practiced by famous foreign architects that, with the favor and support of the central government, who want to be recognized as a worldwide power, construct iconic buildings for national companies. These foreign firms can freely experiment the latest tendencies of this super-modernism24 with a richness in resources elsewhere impossible. Is this the case of Rem Koohlaas’s CCTV building and Herzog & De Meuron’s National Olympic Stadium in Beijing. The second trend is the one related to the research of an authentic Chinese modernity. The younger generation of Chinese-born architects, who had the possibility to study abroad, are now coming back to their motherland opening new firms (operation possible only after the mid-nineties) and reclaiming space for an architecture based on itself, free from any social or political constrictions, rich in thoughts and reflections on tradition, space and material. Some of the main exponents of this category are Ma Qingyun, Li Xiaodong, Liu Xiaodu, Xu Tiantian. Are their works and publications that are attracting the global attention on a Chinese growing architecture, a fact remarked by the assignment of Pritzker Price in 2012 to Wang Shu. Luyeyuan stone sculpture art museum designed by Liu Jiakun architects in Chengdu, 2001-2002

Zhu, Jianfei. Architecture of modern China. A historical critique.

(Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 117.

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> Foreign influence and contemporary situation External influences in China were a constant factor but affected by higher waves of presence, such as the colonialism era or the Deng Xiaoping period.

It is precisely in the eighties that the new opening create a pluralism after the one-view national closure during the soviet influence. Chinese architects were able to study their subject from different points of view, but only few of them had a real understanding of these architectural theories and soon this enthusiasm was translated in a direct iconic imitation, as it happened in all the other aspects of Chinese life. As Charlie Xue said in his book, China “has accepted the lifestyle of the developed world, from sneakers to skyscrapers”19.

This feeling of “foreign superiority” come both from the historical defeats suffered at the beginning of the 20th century and the condition of tabula rasa after the Cultural Revolution, when the Chinese culture was something like forgot.

There were also some misunderstandings in the perception of Chinese architecture by the foreign professionals and vice versa. In the period just after the opening of borders, some selected works and books were published and highly promoted, thus giving only a partial view of the complex outside reality.

An example is the Kevin Lynch’s book “The image of the city”, translated and widely diffused in those years and still teach in the universities. In a similar way foreign architects worked in China tried to understand and interpret the local traditional style, but resulted in a series of project showing an incomplete integration of Chinese traditional features or typologies. The 1989 Shanghai Center of John Portman, with its big red columns in the hotel entrance, reflects this condition.

Despite these initial problems, foreign firms were invited directly by the government to study projects in China, supporting its modernization and exporting an international image of the country. Famous and powerful firms are attracted to East because of its special situation of developing country with favorable economic conditions that give them the possibility to work on

CCTV headquarters in Beijing designed by OMA,2002

Xue, Q. L. Charlie. Building a revolution. Chinese architecture since 1980. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 46.

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The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Shanghai designed by Jhon Portman and Associates in 1990

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project that might not even been possible in their home countries, meanwhile the local government is pleased to favor these operations that create new international contacts. In this context of development are labeled a lot of joint project, studied by external studios and practically elaborated by Chinese design institutes, a solution to correctly adapt the foreign design to Chinese regulations, but also a government tool of control.

Obviously the main places interested in this international operation are the main coastal cities, and especially Hong Kong, being in the first phase under the British control, resulted to be the Chinese gateway to the West. The city in fact became the operational base for international firms and the architecture developed there was the example for the mainland’s one. These are the places and conditions in which OMA, Zaha Hadid Architects, SOM, KPF, Steven Holl Architects, and many others international firms had the opportunity to work.

Instead of the positive step forward in modernization, some problems related to the condition of Asian cities, the environmental consequences of development or the social contradiction between urban and rural society, started to raise and be discussed. Particularly devoted to these topics is the new generation of Chinese architects that nowadays form the working world, founding their own studio, becoming the delegate of a foreign firm or entering in design institutes and university institutions.

To this group belong firms for the most part based in big cities and founded, around the turn of the millennium, by sixties-born architects, in part expatriated to study, in part not able to leave the country.

Among others, in Shanghai there is Atelier Z+, which designed the building of College of Architecture and Urban Planning in Tongji University, MADA s.p.a.m., founded by Ma Qingyun, now Dean of the Department of Architecure at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Scenic Architecture, that built the widely published Zhujiajiao Museum of Humanities & Arts. In Beijing remarkable firms are standardarchitecture, founded by a Portuguese and three Chinese architects, one of whom is the filmmaker Zhang Ke, DnA_Design and Architecture, the only studio to be run entirely by a female architect, Xu Tiantian, and Studio Pei-Zhu, which counts among its most famous projects the Blur Hotel in the capital. Through the country other important firms are

Urbanus in Shenzhen, that are conducting a deep analysis on urban villages, Jiakun Architects in Chengdu, held by the polyvalent figure of author-architect Liu Jiakun, and Amateur Architecture Studio, founded by Wang Shu and his wife Lu Wenyu.

Despite the distance in location and the differences in education, all of them are “small flexibly operating practices, that win competitions, maintain international networks, appoint interns from around the world, and do precisely what sets their fellow architects worldwide apart: represent the labs that are developing architecture today”.26 If in 2006 Charlie Xue thought that “only a few have explored deeper layers of expression that are inherently Chinese”27 it is clear to all that they started work on it, improving their knowledge and consciousness about their past and future. Are they in fact carrying out the research of a truly Chinese architecture, discovering common characters in the treatment and importance of materials and especially in the use of stone (Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Museum by Liu Jiakun, Ningbo History Museum by Wang Shu), in the relation between indoor and outdoor spaces through the traditional typologies (Jade Village by Ma Qianyun, UrbanTulou by Urbanus) and in the resident’s perception and identification in the architecture (Zhujiajiao Museum by Scenic Architecture, Songzhuang Artists’ Residence by DnA_Design and Architecture), topics investigate in this research.

Cachola Schmal, Peter and Wenjun, Zhi. M8 in China.

Contemporary Chinese Architects.

(Berlin: jovis Verlag GmbH, 2009), 4.

26

Xue, Q. L. Charlie. Building a revolution. Chinese architecture since 1980. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 130.

27

Marriage Registration Center in Nanshan designed by Urbanus, 2011

preservation of the architectural heritage

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PART 3. SHANGHAI HOUSING 3.1 siheyuan traditional dwelling The siheyuan 四合院, literally “home with four sides”, is the configuration of the traditional dwelling that belong to the northern China culture and is typical of Beijing city of XII century. Even if this usual localized recognition, the siheyuan origin come from the basic rural house used in all China, made by a wall fence in which the one room accommodation of the farmer was leaning against the north wall to dominate the farmyard.

The dwelling layouts, based on length, width, opening and screenings juxtapositions and relations were regulated by the orientation and the fengshui principles. Such as philosophies and considerations affect also the subsequent addition of volumes, making the Chinese house an archaic example of what we now call “passive architecture”. Basic regulation in this regard are the north-south orientation of houses, causing the east-west flux of the roads, the use of a massive technology for the outer walls, the constant location of the main rooms facing the south to let the sunshine heating the house, but the shielding of this side with a veranda for the summer season. The basic solution was then declined to fit better each climatic situation; for example in the Southern provinces the courtyard houses were long and narrow to screen from the stronger sunlight and keep the house cooler.

The siheyuan is distributed all over the country and, with its history of over two thousand years, ranks first among Chinese vernacular dwellings. It represents beauty, wealth and luxury in the dignified life of the traditional enlarged family, reflecting its religious and moral principles. A courtyard house is built on the Aerial view of a traditional siheyuan in Beijing

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and flowers, bounded on the north by the main building and flanked by the eastern and western wing rooms, with all the one-floor buildings linked up by verandas. The main building on the back includes the principal rooms facing the south and is reserved for the elder members of the family, while the wings provided accommodation for the younger generations. The principal room accommodate an altar and is the center of the community life, where the family’s spirit is symbolized in respect to the ancestral. On its sides there are two auxiliary rooms and behind it there is a second smaller and narrow courtyard, after which stands a second building. It was made by a kitchen, some storage rooms and a toilet and close the house structure. The structure was usually made with brick walls and a frame of timber beams while the roof was usually of gabled type. The floor was paved with square tiles and the decoration was mainly added with carved gates and artistic rood ridges.

Traditional Beijing’s roofscape

idea to have a solid external mass, that produce a closed outer appearance with usually no windows, and a spacious internal void, the core of the system. The dwelling is based on a symmetrical layout with a main north-south axis where only the main gate brake this order. Usually in fact the entrance gate is placed in the southeastern corner of the house, the wind corner, in accordance with principles of fengshui and the “Eight Trigrams” that consider that direction the most auspicious one to bring wealth to the household.

The central position of the entrance door along the central axis, was reserved for the higher grade of the society, such as the imperial family, as we see in the Beijing Forbidden City. > housing layout In ancient China all the dwellings were divided in three principal elements. The base, made with beaten earth and then covered with stone, needed to ward off the rising damp to the wooden columns; for a common house it was around fifty centimeters high and its size was almost like the roof dimensions. The masonry had usually load-bearing function in the small residential buildings and it was construct with beaten earth pressed in wooden formworks. The coverage was made by the traditional two slopes pitched roof with the typical curved shape; it had a wooden beams structure covered by tiles made with cotto or other local materials.

While enter in the house, the first element is the main gate, after which we find a crafted screen wall, the yingbi, having the traditional function of warding off evil spirits but helping also to keep the privacy of the household.

Between them it was therefore to create an open air vestibule in connection with the road via the external door and that had, over the practical function of deposit of the means of transport, especially that of filter between the privacy of the family life and the public activities of the district. Turning westward we will cross the front courtyard, a small and narrow space which gives access to the south to a row of daozuo, rooms serving as guest or storage rooms, private school, or even dormitories for servants. To the north of the front yard we will pass through the middle gate in the longitudinal axis. This inner passage is defined by two elaborated pillars that will be a symbol of the entire compound. Behind this gate there is the main courtyard, enriched with trees

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plan/section 1:200 53

the home had usually at least three courts of which the largest could come to occupy 40% of the total area of the residential lot). Conversely a western residence, as the domus romane, is constructed on the idea of a full and compact volume. Despite this and some other differences, between these two model can be seen some analogies in layout, orientation and evolution. One example of all, the parallelism between the central role of the atrium with the impluvium as outdoor space in the domus, and the crucial element of the courtyard in siheyuan.

3D model of one-courtyard siheyuan

> neighborhood layout The urban texture that siheyuan constitute in the city is not a simple juxtaposition of urban blocks, as it happens with lilong neighborhood in Shanghai, but is a more complex system of streets in connection with the all city, as it is clear in the Beijing structure. The urban blocks in the capital in fact are bigger than the Shanghai irregular ones, counting around 700 meters each side, and are not defined by any wall as it happen in Shanghai. This create a more open city structure with a neighborhood that have a direct access to the street. Along these edges are located the small traditional shops and facilities while other retail activities are carried out in the inner lanes by people offering their own products or services.

It follows a clear hierarchical organization that include a big main street (DaJie) of 19-36 meters wide, a small street (Lu) of 10-18 meters wide, and the small alleyway named hutong of 1-9 meters wide. The city structure is based on the traditional orientation principles that usually dispose the Lu, small streets, along the north-south axes and the hutongs along the east-west one.

Sometimes smaller hutongs can run north-south in between housing plots, that with this organization are arranged north-south lengthwise and having the main rooms facing the south. A hutong is the alleyway that lays in between two rows of siheyuan in parallel lines and occupies the same social role as lilong in Shanghai. As well as having a circulation function, the lanes serve as open spaces providing venues for daily community activities but cannot hold commercial activities protecting its original residential function.

The accretion method of siheyuan in the urban block can be reported in two basic solutions. The first one regard a growth in depth with the addition of principal courtyards in between the peripheral service’s ones. In this way the house will occupy the complete depth of the city block. This cluster layout of individual buildings centering on a series of courtyards is typical of the Yangtze Delta region and is still visible in the structure of the water towns, for example Suzhou. In the private house more courtyards can be created in parallel with the growth of the family, connecting the existing structure with the added part thanks to new corridors and walls. The other solution is the juxtaposition of another courtyard cell next to the previous one having both facing the street. The dwelling is doubled along the secondary axes and while the austere principal courtyards were used for the ordinary operations, the new yards accommodated the recreational activities for the guests.

In its organization the siheyuan is completely different from a western house because it is founded on the importance of outdoor space, in a principle of alternation of full and void connected by side paths (just think of the fact that 54

> densification During the central decays of the last century ah high speed process of urbanization caused the densification of siheyuan system. The rooms in courtyard houses were assigned to different residents or even subdivided in more units to accommodate more families. This phenomena included the growth of self-made housing volumes as informal unit extensions constructed by residents to deal with overcrowded living conditions.

This urban process, connected to a social and economic transformation, is called “pluris-familiarization”. As reported in the study of G. Caniggia28, who studied these phenomena in the Italian cities, it may occur in three different manners: the “re-modulation” of the original house in smaller units, each including one courtyard; the “fragmentation” of the plot with the penetration of the public roads, usually along a central axes; the “insularization” of the block with the widening of the existing volumes at the expense of the former court, thus forming autonomous units against the boundary. Due to these spatial modifications the inner courtyard was transformed from a private outdoor room into a semi-public route of circulation. An additional operation spontaneously happened is the “tavern-isation”, id est the creation of commercial structures along the external side of the blind wall with the transformation of the street in a community place (a typical feature of lilong neighborhood, see next paragraph). These are all transformation still clearly visible in Chinese cities since the modern transformation started just a couple of century ago and because in some inner area the original dwelling typologies are still built and used. Analyzing these process of densifications, they can be recognized as an evolving process which has led to the overcrowding condition recorded nowadays in big cities as Beijing or Shanghai. Over the years of urbanization, when the bureaucratic difficulties and the presence of a new real estate market undermined the traditional organization of dwelling, the siheyuan gradually evolved in the dazayuan (“big mixed tenement”) and started to disappear.

Gazzola, Luigi. La casa della Fenice. (Roma: Diagonale, 1999), 79.

28

Beijing’s orthophotos

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> siheyuan summary HOUSING - number of floors: 1 - m2/person indoor : 20.6 - m2/person outdoor : 23.2 - void ratio : outdoor space 53%, indoor space 47% - architectural principles : full and void alternation among the north-south axes with a first open-air space; south orientation of main rooms; double symmetry on the two central axes; separation of the main and the service functions in different buildings; the unit is enclosed by a wall.

- elements : The house is surrounded by a wall (1) that has the important role of separate the private space from the public one. It is broken by the entrance gate (2) that is the only visible element of the house from the outside and represent the wealth of the household. The first service courtyard (3) need to store the means of transport and to receive the minor guests. The arcade (4) have the function to filter sight of the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities in the court from the entrance. The main courtyard (5) is the core of the dwelling and is the main open air space that accommodate the daily routine operations. The main building (6) is the indoor part of the house that is more used because it include the jian (7), the main room for familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s events and the shang (8), the side rooms used both as bedrooms or for leisure activities. Beside the main building there is another courtyard, the backyard (9) that is necessary to separate the dirty functions and improve light and ventilation, at in the end there is another service building (10) that incorporates kitchen, bathrooms and other facilities.

- outdoor spaces : the most important space in the house is the main courtyard, while the front courtyard sign the entrance in the house and the back courtyard has mainly a technical function.

- common spaces : main courtyard as the family core for everyday life, central room as center for religious or important ceremonies.

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NEIGHBORHOOD - dwelling/km2 : 1008 (half area with one-court layout and half with two-court layout) - people/km2 : 19 840 (one-court layout: 3 households/dwelling; 5 people/household / two-court layout: 5 households/ dwelling; 5 people/household) - FAR : 0.4 - void ratio : distribution space 4%, building coverage 96% - functions : housing in the core 86%, commercial on the edges 14% - urban principles : east-west hutong orientation; a fish-bone-like circulation system; attached houses - elements: The small street, Lu (1) connect the inner part of the block with the main street crossing the area north to south. It have a distribution function and hold the commercial and service activities and for these reasons is wider than the hutong.

The hutong (2) are the side lanes with an exclusive residential function in which the community share the everyday life. They are thinner than the main alley and are usually east-west oriented to maintain the north-south orientation of the main rooms of the house.

The dwelling unit (3) is organized in parallel rows divided by the hutong. It is the private space of each household that occupied both the indoor and the outdoor rooms. It have the main entrance gate on the south side and in the south region is present also a back exit facing the water canals.

The small commercial and service activities (4) are located on the borders of the urban block and are accessible from the outer roads. They can also rise as punctual intervention inside the residential area.

- outdoor spaces: hierarchical organization of the streets. The outer roads serve the vehicular traffic, small streets can be crossed by cars but are mainly for the inhabitants needs, while the hutong are for the pedestrian traffic only. There is no gate or restrictions around the urban blocks.

- common spaces : hutongs are the place of social interaction

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3.2 Lilong neighborhood > birth Lilong 里弄 housing originated as a response to the needs of a rapidly growing Shanghai at the end of the nineteenth century. Between 1855 and 1865 over 110,000 Chinese had moved from their homes to Shanghai, seeking refuge from political conflicts in neighboring areas. In 1853, in fact, the Small Daggers Society, a rebel group proclaiming support for the Taiping administration, invaded the Chinese walled part of Shanghai and in early 1860s the Taiping Rebellion extended to the nearby regions creating even more panic through the population. These conflicts caused an urban migration from the countryside to the city of Shanghai and especially into the Foreign Settlements because those areas were considered an extraterritorial space under the jurisdiction of foreign powers, and therefore safer. At the same time, the rapid economic development of Shanghai attracted tens of thousands of poor villagers in search of job opportunities. In a short span of time, the overcrowded Foreign Settlements started to experience serious problems concerning public security, sanitation and taxation. This alarming situation ignited a hot debate on whether the International Settlements should continue to accept Chinese refugees. Despite these problems, in 1854 the regulation between Urban edge of a lilong’s neighborhood

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embassies and local government, encompassing a segregation policy in the city, was abandoned for a more profitable mixed residential solution. At that time foreign developers migrated to Shanghai with the only purpose to make money, so they quickly realized the financial opportunities created by the new residential policy and started investing in the new building market, focusing less on all other trades. As Edwin Smith, a British merchant, stated: “ my goal is to make profit in the shortest time possible by leasing land to the Chinese at a 30 to 40 percent profit rate. If this is the best way for me to collect money, we don’t have other choices”29. As a result, foreign investors started constructing on the International Settlements the cheapest and quickest kind of houses possible at that time. The buildings had a wooden structure, arranged in rows facing a narrow path joined with a main street. This type of housing was built in a similar pattern as the by-law dwelling used less than a century earlier by the same investors in London during the Industrial Revolution, but also incorporated the knowledge and experience of the native builders. These buildings, quickly constructed to provide temporary shelters for the growing population, can be considered the predecessor of lilong housing.

This cheap dwelling rapidly became popular among the incoming refugees for whom life conditions were of secondary importance and hence, by the end of 1863 there were already 8,740 wooden houses in the center of Shanghai.

Each estate was given a name ending in “li” 里, meaning neighborhoods, that when combined with the word “long”弄, meaning lanes, clearly describes an urban housing form which has characterized the urban structure of Shanghai.

At that time, the area of higher concentration of lilong was between the International Settlement and the French Concession. Another area of high dwelling development was in the north part of the city, over the Common Concession, meanwhile industries and exchange functions was distributed along the sides of Huangpu River. With the course of time the lilong typology spread in other cities like Nanjing or Hankou meanwhile in other port cities similar solutions born from the local traditional houses (bamboo-tube houses in Guangzhou, tapered-end-style houses in Tianjin).

In the course of lilong evolution, according to the official classification made by the Housing and Land Bureau after 1949 and confirmed by Shen Hua in his “shanghai lilong housing” of 1987 , we can distinguish five housing types and two neighborhood structure (shikumen and new-style) described below.

Shanghai lilong roofscape

Zhao, Chunlan. “From shikumen to new-style: a rereading of lilong housing in modern Shanghai” in Narrating Architecture – a perspective anthology (Madge, James and Peckham, Andrew, 453 - 481. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 460.

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> old shikumen lilong Around 1870, out of fear of fire and to improve housing conditions, the municipal council banned the construction of new wooden houses. It started demolishing some of the existing structures and began using the “old shikumen lilong” typology for the new constructions till 1915. Because of their brick structure in fact they were easier to maintain, despite an higher initial cost. This compact solution perfectly responds of a situation of high land price, limited land availability and explosive population growth. Its layout was connected to the siheyuan dwelling solution, and especially to its adaptation of the Southern part of Yangtze River, and were used by rich extended families coming from the surrounding provinces. Because of their inadaptability to the current lifestyle and standards, very few of them still exist nowadays.

Remaining neighborhood examples in Shanghai are the quarters of Hongqingli, Mianyangli, Hongdeli.

Stone gate decoration of lilong’s entrances

1 courtyard 2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 outdoor corridor 5 kitchen 6 auxiliary room 7 terrace

old shikumen lilong - ground floor plan

old shikumen lilong - first floor plan

case, generally located at the back of the central room, led to more bedrooms on the second-floor of the house. Behind the main structure, the secondary building comprised of a kitchen and storage-rooms, above which was usually placed a wooden terrace. Bathrooms were not yet included in the house layout and the inhabitants used a night-pot, typically placed in the open-air corridor, collected and emptied every morning by farmers. Heating, gas and electricity were also not available, but when possible a well was placed in the backyard to provide water for the family’s daily needs.

The internal courtyard played two key roles in the everyday life, it functioned as a meeting place for the family members, and it helped to mitigate the internal microclimate with a lower percentage of sunlight insulation and a N

The house was modulated on the structural grid. The structural bay changed in relation to the place and the time of adoption.

In Shanghai, for lilong houses, it measures about 3.6 to 4.2 meters, and so the standard three-bay solution corresponds to 12m in width, while the big five-bay solution to 20m.

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> housing layout The typical dimensions for a private dwelling was roughly twelve meters in width on the east-west axes30 and a depth of sixteen meters on the northsouth axes. Therefore, the resulting area was about 200 square meters. These dimensions are relative to a three-bay solution, the standard one, but there were a lot of exceptions to this typical size. For instance, five-bay or seven-bay houses were built to accommodate larger or richer families and some doublebay units were also made to better match the dwelling line to the plot area.

The old shikumen lilong house was a mixed technologies structure with hollow bricks walls and wooden beams supporting a sloping roof of wooden tiles, a particular characteristic of Chinese architecture.

Typically the old shikumen lilong house had a symmetrical layout out to the left and right of a middle axes and its body was divided into two parts. The main block was made by a two-story building, with the major rooms facing the internal courtyard, and the accessory part was a one-story service construction located in the rear. The two parts were connected by a narrow open-air corridor of 1.2-1.5 meters in width. On the ground floor, the house comprised of a vast living room, known as Jian 间, placed along the central axis and directly facing the internal courtyard, and two secondary rooms, known as Shang, placed beside it, and used as bedrooms or library. A stair-

LEGEND gate/wall outdoor residential commercial

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OLD SHIKUMEN LILONG

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OLD OLD SHIKUMEN LILONG OLD OLDSHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN SHIKUMENLILONG LILONG LILONG

NE N NE N

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Crowded inner lane of a lilong’s neighborhood

cross-ventilation system. For this reason the fenestration was mainly present in the internal side of the house, rather than on the outside part, which kept its integrity. Removable French windows were used to divide the Jian and the internal courtyard. Light and ventilation on the rear side of the house was provided through the open-air corridor. Each house was accessible both from the front secondary lane, as a formal entrance, and the back secondary alley, for services operation such as cooking. > neighborhood layout The layout of an old shikumen lilong plot generally included several internal rows of housing units and an outside street façade reserved for commercial activities. At this first stage of the lilong development, the average number of units per district was around thirty, which was quite a small number compared to the upcoming period of greatest development of this type of housing. The whole neighborhood was surrounded by a 5.4 meter-high brick wall, with a prominent opening by the main lane surrounded by a stone frame in which wooden plank doors were encased. This element, being the collective image of these housing areas, gave rise to the name “shi-ku-men” 石库门 that in Chinese means stone gate door. The plot was oriented with the main lane on the north-south axis, in accordance with the Chinese traditional philosophy, and secondary lanes running east-west. In this way the main spaces of the house can occupying the best orientation to the south. Because of the developer’s will, who want to obtain the maximum profit from the construction operation, the alleys were limited in number and narrow in size. It was not good for lightning and ventilation, that because of this relied mainly on the inner courtyard, but it was also a problem for traffic and fire control. > densification Around 1900, with another boom of population, rear chambers, some of which even in a two floors solution, were added to the basic old shikumen layout. In this way the backyard shrank considerably worsening the living conditions. To improve light and ventilation the external wall and the storey height were lowered, increasing the sense of openness. To deal with this situation of increasing demand of housing, some one-bay and two-bay solutions appeared meanwhile the biggest dwelling were found suitable for separate leasing by room. With the addition of more volume the construction coverage of residential plot reached the 80%.

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> new shikumen lilong During the second decay of the nineteenth century, because of the further growth of the local industries, a very large number of peasants from the countryside were attracted to Shanghai. Foreign investors quickly recognized the potential high profitable investment in the housing market and established real-estate companies founded using assets from the western world. With the booming of its population, Shanghai needed new dwellings, and the new shikumen lilong typology represented the ideal solution for a massive housing development. The new typology of houses was studied to maximize the use of space, both for a better internal plan and a neighborhood organization allocating a higher number of people in a smaller area. The units were smaller, not only because of the increasing density condition, but also to conform to house to the transformation in the family composition started after the collapse of the Chinese Empire in 1911, when the original enlarged family started to separate itself in smaller cores going to constitute the kind of family we know today.

In 1949 the new shikumen typology accounted almost for half of the built lilong areas. However, with this higher densification and the shortage of services, the quality of life of the inhabitants decreased and most of these constructions were later demolished. Neighborhood examples in the city are Siwenli, Jianyeli, Meilanfang, Zhundeli, Tongfuli.

Some two-bay solutions were also adopted, but due to the increase of dwelling unit, the dimensions of the structural bay shrank from 3.6 – 4.2 meters to 3.2 – 3.9 meters, decreasing the living surface.

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> housing layout The unit layout was reduced to a one-bay solution31 in width and to 12 meters in depth. This causing the reduction and the shift of the central courtyard. Its size shranked to 6 square meters and it was located in front of the entrance.

The separation between the main and service zones was maintained with a small rear yard, and also the symmetry in plan was kept. Both the front and the back buildings increased their height of one floor, giving to the new shikumen lilong a vertical layout. It happened then that the accessory building was a two-storey construction that permit an higher sunshine and ventilation to the main three-storey building. With the same aim of improve

1 courtyard 2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 outdoor corridor 5 kitchen 6 auxiliary room

new shikumen lilong - one jian layout - ground floor plan

- first floor plan

- first floor plan

new shikumen lilong - two jian layout - ground floor plan

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N LEGEND gate/wall outdoor residential commercial

OLD SHIKUMEN LILONG

NEW-TYPE LILONG

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> new-type lilong During the 1920s, diversified form of urban housing started to appeared in Shanghai, based both on traditional models or imported forms. The booming city’s economy, the growing number of investments and operations and the increasing gap between rich and poor, originated a new middle class with different residential needs. In response to this social transformation, new types of housing and neighborhood layouts started to be used in the city. Generally they were smaller dwellings in clustered solutions, mixing the traditional typology with urban needs. More flexibility and interior variations were allowed and the leading modern facilities, such as heating, electricity, gas and sanitary system, were added. Regard the business operation, these houses were usually constructed by companies in a acquired area and then sold or rent to the single family for whom built their own shelter was surely more inconvenient.

GARDEN The new-typeLILONG lilong, responding with the adaptation to these new needs, was massively built between the 1920s and the 1940s, becoming the most successful lilong dwelling and representing the most prominent type of lilong GARDEN GARDEN LILONG still present inLILONG the city. Most of them are still in use nowadays and were recently GARDEN GARDEN LILONG LILONG improved thanks to the municipal rehabilitation program. The development happened mainly in the west part of the city and examples locations are Jing’an Villa, Huaihai Village, Changle Village.

Shanghai lilong roofscape

living conditions, fenestration along the outside wall was increased to make up for the reduced inward courtyard. In this evolution an higher functional separation was introduced and the ground floor was used for public functions, meanwhile the upper ones were used for family private activities. During this operation some extra spaces were created in order to allow the first tenant to sublet some rooms ensuring itself an additional income.

In order to consolidate the structure, the slabs were made with reinforced concrete while the bearing walls were still made with holed bricks. For the traditional pitched and gabled roof a wooden structure was kept.

Another feature of new shikumen lilong was the introduction of ornamentation and carvings in different Western architectural styles.

NEW SHIKUMEN LILONG> neighborhood layout

APARTMENT LILONG

to the old-shikumen block size, even reaching hundreds of houses in the NEW NEW SHIKUMEN LILONG NEW NEWSHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN SHIKUMENLILONG LILONG LILONG biggest lots. The percentage of land coverage reached 70-80%, but despite

APARTMENT APARTMENT LILONG APARTMENT APARTMENTLILONG LILONG LILONG

The neighborhood dimensions and the number of units increased compared

this densification the new shikumen lilong organization appeared more spacious. This happened because the external brick walls were lowered and were planned wider lanes. The main ones reached 4 meters for the passage of cars and the branch ones were enlarged to 2.5 meters. It produced a more reasonable and well-organized distribution system. Commercial function still remained along the external perimeter serving the neighborhood’s people.

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> housing layout The housing unit was usually a three-story building, with three possible internal layouts between 150 and 300 square meters: the one-bay, the oneand-half bay and the two-bay solutions. If the width was highly variable, the depth was reduced to ten-twelve meters to have better light and ventilation.

The inner courtyard was transformed in a front garden with the installation of a railing or a framed structure instead of the front brick wall. The use of the indoor spaces became more rigid reflected a western organization but keep the division of a main and secondary volume thanks to a tiny yard. The bearing walls were still made of bricks while the floors were constructed with wood from reinforced concrete. The sloped wooden-framed roof still remained as a traditional element but some flat roofs started to appear. Other changes in construction techniques were the replacement of wooden part by steel bars and the abandon of handmade bricks in favor of machine made ones or reinforced concrete structure. The resulting elimination of some of the traditional elements made this new lilong once again more similar to a Western house.

The one-jian layout measured 4.2 meters by 12 meters, and still had the entrance yard and the back open-air corridor between the main and the service parts. At the ground floor there was the common function, with the persisting proximity between the living room and the courtyard, meanwhile in the upper floors there was the private bedrooms, bathrooms and library.

Balconies and roof terraces were added on upper floors to increase the sense of openness. The layout still maintains the double access from the front and the back.

Trying to solve the problems of the lack of privacy and comfort, the one-andhalf jian solution increased the outdoor spaces reaching the dimensions of 6.3 meters by 12 meters. In this way the space for circulation raised, the functions was organized in a more effective solution and the physical features of the building improved. At the front, the half jian was used as a circulation corridor composed by an entrance and a stair-case; at the back, it was used as a service courtyard next to the kitchen instead of the open air corridor.

1 courtyard 2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 outdoor corridor 5 kitchen 6 auxiliary room 7 terrace 8 bathroom

new style lilong - one and half jian layout - ground floor plan

new style lilong - two jian layout - ground floor plan

- first floor plan

- second floor plan

- first floor plan

The two-jian layout increased in dimensions till an 8 meters by 12 meters solution and was enriched with better plants. With its better proportion between width and depth an higher lighting and ventilation were allowed. At the ground floor was introduced a dining room, a bigger and more livable front garden and a garage for the richest families. The stair case was located at the center of the service part in connection with kitchen, storage and bathroom improving the circulation fluidity. This was extremely useful when the house was inhabited by different households that could access without disturbing the other ones. new style lilong - one jian layout - ground floor plan

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1 courtyard 2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 outdoor corridor 5 kitchen 6 auxiliary room 7 terrace 8 bathroom 9 garage

- first floor plan

- second floor plan

> neighborhood layout Thanks to technical improvement the outdoor wall defining the urban block 67

> garden lilong With the increasing influence of the western culture and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the new rich community, a new residential typology was developed and used between 1930s and 1940s. This solution, in fact, was studied for wealthy European families or Chinese high officials who wanted a bigger garden and a private house in a more prestigious location within the city. However, because of the small demand and the high selling price, this solution was adopted only in a small scale. The most of the neighborhoods were built in Xuhui and Luwan districts and site examples are Liyang Garden and Shangfang Garden.

N LEGEND gate/wall outdoor residential commercial

OLD SHIKUMEN LILONG

NEW-TYPE LILONG

OLD OLD SHIKUMEN LILONG OLD OLDSHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN SHIKUMENLILONG LILONG LILONG

NEW-TYPE NEW-TYPE LILONG NEW-TYPE NEW-TYPELILONG LILONG LILONG

and the stone profile were lost and in substitution an iron gate was installed.

The width of the internal secondary lanes increased to allow the passage of cars and another important change there was in the drastic reduction of outer commercial units, that leaved some houses in a direct contact with the main streets. In this way, the neighborhood became a more open structure in connection with the city. As a result of the optimization of spaces organization the density remained high, with about 50-60% of site coverage. > densification When the unit was shared between two families, each of them would occupy a floor of the house and the internal layout could be modified to guarantee an independent entrance for both of them. Each households had an outdoor space because of the presence of the entrance courtyard and of a balcony NEW SHIKUMEN LILONGat the upper floor. Despite an improvement in facilities, the overcrowding were problematic and to perform the daily chores the inhabitants frequently used the side lanes. Even if this community lifestyle can be considered a joyful NEW NEW SHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN LILONG LILONG way to share daily activities and space, it is also to recognize the life standard NEW NEWSHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN LILONG LILONG Elevation of a garden lilong problems. in Shanghai

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> housing layout On average, the size of the dwelling was limited to two bay in plan and three or four storeys in height. The number of internal functions and the layout GARDEN LILONG complexity increased.

As an example, three different entrances were planned to be in the house:, the main one for the guests, the side one for the garage and occasionally for the owners, and the back one for the servants. There GARDEN GARDEN were also a LILONG lotLILONG of transitional areas added, such as meal-preparation area or a GARDEN GARDEN LILONG LILONG lounge beside the living room. Without any dimension restrictions the rooms were freely oriented and the number of windows increased on any side of the walls. The garden increased in importance because more used in the family life and some windows with a special scenic view on it were introduced. The houses were also characterized by the presence of the newest technologies and a keen international style that enriched the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape. One significant change in this sense was the diffusion of the flat roof. > neighborhood layout The neighborhood was made by detached or semi-detached houses in a lilong pattern. Garden lilong occupied larger lots and had a lower density, because

new style lilong - one jian layout - ground floor plan

APARTMENT LILONG

- first floor plan

1 courtyard 2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 outdoor corridor 5 kitchen 6 auxiliary room 7 terrace 8 bathroom 9 garage 10 dining room - second floor plan

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> apartment lilong At the same time, from 1920s to 1940s, another kind of dwelling was developed to accommodate small middle class families and foreign staff. With the continuous increase in price of real-estate properties, insufficient quantity of land and the growing demand for housing, the new buildings started growing in height counting four to six storey. Functional and financial factors made them simple and practical to be built by foreign companies, that usually rent these middle-grade and high-standard apartments to the private client.

Examples area in Shanghai are the Shannan Village and Garden Apartment.

N LEGEND gate/wall outdoor residential

OLD OLD SHIKUMEN LILONG OLD OLDSHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN SHIKUMENLILONG LILONG LILONG

View of an apartment lilong in Shanghai

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of the bigger outside spaces. The private outside area, in fact, increased in dimension reducing the function of the side lane to circulation and therefore reducing the opportunity for social interaction. This was a result of the change in life style among the richest part of the population, who enjoined the tranquility of the private single garden. The lower block density was also caused by the enlargement of streets that used only for car circulation needed a bigger width. It resulted in an organic and regular distribution design of principal and minor streets.

NEW NEW SHIKUMEN LILONG NEW NEWSHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN SHIKUMENLILONG LILONG LILONG

> housing layout The layout of the building included common lobbies, staircases, elevators and corridors that distributed the entrances of the single units. Each of them had an area between 40 to 150 square meters, comprising a living-room, a kitchen, a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms, with more expensive solution having a dining room, a servantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room and a garage. The private apartment was designed to be on a single floor unlike the other lilong housing typologies.

GARDEN GARDEN LILONG LILONG The structure of the buildings was strengthened using machine-made bricks GARDEN GARDEN LILONG LILONG for the first-floor walls and reinforced concrete for the other parts. The internal walls were made of hollow bricks to make them lighter and easier to build and the flat roof with waterproof layer became a common solution. The outer aspect of the building was influenced by western model including some foreign ornamentations.

2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 outdoor corridor 5 kitchen 7 terrace 8 bathroom

apartment lilong - row-patterned model - ground floor plan

APARTMENT APARTMENT LILONG APARTMENT APARTMENTLILONG LILONG LILONG

apartment lilong - row-patterned model - standard floor plan 70

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According to the internal organization, the apartment lilong houses were divided into three categories.

The row-patterned model had a rectangular shaped layout including two to six apartments on each floor and two to three units per landing. Beside the main staircase a secondary one was added as service access or emergency exit, connecting the facilities area every two units at the back of the building.

In the unit layout the living room and the bedrooms, the main spaces, were usually south oriented.

The dot-patterned building model had a more thin and compact layout that created a slimmer volume. They had only two apartments on each floor, sharing the front and the back access. Free on the other three sides they could have windows and balcony freely oriented.

The butterfly-patterned building model is an improved dot-patterned solution.

It had four apartments each floor, connected by a central distribution core, with a north oriented access. Attached to the main staircase there were all the service functions while all the main rooms were placed on the more exposed corner. A secondary staircase was added for every two units. apartment lilong - dot-patterned model - ground floor plan

- standard floor plan

> neighborhood layout Some apartment lilong building stood alone while others were developed together in a compound solution. When by themselves usually went to fill holes in crowded neighborhood, when united in a complex the plot layout resulted more open to the external city. The hierarchy of alleys in fact went lost because of the decreasing number of buildings in the area and because of the bigger space needed between them. The outdoor environment of the ground floor free area was improved trying to substitute the previous social role of community interaction of the branch alley. When along the street, the first floor of the building could be reserved for commercial activities.

2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 outdoor corridor 5 kitchen 7 terrace 8 bathroom

N LEGEND outdoor residential

apartment lilong - butterfly-patterned model - standard floor plan

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LILONG LILONG PROTOTYPE LILONG LILONGPROTOTYPE PROTOTYPE PROTOTYPE ilil ililmio mio prototipo muro mio mioprototipo prototipo prototipoha haha hailil ililmuro muro muro attorno attorno sole due porte attorno attornoe ee esole sole soledue due dueporte porte porte oppure oppure tutte strade seoppure oppuretutte tutte tuttele lele lestrade strade stradesesesecondarie condarie sono sono aperte??? aperte??? condarie condariesono sonoaperte??? aperte???

OLD OLD SHIKUMEN LILONG OLD OLDSHIKUMEN SHIKUMEN SHIKUMENLILONG LILONG LILONG

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> lilong principles

Anyi, Wang. La canzone dell’eterno rimpianto. (Original title: 长恨歌) (Trento: Einaudi, 2011), 5.

32

Jie, Zhang and Junhua, Lü and Rowe, Peter G. Modern urban housing in China, 1840-2000.

(Munich: Prestel, 2001), 293.

The birth of lilong not only reflect the modification in urban needs, but also confirm a change in the Chinese society. If the big siheyuan could accommodate the traditional enlarged family, the smaller surface of lilong can hold a reduced household, a transformation that in the urban context is translated in a change from a family-based courtyard-centered living to a communitybased alley-centered one. In the second model, the emphasized use of the inner alleys is favored by the fact that there is not a specific communal space designed in the neighborhood and the crowded life conditions pushed the people to occupy the outdoor space in a way that still characterizes Chinese cities. With the first preservation laws enacted between the end of 1990s and the beginning of 2000s, the value of these area was unanimously recognized and this particular feeling perceived in Shanghai lilong was better defined and safeguarded. Here an extract from the novel Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai by Wang Anyi, a contemporary writer from Nanjing, in which she describes the lilong atmosphere: “Looked down upon from the highest point in the city, Shanghai’s longtang – her vast neighborhoods inside enclosed alleys – are a magnificent sight. The longtang are the backdrop of this city. Streets and buildings emerge around them in series of dots and lines, like the subtle brushstrokes that bring life to the empty expanses of white paper in a traditional Chinese landscape painting. As day turns into night and the city lights up, these dots and lines begin to glimmer. However, underneath the glitter lies an immense blanket of darkness – these are the longtang of Shanghai”.32 The typical Shanghai landscape, made by walled residential blocks defining the streets, full of narrow and busy passages between the lilong rows, spread through the multiform and surprising urban textile, covered by sloped grey and red roofs, is here recognized as a community heritage, as was already made for the ancient hutong neighborhoods in Beijing.

Common in Shanghai are also the mixed lilong typologies quarters. This happened on one hand because of the extremely rapid succession of patterns in the city’s development, and on the other hand because of the different requirements of the several social groups in the city landscape. The lilong had the capacity to adapt itself to the changing society’s needs. Studied under this and other aspects, the evolution of lilong perfectly summarize a more common history of evolution of urban housing typologies and is because of this important characteristic that is being studied more frequently by scholars and institutions.

The lilong typology has been here investigated in depth since it reflects the crucial steps of Shanghainese housing evolution, absorbing over time the changes in lifestyle of its inhabitants. As told by Peter G. Rowe in its book, “almost without exception, subsequent transformation of a particular housing type did not result in a new type altogether. The one exception was the lilong housing, which seems to be anchored in both the western terrace house and the Chinese courtyard house traditions, but is a relatively distinctive housing type in its own right”.33

other fields a minor importance and bounding the house to a mere place to sleep. In this situation the living standards worsened and the soviet-influenced solutions of danwei and communes spread all over China. “Although a large number of houses had been built since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the level of urban housing had not been improved greatly, primarily because of the initially poor conditions of cities, and a rapidly growing population”.34 After the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, in which only some apartment buildings were constructed to solve the lack of housing, the urban dwelling conditions were disastrous because of the government will of reduce the urban population favoring a rural model. “Starting from the middle of the 1960s, the urban planning and housing management system suffered serious damage. Offices at various levels were paralyzed or closed. In November 1960, at the Third Conference for National Planning, it was proposed that there would be “no urban planning for the next three years”. […] Funds for urban maintenance were badly misappropriated and urban housing […] fell into disrepair.”35 Only with Deng Xiaoping’s intervention the conditions improved.

34

Jie, Zhang and Junhua, Lü and Rowe, Peter G. Modern urban housing in China, 1840-2000.

(Munich: Prestel, 2001), 158.

35

Jie, Zhang and Junhua, Lü and Rowe, Peter G. Modern urban housing in China, 1840-2000.

(Munich: Prestel, 2001), 172.

Shanghai’s orthophotos

> an historical gap

33

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To explain Chinese housing evolution it have to be pointed out that between 1950s and 1970s no major improvements were made. The main goal of Maoism policy was the economic development of the country, giving to all the 75

> lilong summary HOUSING - number of floors : 2.5 - m2/person indoor : 22.5 - m2/person outdoor : 5.3 - void ratio : outdoor space 15%, indoor space 85% - architectural principles : the entrance is in the courtyard and so the first space of the house is a void; the first indoor room is the main room and is south-facing; the main building is higher and covered by a sloping roof; the service rooms are separated from the main spaces with a backyard; the unit is based on the structural bay modules; the unit is enclosed by a wall.

- elements : The wall (1) is the element that separate the private space from the public or semi-public area; the main courtyard (2) represent the entrance and the private outdoor space for leisure or service activities; the main room (3) is the place for the family activities as dining, chatting and is the most public part of the house; the secondary rooms (4), including bedrooms and storages, are smaller and located in the middle of the plan or at the upper levels; the distribution system (5), usually a narrow stair, lays behind the main room in a central position; the backyard (6) permit the light and ventilation provision and divide the dirty facilities from the main building; the service rooms (7), as the bathrooms and kitchens, are at the back of the unit, on the north side, and are served by a service access; is sometimes present a balcony (8) for the big or the three-floor layouts.

- outdoor spaces : The courtyard is the private outdoor space belong to the traditional dwelling system. It is used by the family for the everyday activities and is the element that guarantee a basic light and ventilation supply. During time its dimensions changed and if first was reduced to a minimum technical space, then it evolves in the private garden and at the end disappeared with the growth in height of the building.

In the lilong we typically found a front courtyard and a back lightwell.

- common spaces : The shared spaces are the main room and the big courtyard.

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NEIGHBORHOOD - dwelling/km2 : 5 873 - people/km2 : 46 984 (1 household/dwelling; 8 people/household28) - FAR : 1.3 - void ratio : distribution space 25% (lilong lanes 47%, main lanes 53%), building coverage 75% - functions : housing in the core area 78%, commercial on the outer borders 22% - urban principles : east-west lilong orientation; a fish-bone-like circulation system; attached houses; walled urban block - elements: The gate and the wall (1) are present at every scale in the city: the city wall, the border surrounding districts, temple or parks, the edge defining the domestic courtyard. Those are repeating the traditional plan of Chinese cities. The wall is also a division between the outer city and the inside residential area that keeps the security of the community. The entrance gate is part of this control system but represent alsoan architectural and decorative element.

The main lane (2) of the block is the connection of the inner core with the rest of the city. It is joint with the secondary system of side alleys, but does not accommodate any social function. It is larger than the branch lanes for technical and distribution reasons.

The side lanes, the lilong, (3) are the ones connecting the residences that overlook it with the main path and then to the outer city. These alleys are the most important semi-public relational space because are high used for community activities that cannot find space in the indoor rooms. They are thinner than the main alley and are usually east-west oriented because of the north-south orientation of buildings.

The dwelling unit (4) is organized in few row of at least five attached houses, having both a front and a back access.

Originally thought as the reproduction of the traditional housing model, during the densification process its dimension gradually shrank and its outdoor spaces filled with extra volumes.

The ring of commercial and service activities (5) faced the outer roads and is accessible only from this external circulation. They served mainly the neighborhood community but accommodate also facilities for the other parts of the city. These small-scale businesses were usually small food and tobacco shops, family restaurant, everyday services.

- outdoor spaces: hierarchical organization of the streets with few main roads for the vehicular traffic and secondary lanes for the pedestrian circulation. There is not a specific community space neither a green area.

- common spaces : lilongs are the place of social interaction.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Back in 1932, one extended family occupying one unit was typically composed of oneto-two elderly, two adults, one-to-eight children and oneto-two servants, resulting in a family size ranging from four to thirteen people. We assume an average family size of eight.â&#x20AC;?

Density atlas website, url: http://www.densityatlas.org/ casestudies/profile.php?id=60 36

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“Tower block” Wikipedia. Last modified October 11th, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tower_block 37

“High rise” Oxford dictionaries.

Last modified 2014. http://www.oxforddictionaries. com/definition/english/highrise?q=high+rise 38

Craighead, Geoff. High-Rise Security and Fire Life Safety.

(Burlington: Elsevier, 2009), 2.

39

Craighead, Geoff. High-Rise Security and Fire Life Safety.

(Burlington: Elsevier, 2009), 12.

40

Hong Kong view from Victoria Peak

3.3 High-rise compound Before describe the contemporary situation in Shanghai it is to define what is an high-rise building. There is not an international agreed definition, but an high-rise, or tower block, can be described as a multi-story structure in which most occupants depend on elevators to reach their destinations.

For Wikipedia “is a tall building or structure used as a residential and/or office building“.37 In the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary it is defined as “a building having many storeys”.38 In the U.S., the National Fire Protection Association defines a high-rise as being higher than 75 feet (23 meters), or about 7 stories.39 In China a high-rise is defined by codes as a building with more than 10 floors or above 24 meters in height over ground level.

In the history of tall building the main evolutionary step happened with the change in function. If during the century the highest building were recognized as a civil or religious symbol of power, at the end of the 19th century they started to become office. As known this passage happened in America with the invention of elevator and the introduction of steel frame in structure, in response to a rapid population growth and an industrialization process. The 10-story Home Insurance Building, built in Chicago in 1885, is commonly considered to be the world’s first skyscraper. Then this term started to be use also for tall hotel buildings and finally in the 1920s buildings over 15 floors were constructed as residential tower. Then “Skyscrapers began to appear in Shanghai, Hong Kong, São Paulo, and other major Asian and Latin American cities in the 1930s, with Europe and Australia joining in by mid-century.”40 Some 8-10 storey residential buildings were erected in Shanghai, but only during the 1970s they knew a great diffusions because promoted by the central government as a method to prevent the waste of arable land. These first kind of high-rise were studied with an industrialized method of construction , as the sliding molded-panel technique, and ere usually slab blocks organized vertically keeping the first floor reserved for commercial activities, and horizontally with an open-air corridor to serve the highest number of families.

An example in the complex located in North Caoxi Road.

North Caoxi Road prefabricated neighborhood, Shanghai

After the 1978’s social and economic reform, a more capitalistic-oriented China were outlined and also the real estate market changed. An enormous booming in housing development was caused by a new era of urbanization.

The purpose of housing shifted gradually from a supply of welfare housing to a satisfaction of a demand of higher comfortable dwelling. The lifestyle of Chinese people changed over a more westerner model and so they asked for more living space and modern facilities. Urban-residential projects were developed on the slogan “high standards with relatively low cost, high quality with relatively low space standards, complete functions in small areas, and a pleasant environment despite limited land coverage”.41 Despite a heated discussion about the adoption or not of the high-rise typology, the apartment solution were confirmed also by the government standard regulation. As a natural passage in the evolution typology, from the apartment lilong the western clustered model was adopted. > housing layout Instead of the slab layout, the point tower solution was preferred because of the possibility of not having a continuous shadow reaching a FAR higher than 2. These 20-30 storey buildings were designed to have the maximum profit. New housing layouts were introduced to obtain an higher density and to fit the different family sizes. They employed a more delineated functional separation and each of them included higher comforts such as one or two bathrooms, a separated dining room, a big living room. Some special complex were studied for specific social groups, for instance, high-standard apartments for returned overseas Chinese. Because of the not mature application of new technologies a south facing for main rooms and a correct orientation was kept to ensure good lighting and ventilation. To improve these living conditions, to deal with the reduction in size and to increase density, the general plan of the building was improved adopting concave-convex layouts. Inside the building the common spaces were abolished because the distribution core was positioned at the center and it only included the staircase and the elevator vain. Staying between the apartments body, this distribution space could not even had any opening and so it was a completely unsuitable space for social interaction. To improve the quality perceived by the residents, the form of traditional architecture were borrowed and used to decorate the complex.

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41

Jie, Zhang and Junhua, Lü and Rowe, Peter G. Modern urban housing in China, 1840-2000.

(Munich: Prestel, 2001), 230.

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1 inner courtyard 2 main room - jian 3 bedroom/library- shang 4 distribution 5 kitchen 6 auxiliary room 7 terrace 8 bathroom

high-rise building - y-shaped layout - standard floor plan

> neighborhood layout The urban block considerably increased in dimension integrating other functions. In the area were introduced schools, bank and communal facilities grouped in one or more civic centers while on the outer border of the plot, or even along the main internal roads, few commercial buildings were constructed. The road plan was studied to reduce the possibility of traffic and tried to separate the unsafe proximity of vehicles and people. The sunlight restrictions caused the departure of the buildings leaving huge spaces between them. To improve the general image and feeling of these clusters solutions with mixed building typologies or construction’s heights or different architectural features were tried. Due to these operations the neighborhood layout changed from the walled lilong block innervated by small paths, into an open big-scale complex. At the ground floor was common the presence of a garden or some outdoor facilities, used mainly by elderly people, but despite the elaborated use of landscape to improve the environmental quality, the absence of a real sense of community was perceived between inhabitants. As reported in a study organized by the Pratt Institute of New York, some collected experience revealed the lack of neighborhood interactions: “Shi reports that there is actually little individual interaction between residents. For example, the interaction between his household and his next door neighbors does not go beyond saying hello and exchanging a few words when they meet in the hall”.42 Being directly connected with the outer part of the city, also the sense of security went lost. To mitigate this deficit some iron gate were installed and a set of guardians were paid to control the incoming and outgoing traffic.

Yaojiang International Plaza compound, Hongkou district, Shanghai

high-rise post-modern compound in Hongkou district, Shanghai

“Experiences” Housing Shanghai.

Last modified 2014. http://ericengdahl.com/ housingshanghai/experiences/shi20-undergraduate-student/

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high-rise building - butterfly-shaped layout - standard floor plan 80

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> high-rise summary HOUSING - number of floors: 28 - m2/person indoor : 43 - m2/person outdoor : 0 (balcony 2.6) - void ratio : outdoor space 0 % (balcony 6%), indoor space 100% (with balcony 94%) - architectural principles : south orientation for main rooms; irregular shape for living standards; central distribution core; common entrance hall; retail space on the ground floor.

- elements : The commercial space (1) is mandatory placed at the ground floor to have a direct connection with the outer streets from where the clients arrive; only if previous defined, in the bigger mixed-use blocks, there are some buildings specifically reserved for office and facilities function. The entrance hall (2) is the first space of the residential part of the building and, not considering the distribution, the only shared by the inhabitants; being the first room to welcome the residents and the potential buyers it is well furnished to create an atmosphere as welcoming as possible.The distribution (3) is composed by at least two elevators each building, one main staircase and usually a service that connected the service rooms of the house with the ground. It is located in the core of the building because it do not need neither a large amount of light and a continuous air exchange. The residential unit (4) is the proper dwelling, the private part of the building; there are from two to six units each floor connected by the distribution core and sharing the landings, and each of them must have a big exposed surface for a good light and air supply.

Each unit is developed on one level and include the part with the main rooms (5), including mainly the living room and the bedrooms, that is facing south, and the service rooms (6), that are the bathrooms, the kitchen and the dining room, oriented to north. The average unit is also designed with one or two balconies (7), one for serving each part. The flat roof (8) is the last level that host the plantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s equipment.

- hierarchy of outdoor spaces : If the balconies are present, one served for the main rooms for leisure activities while the other has a service role.

- common spaces : The level of privacy between different household increased so in the building the only shared space is the empty entrance hall, while in the unit itself the main rooms are used by the all small family group.

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NEIGHBORHOOD - dwelling/km2 : 39 620 - people/km2 : 106 975 - FAR : 3 - void ratio : unbuilt space 79% (distribution path 8%, generic outdoor 71%, leisure area 21%), building coverage 21% - functions : housing 95% , commercial 5% - urban principles : free circulation system; big outdoor leisure space at the ground floor; commercial activities on the edges; placement of buildings so that they do not shadow each other; gated and monitored urban block.

- elements: The iron gate and railing (1) located all around the urban block, and the security personnel, are used to maintain the safety of the community. Nowadays in these neighborhood the wall are not used in order to have a more openwestern model.

The internal circulation (2) is reserved for private car of the inhabitants or for the officeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s workers. The streets are narrow and leading to the ground or underground parking.

The pedestrian paths (3) are the smaller passageways that conduct to the residential buildings. They connect the parking and the gate (even if sometimes the entrance passage is shared with the vehicular traffic) to the entrance hall of each construction.

The common open-air space (4) is the equipped area of the ground floor shared by the compoundâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inhabitants. It can include a little outdoor gym, a fountain, a green space with seats, a swimming pool. The area is mainly used by children and elder people.

The buildings (4) have a small footprint area but a huge growth in height. They are disposed in the area according to the shadow and orientation regulations. Their irregular shape is also due to the light and ventilation needs.

The commercial and service activities (5) still faced the outer roads but are mainly facilities serving all the citizens and not exclusively the community. They are obviously moved to the lowest floors and are in a reduced percentage.

- outdoor spaces: inside the urban block there is not a strict organization of streets and paths and the hierarchy of streets is lost. The spaces all have a technical function.

- common spaces : the ground floor garden is a community place but is not fully used by the inhabitants.

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3.4 Tendencies of contemporary housing design

Porosity Block project by Steven Holl, Chengdu, 20072012

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In an era of demand-driven housing design, reflecting the increasing disparity between rich and poor and the extensive range of lifestyle, the number of dwelling typologies raise in a disproportionate manner, especially in comparison to the one-solution Chinese housing history.

After the 1980s reforms the residential areas were all planned and organized in clusters because it was seen that the neighborhood cohesion improved both the psychological welfare of inhabitants and the management of the community. To strengthen this organization was introduced the “neighborhood committee”, that is a resident’s non-governmental organization of 100-700 households used to manage and serve themselves. To this is flanked a newborn specialized estate-management company specialized in the maintenance of residential areas.

In mid-1990s the new housing reforms specified minimum floor area standards defining five points for the construction of a comfortable house: excellent habitability in terms of energy performance, comfortableness in having an adequate unit’s equipment, structural safety, durability, and finally an economic analysis for establishing a viable cost. These requirements fall in a general trend of growing per capita living space, studied to have more area for the leisure activities and improved equipment, but a better functional separation among the different functions (day/night, public/private, clean/ dirty). During this renovation, it was not fixed a maximum flat area to leave more freedom in the development of new unit’s layout for different social classes.

More interest has aroused the environmental condition of residential areas and some measures were adopted to improve the ecological sustainability of the quarters. Landscaped outdoor spaces were integrated with system for the reuse of water, a more strict control on heating plants was applied, new studies on energy saving with new technologies were carried on. Due to this renewed quality the neighborhood’s names changed in “Garden”, “Plaza”, “Mansion”, and each compound wanted to underline their specific features.

For this purpose, and in response to the new citizen’s tastes, each compound was dressed with a different architectural style, both local or foreign, with the result of an high-rise building with an outer eclectic aspect.

During this period of renewal new mixed functional areas in high density urban context born from Chinese specialized big estate who based their new residential typologies on market researches. Big societies as Vanke or SOHO China have purchased and developed big central of the major Chinese cities

Pujiang New City designed

by Gregotti Associati, Shanghai,2001-2007

with the collaborations with well know architectural firms, such as Zaha Hadid or Steven Holl. New developing models and housing solutions appeared.

HOPSCA is the acronym used to describe a new developing model for largescale mixed-use urban areas. It is an abbreviation of Hotel, Offices, Parking or Park, Shopping Mall, Convention Centre or Culture, and Apartments. These quarters are usually comparable to a small city with high-tech facilities and well-designed green spaces that with their iconic architecture have huge influence on the economic and social aspects. These solutions fits the needs of wealthy and well-educated white-collar workers and self-employed individuals of thirty to forty years in age.

To report also numerous experiment studied by foreign firms in collaboration with the municipalities for the development or new sectors of the city in the suburban context. Similar cases in Shanghai are the Pujian new town designed in Minhang district between 2001 and 2004 by the Italian firm Gregotti Associati and the Themes Town developed in Songjiang district in the same years by the Atkins group.43 For the new generation of Chinese architects the house is a new issue. This because of the previous governmental exclusivity on housing design and construction. They can now start to work on the housing theme, even if not with an extreme freedom due to the restrictive laws, at least researching on it (Urbanus studies on urban villages44) and experiment their architectural possibilities (Father’s House project by MADA s.p.a.m.45).

43

den Hartog, Harry. Shanghai new towns. Searching for community and identity in a sprawling metropolis. (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2010), 118; 148.

44 “Urbanus Research Bureau” Urbanus, Architecture & Design. http://www.urbanus.com.cn/urb. php

Cachola Schmal, Peter and Wenjun, Zhi. M8 in China.

Contemporary Chinese Architects.

(Berlin: jovis Verlag GmbH, 2009), 100.

45

Maillen Hotel & Apartment designed by Urbanus, Shenzhen,2011

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3.5 Common features in Shanghai housing > repeated principles Among the housing typologies analyzed there are some principles that, even modified in final result, are constantly present. These elements are not just simply repeated but deeply rooted in history and traditions in relation to Chinese notions of ‘family’ and ‘home’. During housing evolution they changed in their form but some result in part compromised in the latest highrise solution. > housing - the use of modular units. The single dwelling in fact was divided in jian, a word that represents the bay of the wooden structures but expresses also the unit of living space with a quadrangular base between floor and ceiling.

Its size varies between three and five meters in width and length in the north of the country, but reaches the eight meters in width with a double or triple proportion in depth in the south. One of the characteristics of Chinese architecture is in fact its tectonic clearness.

- the importance of the and orientation of buildings. To provide for light and ventilation in the humid city of Shanghai a crossed ventilation and the presence of direct solar radiation was of primary importance. The orientation of the buildings, by the way, reflects also the traditional rules of fengshui.

- the use of local materials. Wood was traditionally used for structures, because of the Taoist preference for “living materials”, but also because of being easy to work and involving short times of construction. Stone, ancient used only for tombs or bridges, gradually became more common. This replacement was caused by its properties of durability and inflammability. Both of them were later replaced by bricks and concrete till arrive to the latest introduction of modern technologies. This is a theme on which the contemporary Chinese architects are researching.

- a strong relation between closed and open spaces. The complementary creation of full and void in the house composition reflect the observant felling of Chinese people to the nature and the shrewd use the made of its resources to improve their living conditions. The courtyard represent also a social value because is lived as an extension of the building interior. In particular, this effect is highlighted by the presence of gates, courts, galleries, verandas. Under an architectonic point of view it is to highlight the specific fact that the courtyard is the first space meet in entering the house, thus passing form an outdoor to an outdoor place but with a marked difference: the first is part of the community system while the second one belong to the family one. > neighborhood - the disposition of streets and alley in the urban blocks are dictated by orientation principles. The neighborhood structure include a general northsouth main lane and a series of secondary alleys, the proper lilong, along the east-west axes. The resulted buildings will occupy the space between two small lanes, usually around twelve meters, with the main courtyard on the south side.

- a hierarchical organization in the outdoor spaces of the neighborhood, with an increasing privacy moving from outside to inside. If the outer streets are used almost exclusively by vehicles, they are not allowed to enter in the block of siheyuan and in the first phase of lilong development. The main lane were 4 - 7 meters wide and have a primary distribution function, while the side alleys, 2 – 4 meters wide, were used by the inhabitants as quiet and safe community places. The entrance courtyard represented the first private space 86

of the household.

- the presence of commercial land use in periphery of urban blocks. Also small schools, parks and leisure facilities can be found near the streets to establish a balanced relation with the residential function. The small businesses as groceries, family restaurant, cigarette stands, barber and tailoring shops favoured the community interaction.

- a shared sense of identity and community and belonging to the local culture.

Reflecting the traditional model of the enlarged family, the local community is seen as a unique group based on social relationships. The alleys are the place where the local traditions are transmitted to the young generation and the human scale proportion of this space make it perfect for community activities.

Its size, the protection role of the wall and the repetition of the same housing unit are all architectural elements empowering the community identity. As psychological studies reveals, human beings prefer private and safety spaces for neighborly interaction rather than a vast undefined garden. In conclusion, if traditional lilong pattern had eliminated the waste of space by maximizing the land use, the high-rise solution has a lot of underused public open space. > evolution trends - from small to big communities / increasing unit’s number. Under the push of the growing population and the increasing urbanization the city needed more and more housing. This caused the densification of urban areas with an higher unit’s number and the construction of bigger residential villages.

- the reduction of the community services and commercial activities. In order to obtain an higher number of dwellings and more economic profits the space reserved for different function to the residential one decrease. The small shops were replaced by offices, bar and restaurant in the lower floors of compound.

- reduction of private outdoor area. This process passed first through the community sharing solution of lilong and later arrived to the complete ground floor open space in high rise compound. In this transformation from an inward-looking organization to an open structure of the neighborhood, both the private and the semi-private space went lost.

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- increasing verticality. The number of floors raised during time from the one level siheyuan, through the two-four storey different lilong layouts, to the thirty floors high-rise solution. This led to an higher FAR and higher income for the developers but compromised some qualities the low-rise solutions would bring to citizen’s life.

were not in Chinese history a treaty including morphological or typological instructions. Because of the strict rules and rigid traditions, transmitted first by the local culture and then by some technical manuals, the foreman and the craftsmen could meet the demands of the buyer without a designer.

One of the main differences, finally, is the different kind of urban spaces and the perception of the two cultures of public spaces. If in the western urb the distribution system is interrupted by a range of plazas, widenings, churchyards, squares,flight of steps, in the eastern city it has a pure distribution function while the life takes place within the single urban block. It caused the absence of real public spaces in the original structur of chinese city, a fact influenced by the tradition but nowadays acentuated by the rapid accretion. With the foreign intervention on the city development some hybrid spaces as enormous pedestrian streets, no-functional squares or huge parks were introducted but, despite their decennial history, these spaces are still misunderstood and unused by the population. Examples in Shanghai are Nanjing Road, a cut that starts from the Bund and reach People’s Square covering 1.6 kilometers, or the numerous office’s plazas used as meeting place by the elders, or the beautiful but giant Century Park, located on the outskirts of the city center. The used spaces that we found in the city are therefore the inner lanes of the residential quarters or the small-scale community spaces and the neighborhood parks.

> comparison with the western culture Here it is to point out the differences between the western and Chinese culture of dwelling.

First it is to be said that every Chinese vernacular architecture is characterized by a striking consonance among built forms. Although significant geographical variations, the morphology of traditional houses, important palaces, imperial tombs and any other type of building, share a number of architectural, spatial and cultural elements. This because the symmetry and the strict order of the layout reflect the hierarchy of Chinese family and nation, the most important principles at each grade of the society. The presence of a significant element was defined only by its position in the general plant or its bigger dimensions.

Contrariwise, in the western culture to each function is associated a specific layout of the building that reflect the needs of the activities and the grade and importance of the occupants, giving birth to an infinite number of construction type.

Another basic difference stand in the approach to the change of urban environment; the western culture is based on a “continuity in the transformation” meanwhile the Chinese culture is founded on a “continuity in the permanence”, showing a strong character in conservation. These principles affected the evolution of dwelling because in the West the residential typology of reference changed in time passing through the domus, the insula, the attached house, the linear solution and a lot more, while in China the reference always was the traditional one, based on the courtyard, but modified in time adapting to the changes in lifestyle. The contemporary problem is that this adaptation process stopped and instead the western models have been uncritically adopted.

Another difference stay in the role of the architect. Unlike the individualist western tendency that classified the architect as a recognized professional, in China this figure occupied a position between the role of a scholar and a craftsman. All the buildings in China in fact were more built than designed; there 88

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PART 4. CASE STUDY 4.1 Shanghai urban history > A favorable condition Shanghai 上海 is the economic capital of China. At the end of 2012, its total area was 6 340.5 km2 and its population was almost 24.2 million, occupying 0.06% of the national area and housing 1.31% of the national population. At that time, its GDP per capita reached US$ 14 687, which was 2.15 times higher than the national average.

Shanghai, with an average altitude of 3-4 meters above the sea level, has a typical North Asian subtropical monsoon climate, mild and moist, with two long seasons, summer and winter, and two shorter ones, spring and autumn.

The average minimum temperature in January is 3 ºC and the average maximum temperature in July is 27 ºC, with an average annual precipitation of 1 164,7 mm.

The geographical location of Shanghai, literally “above the sea”, has played a central role in its future development. Being on the Chinese east coastline and at the crossing of two important rivers, the Huang Pu and the Yangtze, Shanghai represents a focal point in the greatest water network of China, the Yangtze Delta region. The city is also crossed by the Suzhou Creek (also named Wusong River) and a high number of minor waterways and canals. Shanghai was originally a water town. The city, in fact, lies in the middle of the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, a region made of cultivated agricultural lands, innervated by lakes and waterways. At the same time other cities, like Suzhou, Zhujiajiao or Tongli, developed a similar morphology made of crossing canals and bridges.

The three main rivers crossing the city were also commercial roads, connecting by boat the inner part of China with the East China Sea. Although the Yangtze Shanghai complete map

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river originates in the Tibetan Plateau, its navigable part starts in the Sichuan province, connecting Chongqing to the coast. It also allows the steam provision of the area and the mail and passenger carrier. In terms of land transportation, Shanghai plays a central role in the two main Chinese north-south railwaylines connecting Beijing and Guangzhou. Nowadays its infrastructural system also includes the Hongqiao airport for the internal flights and the Pudong International Airport for the international traffic, serving millions of passengers and distributing tons of goods. Shanghai also represents an interchange point in the highway network both at a national and municipal level.

For this reason, since the 18th century, Shanghai has become an international trade port and a crossing commercial point dominating large part of the internal and external markets, hence attracting the foreign attention and becoming one of the biggest metropolis in the Far East. > The city origin The earliest record of a settlement around the Shanghai area dates between 770 BC and 476 BC, when the Wu Kingdom built He Lu, a city on the bank of Wusong River, to protect themselves from the frequent wars with the neighboring people. Later, around 220-280 AD, the primary settlement in the area was the city of Qin Long, approximately 40 kilometers north of the actual city center, used by the emperor as a military port serving as the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gateway for trades. After some changes in the regional administration of the area, the city with the name Shanghai was founded during the Song Dinasty (960-1279 AD), thanks to the positive influence of the near Southern Shanghai city center map in 1896

Song capital Hangzhou. Shanghai was not just an important seaport, its economy was also boosted by the introduction of salt and cotton industries.

In 1291 Shanghai became a district administration and started to become the important cultural, economic and political center that is today.

By the end of the 15th century Shanghai had become culturally rich, attracting talented poets, musicians and scholars in the newly opened schools.

Unfortunately, its richness also caught the unwelcomed attentions of the Japanese, who launched continuous assaults to the city in conjunction with Chinese pirates. In response to this unbearable situation, Shanghaiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s citizens decided to build a city wall, which was the first main physical change made to the city until that time. The wall was 4 kilometers in circumference, 35 meters high and surrounded by a 45 meters ditch. At first, it included six access gates and four arrow towers, subsequently converted in temples, and later it was enriched with four water gates. The wall had a ring-shape indicating the lower political status of Shanghai compared to a rectangular imperial walled cities as Beijing or Shenyang.

The original structure of the city was modeled around five major creeks, with the roads built just next to them and crossing the settlement from east to west and north to south, but over time the number of streets increased and became a denser weave. After 1681, since the foreign attacks were averted, some roads were also traced outside the wall promoting the river trade and commercial functions. As a result the area between the ancient center and 92

Shanghai old city historical map

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the Huangpu river soon became a highly constructed trade center. Since the city was founded on a ground with a very dense water network, the problem of river’s flooding increased with the expanding of the city. To contrast these events many wharfs and jetties were constructed, starting with some smaller private one, but soon followed by a large system of 20 public and commercial wharfs. In the 18th century the main inner street was connected to the riverside by an increasing number of roads. North of this area there was a smaller suburb with many warehouses owned by merchants coming from the southern cities of Fujian and Guangzhou who started establishing guilds grouped by region or trade.

Due to its historical development, Shanghai does not have an orthogonal street structure as the traditional foundation city, but instead shows a completely different organization, which was dictated by the trade needs and directions.

Differences can also be found in the buildings disposition and arrangement; instead of an individual component including one function, we see a more organic growth with mixed functions elements. These cultural and commercial openness was present in the Shanghai structure long before the arrival of the foreign influences. > Establishment of foreign concessions In 1756 the earliest foreign merchants immediately recognized Shanghai’s potentials to become an international power, but the largest companies, still involved in the profitable but illegal opium trade in Guangzhou, didn’t pay much attention to them. In the 1830s, due to the Chinese restrictions and Shanghai city center map in 1930

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condemnations of drugs, the situation in the Pearl River Delta area became problematic also from a legislative point of view. Between 1839-1842 the Emperor and Britain fought the “First Opium War” at the end of which the victorious United Kingdom of Great Britain signed the Treaty of Nanjing, a preferential agreement with the Chinese administration, and established a permanent settlement. During the first year, while the definition of the acquisition of the appropriate land was established, the consul and the people in charged lived in the ancient city. However, after the treaty was signed, in November 1845, the British established their own territory in the southern corner between Huangpu river and Suzhou creek. Other nations quickly followed Great Britain and came to Shanghai to develop some agreements, such as the Treaty of Wanghia, signed in July 1844, that allowed the Americans to occupy the land over the Suzhou creek. In October of the same year the French signed the Treaty of Whampoa, settling in the remaining area between the walled city and the British concession.

Both in 1853 and in 1860 the Small Sword Society, an unruly group supporting the Taiping Revolution, conquered the Chinese city and established their head quarter in the British Consulate. Due to the unlivable conditions, the Chinese population started asking asylum in the foreign settlements and with their acceptance in these territories, the signed agreements languished.

Furthermore, the frequent misunderstandings and problems among the three foreign powers in the city, promoted the need to develop a stronger set of laws. Consequently, the principle of extraterritoriality was created and every single concession became a foreign island, with foreign laws, established in the Chinese territory. The extraterritoriality had also produced a higher degree of life and property safety and offered more protection from excessive taxation from the Chinese power. Offices, banks and financial institutions were built on the Bund, forming one of the distinctive places of Shanghai. While for the latecomers French this was an improved solution, for English and Americans this was the worst possible situation, so they decided to join their territories

Nanjing Road in 1930s

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Aerial view of the Bund in 1930s

and formed the International Settlement. In 1944-1945 China got also involved in the First Sino-Japanese War for the control over Korea. Thus after signing the Treaty of Shimonoseki, an additional foreign settlement arose in Shanghai, the Japanese Concession, located in the northeast part of the Hongkou district, over the two rivers. The city was then working as a multi-parts system and this is clearly reflected by its irregular development. The characteristics of the Chinese and the Western areas were noticeably different. The ancient part had narrow streets and buildings were constructed with local materials and traditional techniques, while the foreign area was adapted to the European standards, with bigger roads and imported constructive habits linked to a more massive technology.

Contrariwise the area below the foreign concessions and behind the Bund, because of its low economic value, was occupied by the Chinese people, who started developing their own businesses, and becoming densely populated in just a few years. Yet in the opposite side of the Chinese city it was developed another kind of commercial street with a more western character; not the intimate commercial experience of Fuzhou Road, made of small retail shops and restaurants, but the shining and stately Nanjing Road with its big shopping mall and colorful electric lanterns. Along the Huangpu river, in the northern part of the Bund, it was also instituted a public garden where at first there was a sand-made artificial little island, and the first steel bridge over the Suzhou creek was built, connecting the American part with the center.

By 1920 Shanghai’s physical form was defined. The main roads and settlements were outlined, the foreign concessions stopped their growth, and the use of the in each area was established.

Shanghai prosperity lasted until the end of 1920s. In that period the city became the most coveted port of perdition across all Asia, assuming the name of “the Paris of the East”, attracting merchants and men of good fortune from all over the world. In her book Harriet Sergeant said that “in the 20s and 30s Shanghai became a legend. No world cruise was complete without a stop in the city. Its name evoked mystery, adventure and license of every form. In ships sailing to the Far East, residents enthralled passengers with stories” about the heyday of a city that will inspire novel and films with its atmosphere.(nota) In 1927, Shanghai became a special city directly under the Executive of Government of the Republic of China. At this time, because of the increasing Shanghai city center map in 1970

> Pre-modern era The 20th century started with the Boxer Rebellion in northern China, which was stopped by the foreign forces, increasing their power over the Chinese empire. All of the concessions grew in dimension and economical weight, welcoming a new round of refugees. In January 1912 the last Chinese emperor dynasty was bowed out and the foundation of the Republic of China was proclaimed. Shanghai’s political status was raised to a municipality in 1927 and at that point it was decided to destroy the city ancient walls, that were seen now by the original population as a symbol of their feudal past.

During the colonial period, the city increased the number of roads and infrastructures, creating the main roads that are still in use in the center of the city (Nanjing Road, Beijing Road, Henan Road, Sichuan Road and many others).

In addition, Shanghai was enriched by an incredible number of significant buildings inspired by the international style. Not only the Bund area, but also the majority of the churches and a lot of service buildings, such as schools and hospitals, can be traced to that period. During the same years also the industries were developing and the Hongkou district, just over the north bank of Suzhou river, was chosen to become the city’s industrial center. That area was in fact considered an unattractive location because of its unhealthy swampy conditions.

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Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese took total control over the city, ending all foreign concessions in Shanghai except for the French, representing the neutral Vichy government, which eventually ceded their privileges in 1946, following the end of the war.

Foreigners in Shanghai in the heyday, 1930s

demand of houses, the real estate market started to become one of the most profitable investment, and the new Lilong typology was therefore born. The building activity in the Chinese area was in fact very prosperous, fuelled by the development in 1929 of a government’s plan for a new district.

In the 1930’s, conversely a political fermentation cracked the fortunate life of Shanghai. In only two decades in fact the China’s Communist Party was founded, the Nationalist government was established, the Great Depression and the Second World War damaged the European region and ultimately Japan invaded China occupying Shanghai in 1937. Up until the Japanese invasion, Shanghai, due to its extraterritoriality, was once again the destination of a continuous flow of Chinese coming from the turbulent north region and of Jews escaping from the European Nazi persecution. However, under the pressure of their ally Germany, in late 1941, the Japanese forced the Jews to move to the Shanghai ghetto in the east part of Hongkou.

> Maoism era The colonial occupation of Shanghai lasted for about one century (1842- 1949), until China went under the control of the Communist in 1949. In that year, in fact, the whole China over the Yangtze river was under Communist control and with the Battle of Shanghai the Nationalism forces were completely eliminated, liberating the city from a semi-colonial and a semi-feudal society. On October 1st Mao Tse Dong announced the foundation of the People’s Republic of China and launched his political campaign based on village organization and rural administration. With the suppression of the privatization of land and the consequent confiscation of properties, the construction operations in Shanghai halted. The foreign powers couldn’t see a future in a country with such a central organization and moved all their properties back to their motherland or to Hong Kong colony. All of the foreign properties became state assets and mansions, villas, lane houses were then used for government offices or assigned to landless peasants. The realized part of the master plan drafted on a soviet city model include the transformation of the former racecourse in the actual People’s Square system, crossed by one of the largest intersection of urban elevated roads and represented the municipal power, and the new Soviet-style apartments surrounding all of the previous construction.

Even if Shanghai wasn’t incorporated under another province, its economic freedom was still suppressed in a different way, for example from the southern region of Guangdong, generating severe damages to its infrastructural and economic development. During the 1950s and 1960s, Shanghai became an industrial center and still kept its international character, forming the vanguard against Beijing’s power elite. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution movement had one of its major concentrations in Shanghai, resulting in the destruction of most of its history and culture.

Mao’s era promotional manifesto

Japanese invasion of the city in 1941

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Contemporary Shanghai CBD skyline in Lujiazui

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> From 1980s till now In 1976, with the dead of Chairman Mao, and the beginning of the Open Door policy by Deng Xiaoping, the Guangdong province was chosen as the favorite area for international businesses and Shanghai lost its primacy. During 1980’s there were not big changes in the city and the only action taken was the improvement of some existing residence structures. At that time the overcrowding was extreme and the 5.86 million people in Shanghai only had less than 5 square meters each.

At the end of 1980’s the central government started giving financial privileges to Shanghai, but the city would have to wait until 1991 for its big redraft as “the head of the dragon”, China’s leading connection with the rest of the world. In this year, in fact, Pudong, the area on the eastern bank of Huangpu river, was chosen as the site for the new Central Business District (CBD) and a big international architectural competition was held between five important firms. The mission was to develop an area of about two square kilometers, with 50 per cent used for office function, that would convey to the world Shanghai’s desire for revenge. Even if the official winner of the competition was the Richard Rogers Partnership architectural firm, the development of Pudong started using at the same time all and none of the five proposals submitted.

The designed planning of the new area failed, but the actual skyline of the CBD is still one of the worldwide recognized symbols of a powerful city.

In 1994 the Master plan for Shanghai was revisited defining a poly-nuclear network strategy in order to disadvantage urban sprawl and create a system of compact cities and agricultural land. This resulted in the destruction of the central historical buildings, the rising of prices in the inner area and a gentrification process with a new emerging elite.

In 1999 the State Council approved a new Shanghai Urban Comprehensive Planning including the strategy “one city, nine towns”, that emphasized the previous policy and focused on the development of nine new towns, each assigned to a foreign architectural firm, with the reduction of central urban congestion and the rehousing of 50 000 to 100 000 people a year. The

plan pointed out also that in 2020 Shanghai is expected to be built into an international economic, financial and trade center. In this perspective of international development has been organized the Expo 2010 with the theme “Better City, Better Life”.

In this period the city was also supplied with all the newest infrastructures, such as the international airport of Pudong, the bridges over the Huangpu river, the Elevated Inner and Outer rings and the highways network, the subway system. Another time of astonishing growth in construction was started and the whole city was filled with high-rise buildings, which definitively cancelled the previous image of a low traditional settlement with few elevated structures.

Shanghai extension from the World Financial Center

Shanghai city center map in 2010

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4.2 Project area Hongkou district 虹口区 is one of the central district of Shanghai. It extends northward and has a land area of 23.48 km2, a population of 84 560 000 and a density of 36 014 people/square kilometer in 2012.46 Together with the Old Bund and Lujiazui, Hongkou forms the “Golden Triangle”, the core of central business districts of Shanghai. The district occupy a good position in the city structure because it is near the central areas of the Bund and Nanjing Road, but accommodate also in itself a lot of new developing core. The North Sichuan Road area in fact it was chosen by the municipality as one of the new commercial city cores and has seen the construction of a lot of new buildings for shopping and leisure in the last few years. Another development pole is the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, where high and new technologies are studied.

Being rich in architectural heritage, it includes several cultural landscape zones, four historical and cultural sites protected at the national level and 303 historical sites and cultural relics defined by the city’s regulation. As examples the Broadway Mansion and the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum arose here, and also the Duolun Lu culture street, a project of lilong renovation and art promotion, is located in Hongkou district. At the beginning of the 20th century the area become the main industrial center of the city because of it richness in waterways, that were preserved nowadays no longer as commercial routes, but for their scenic waterfront landscape. The area is well served by the infrastructural system thanks to the newly developed subway lines 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, while a lot of urban busses crossing the quarter. Both the Inner Ring Road and the Middle Ring Road cross Hongkou, connecting it with the airports and all the central areas of Shanghai. During history the district was first occupied by the Japanese who establish their concession and later in its territory was defined the Shanghai Ghetto, the area that hosted the European Jewish refugees during the second world war persecutions.

HONG KOU

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View of the internal courtyard of 1933 renewed building

Shanghai Municipal Statistical Bureau. Statistical Yearbook of Shanghai 2012. Beijing: China Statistical Publishing House, 2013.

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Shanghai map with the localization of Hongkou district and project area

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News reported on the district website: Hongkou, Shanghai > Industry park. Accessed November 29, 2014. http://hkq.sh.gov.cn/ 47

Aerial view of Ruikangli and Ruiqingli neighborhood

The site project is located in the southern part of the district, just over the division of Shanjing Port, an inner canal of Huangpu River, in two branches.

It is surrounded by different urban textures made by different residential typologies, reflecting the city’s development. The project site is bordered on the west side by the busy Siping Road, that held the stops of the bus line 14, 50, 61, 100, 123, 147, 307 and the Hailun Road metro stop of line 4 and 10.

In front of the site project, over Siping Road, there is an high-rise hotel that represent the landmark of the area. Between the hotel and the lilong blocks an high-rise compound was erected. Over the north edge, defined by Tianshui Road, some medium-rise residential buildings and an irregular urban village define the area. On its east side, over Tongjia Road, there are a small public park, a school and some messy medium-rise constructions. On the south side of the site project, facing Hailun Road, there are the lilong neighborhoods of Ruikangli and Ruiqingli that are well conserved and are still nowadays occupied by their communities. The third lilong block, Ruiyuanli, lost almost everything of its original plant to accommodate a branch of the China Music Industry Park, the first officially approved music industry agglomeration on the national level. This area is part of a bigger development project, the “Shanghai Music Plan”, supported by the municipality of Shanghai and especially the government of the Hongkou jurisdiction.47 The operation started in 2011 and will transform 281 000 square meters comprising the regeneration of the canal waterfronts and seven development areas that will hold several companies and industries of the cultural and art sector. Three of them, the China Music Industry Park, 1933 Shanghai, and 1913 Shanghai, are already finished, while the remaining four, that are the Exhibition and Experience Center of the music

FUNCTIONS residential commercial office hotel “Shanghai Music Valley” public services 104

N

105

Construction site on the project area

New constructionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advertsing around the building site

valley, Sanjiaodi Art Park, Jiaxing Theater, and Peninsula Bay Project, are still under construction. Among them, the most well known is the renewed cultural area of 1933, a former slaughterhouse now fill in with commercial activities, bar, restaurants and small creative companies. After being abandoned and falling into disrepair, the building was extensive restored in 2008 and with its special layout made by a central atrium from which a lot of staircases and interlocking slopes departed, it become the perfect place for creative work and promotional and cultural events.

The project area, that is about 30 000 m2, with an average extension among the north-south axes of 200 m and 140 in the opposite, is actually under construction. In the last two years it was involved in the works for the Hailun Road subway station and as this operation will be concluded another residential complex will be built. As we can see from the renders and promotional picture posted all around the area it will be a multi-storey group of buildings with a mixed post-modern and western style outer aspect. On the area will be take in consideration the future presence of the metro exits, calculated as the underground encumbrance and the four metro exit buildings over the site.

DENSITY FAR 1.3 - liliong FAR 1.7 - urban village FAR 2 - medium rise FAR 3 - high-rise

106

N

107

The favorable elements of the surrounding are: - the presence of the 1933 and the Music Park creative centers. They are successful examples of renewed areas and can be a positive and propulsive force for the rehabilitation of the new neighborhoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social functions; - the small public park. Even if is a small area, the presence of a green space in the dense Hongkou district can valorize the location of the new residential district; - the public transport network. The connection with even two line of metro and a lot of bus line make this area a favorable location for an housing developing plan, being the public transportation a primary requirement in the urban context; - the presence of a dense residential structure. The high-density solution will be well integrated in the compact urban textile of Hongkou district, also because of the fact that the new quarter will be surrounded by neighborhoods with a similar mixed-use composition.

The negative elements of the surrounding are: - the traffic congestion of Siping Road. The busy Siping Road, that connect the Bund area to the north part of the Hongkou district, is made by seven lanes and is cause of air and noise pollution during the whole day.

- subway and bus stops. The presence of the metro line will attract a lot of external citizens that will be temporary present on the area surrounding the residential core, affecting the privacy and security level of the community. The stops will also steal space to the residential and community functions.

Ruiqingli South entrance gate

By order of appearance in the following pages: - Ruiqingli outer front - Ruikangli entrance gate - Siping Road view -Shanjing Port - building site on the project area - metro exit on Siping Road

108

CIRCULATION mai road secondary road internal car paths pedestrian routes

N

109

GREEN - PUBLIC MOBILITY public green private green other green water metro line 10 metro line 4 metro exit metro station bus line bus stop 110

N

111

112

113

This is the principle of a research that has emerged with the industrial development and the growing demand for housing in a urban context. Starting from the row of workers’ houses, it produced the reflections on the existenzminimum at the 1929 CIAM meeting by Walter Gropius, Hans Schmidt and other important figures, and later the implementation of this extreme life standards lead to the Le Corbusier studies on the Unité d’Habitation, till, for example, the studies of Atelier 5 about the unit’s aggregation in a village.

48

Schildt, Goran. Alvar Aalto, the early years. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1984), 214-230.

49

Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, 15th century

4.3 Design strategy Thinking about a new settlement strategy we have first to abandon the idea of the “type”. If we pursue the study of the perfect residential unit in its livable standards and efficiency we will fall in the utopic repetition of the ideal prototype, an operation that started from the addition of the singular dwelling and not from the general project for the urban block.48 Left this study field we will debate about the kind of spaces we want to create in the neighborhood. Reflecting on the Chinese approach to the public space we introduced different grades of privacy in the scale between public and private.

The real public space is the one outside the urban block but that sometimes carves small areas in the connection point (in the case study the metro exits and in the proximity of the public park and school). Moving toward the inside a set of community areas are connected by transition spaces creating by the proximity of the buildings; the connections are pleasant places to cross and not roads defined only by technical standards. These places will go to satisfy the demand of spaces for shared activities encountered in the study of the city. Inside each single sub-blocks some other semi-public spaces are designed for the specific use of the inhabitants (in the following example we will found a protected courtyard for the elder group, student’s terraces, shared working space). Finally the single unit will include an outdoor private space.

These organization reflect the considerations about the architectural theme of indoor-outdoor relation and the creation of intermediate spaces characterized by features of both spaces. These thoughts are well represented in the Alvar Aalto’s writing “From doorstep to living room”. First he underline the importance of an exterior space in the house system, “The garden wall is the real external wall of the home. […] The garden (or courtyard) belongs to our home just as much as any other of the rooms”; and later he explain how an outdoor space can remind a covered room and vice versa, both creating a great place to live. It can be made “changing the direction of one’s perception of space, so that the walls are experienced as external walls, planes belonging

to the solids behind, rather than as enclosing walls”. To explain his point of view he propose the Fra Angelico’s “Annunciation”, “the perfect trinity of man, room and garden”.49 Finally, to create a quality urban space, a study on full, void and their combinations was made. (in the following pages the study models). The possibilities born from this work will represent both the interaction of the building in the space under a purely formal, and its adaptability to different social and technical requirements.

MVRDV studie for a competition in Potsdam, 1997

The solution we will adopt is a low-rise and dense urban structure, a lowrise high-density model, that will resemble the historical urban massiveness, but at the same time will satisfy the contemporary needs of density with an elevated number of inhabitants. As proposed program the project will keep the mixed-use block solution, including housing but also commercial and service activities.

Referring to the previous investigation on housing types, the main features we want to keep and improve in this case study are both at the urban and building scale. As main guideline we will maintain an horizontal neighborhood structure as the traditional block organization, while the unit is developed in vertical to increase the population density, adding privacy for each household.

Trying to do this, some restrictions will be applied in the design phase: > the neighborhood have to be mainly composed by residential building to keep its original housing function, but can integrate some facilities as the original lilong block. What we want to avoid is a “Xintiandi solution” in which the quarter become a commercial pole. > the FAR and the standards of indoor and outdoor livable space will not be fixed a priori, but have to be at least higher than the lilong values and pushed as much as possible to get close to the high-rise ones. These numbers will be calculated after a volumetric simulation on the area. > the new target of inhabitants wants to reflect the actual social composition of the city. For this reason the new community will be composed by families of two or three members, by groups of young people sharing the same apartments (students, friends, collaborators), by elder people sharing some spaces and activities, by single people who need working space next to their homes, and especially artists attracted by the renovation operation.

hierarchical organization of outdoor space

114

115

Experimental model on void and full interaction (material: soap)

116

symmetric removal

separated

with an extrusion

with addition

regularly engraved

sliced

perforated

carved

fissured

holed

escavated

roof shaped

slotted

overlying

relieved

117

> prototype principles HOUSING - number of floors : 2-7 - m2/person indoor : 36 - m2/person outdoor : 11 - void ratio : outdoor space 23%, indoor space 77 % - architectural principles : (H1) the unit is usually made by more floors; (H2) alternation of full and void spaces, and so each unit has an outdoor uncovered private area; (H3) the entrance of the single unit is private and leads preferably to an outdoor space50; (H4) the first indoor room is the main shared room; (H5) each unit has at least a double facing to ensure enough light and crossed ventilation.

- elements : The wall (1) is the element that virtually separate the private space from the community one. The outdoor area (2) represent the traditional main courtyard and is used for private for leisure or service activities; it can be a front garden, a patio, a terrace, a green roof.

The main room (3) is located next to the outdoor space and is the place for the shared activities; it is the most public part of the house falling in the hierarchical transition from public to private.

The other rooms (4), including bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms and storages, are shared or private depending on the target. The distribution system (5), become one of the principal element of the house and reprising the role denied in the highrise developments.

- outdoor spaces : The outdoor space get again the importance it have in the traditional dwelling system. It have different shape, size and grade of privacy in accord to the resident’s requirements.

- common spaces : Some indoor or outdoor spaces are shared in relation with the inhabitant’s needs.

118

NEIGHBORHOOD - dwelling/km2 : 7 701 - people/km2 : 21 396 - FAR : 2 - void ratio : void 44% (ground private space 9%,community space 20%,distribution space 71%), building coverage 56% - functions : housing in the core area 78%, commercial on the outer borders 19%, community space 3% - urban principles :(N1) The neighborhood comes from the principles “low-rise, high-density”, it means the buildings will not exceed seven floors in height; it comes from the architectural principle of the excavated plate.

(N2) The urban structure is based on the connection of small community spaces between the buildings; they are located in the central part of the area to keep the sense of security while the border one are spaces of relationship with the elements of the outer city. There are no lanes or streets but connection spaces.

(N3) The enclosure of the neighborhood is given by the buildings themselves and not by a proper wall.

(N4) Housing is kept as the main function but declined on the needs of different target; commercial activities are integrated in the external edge of the neighborhoods to emphasize the vitality and the use of the area; new common spaces are added in a small percentage to serve the local community.

(N5) The area is subdivided in smaller blocks creating smaller sub-communities better served by a specific type of dwelling.

- elements: The wall (1) is virtually keep to define the divide the outer city and the inner community, but is actually substituted by the buildings’ edges and commercial activities. The interactive role of small lanes is moved to the urban spaces (2); these semi-public elements never appeared in the Chinese urban system but do not represent the western imposition of the structured public spaces. They are designed as smaller centers that will be used by the community and occupied by their usual activities. The distribution (3) will be incorporated in the urban system as a quality space and not as a mere connecting street. The internal area is reserved for the pedestrian traffic, while accesses for vehicles to the underground parking will be provided from the outside. The dwelling unit (4) is organized in small clusters responding to the different needs of inhabitants and are assembled in different ways with the aim to increase the density. The commercial and service activities (5) faced the external roads serving both the community and the external users.

- outdoor spaces: a hierarchical organization of outdoor spaces are kept. It comes from the outer city, the public spaces not belonging to the area, and gradually pass to the semi-public areas; in each sub-blocks then there can be another shared external place and finally the residential unit has its own outdoor space.

- common spaces : the new semi-public areas are the place of community life.

119

4.4 Prototype solution

H1

N1

H2

N2

H3

N3

H4

N4

H5

N5

N 1:2000 MASTERPLAN

120

121

A’

B

B’

C

A

122

SECTION AA’

SECTION BB’

N

SECTION CC’

C’

1:1000

1:1000

GROUNDFLOOR

SECTIONS 123

124

N

N

N

1:2000

1:2000

1:2000

FULL/VOID

HIERARCHY of OUTDOOR SPACES

CIRCULATION

housing commercial care housing senior housing common facilities art galleries art studio artist housing group housing student housing student service parking access metro exit

N 1:2000 FUNCTIONS 125

N

functional exploded view

N

functional exploded view

1:2000

1:2000

BLOCK A

BLOCK B

ground floor

sections

1F

ground floor

2F

1F

3F

2F

4F

L H E B A

126

I

F

G C

K

J

D

roof plan

housing commercial care housing senior housing common facilities art galleries art studio artist housing group housing student housing student service parking access metro exit

3F

section roof plan

127

N

functional exploded view

functional exploded view

N

1:2000

1:2000

BLOCK C

BLOCK D

ground floor - 1F

ground floor 2F - 3F - 4F

1F

sections

roof plan

2F 4F

roof plan

L

E B A

128

I

F

G C

K

J

H

D

sections

3F

housing commercial care housing senior housing common facilities art galleries art studio artist housing group housing student housing student service parking access metro exit

129

N

functional exploded view

ground floor

N

functional exploded view

1:2000

1:2000

BLOCK E

BLOCK F

1F

ground floor

1F

2F - 3F

2F

4F - 5F - 6F 3F

sections

roof plan sections

4F

5F

L J

H E B A

130

I

F

G C

K

D

housing commercial care housing senior housing common facilities art galleries art studio artist housing group housing student housing student service parking access metro exit

roof plan

131

N

functional exploded view

ground floor

N

functional exploded view

1:2000

1:2000

BLOCK G

BLOCK H

1F

ground floor

2F

3F

1F

sections

roof plan sections

L

E B A

132

I

F

G C

K

J

H

D

housing commercial care housing senior housing common facilities art galleries art studio artist housing group housing student housing student service parking access metro exit

2F

roof plan

133

N

functional exploded view

N

functional exploded view

1:2000

1:2000

BLOCK I

BLOCK J - 1F ground floor

ground floor 1F

1F - 2F 2F

3F - 4F sections

sections

5F - 6F

roof plan L

E B A

134

I

F

G C

K

J

H

D

3F

roof plan housing commercial care housing senior housing common facilities art galleries art studio artist housing group housing student housing student service parking access metro exit

135

N

functional exploded view

ground floor

N

functional exploded view

1:2000

1:2000

BLOCK K

BLOCK L - 1F

1F

ground floor

2F

3F

1F sections

2F

4F

sections

5F

L H E B A

136

I

F

G C

K

J

D

roof plan

housing commercial care housing senior housing common facilities art galleries art studio artist housing group housing student housing student service parking access metro exit

3F

roof plan

137

N 1:2000 UNDERGROUND LEVEL

138

139

LILONG PROTOTYPE

4.5 Final comparison

BASIC SCHEME

FULL/VOID

CIRCULATION

PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / HIERARCHY OF SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE OUTDOOR SPACES

FUNCTIONS

BASIC SCHEME CIRCULATION FULL / VOID BASIC SCHEME

LILONG PROTOTYPE

CHEME LILONG PROTOTYPE FULL / VOID

full 75%, void 25% dwelling/km2 : 5 873 people/km2 : 46 984 FAR : 1.3

LILONG

CIRCULATION PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE

FULL / VOID

housing commercial PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE

gated access, fish-bone distribution FUNCTIONS housing commercial

BASIC SCHEME LILONG PROTOTYPE

FUNCTIONS

CIRCULATION

public / non designed semipublic (lilong lanes) 47% / private

residential 78% commercial 22%

PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE

BASIC SCHEME CIRCULATION

FUNCTIONS FULL / VOID

housing commercial

FUNCTIONS

/ E

housing commercial

BASIC SCHEME

HIGH-RISE FULL / VOID

PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION

PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE

full 21%, void 79% dwelling/km2 : 39 620 people/km2 : 106 975 FAR : 3

gated access, free layout of distribution

public / semi-public (leisure area) 21%/ private 6%

residential 95% commercial 5%

FUNCTIONS housing commercial

LILONG PROTOTYPE

FUNCTIONS

CIRCULATION

housing commercial PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE BASIC SCHEME

FULL / VOID

140

PUBLIC / SEMI-PUBLIC / SEMI-PRIVATE / PRIVATE

FUNCTIONS housing

PROTOTYPE

full 56%, void 44% dwelling/km2 : 7 701 people/km2 : 21 396 FAR : 2

few small accesses, structured distribution

public/ designed semi-public 29%

/ private 23%

residential 78% commercial 19% community space 3% 141

5. CONCLUSIONS After the research on the Chinese situation, that is trying to face an increasing urban population, under the pressure of an ever-profitable but ruthless real estate market, in consideration of a unique and difficult housing policies history, knowing the traditional principles but also the recent transformations of the architectural approach, with an eye to the abused cultural heritage, we are now searching for another housing strategy.

During the past years the main approach to the housing problem in China was to develop big residential villages with the aim to obtain the highest density and the highest number of dwelling to accommodate the major number of people and to have a profitable sale or rent. The solution of high-rise buildings perfectly fits these requirements and seems to be well integrated into the contemporary city. But like argued before, this “slab in the park”43 typology found a lack in the connection with the Chinese tradition and the urban surrounding giving a sterile solution with the loss of a familiar atmosphere. The everlasting principles on which the Siheyuan dwelling and its neighborhood is based are almost all denied.

During the city development, as the only alternative has yet been proposed the lilong, the symbol of a syncretism between the east and the west, a typology that only now has been re-taken into account. Its origins, rooted in the same values of the traditional house, and then the perpetuation of some basic rules of organization of the town, have made this kind of neighborhood a friendly spot and a place to identify with. This neighborhood in fact is organized according to the traditional orientation, circulation structure and functions, while its private unit report the same importance given in the urban block to the outdoor areas and the hierarchical organization of spaces. The work of recognize and synthesized these values has led to the redaction of some principles used as guidelines for the design phase. The general strategy for the project was to apply a plate solution, with an average height of fourfive storey for the buildings but with an high range of spatial diversity at the ground level. This operation of absorbe and adapt the basic rules of the traditional construction has allowed to achieve an high-density solution that respect the community life and its handing down, while the other operations realized in the city only proposed the lilong’s updating. The proposed solution will not probably be the unique nor the final one, but is trying at least to give an example of the traditional value’s application.

Forty years ago, in 1973, the New York State Urban Developed Corporation, a short-lived but significative public housing authority, and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, a non-profit think tank formed by young architects, started to face an issue with which probably China will be forced to deal with in a few years. In that year the MOMA organized an exhibition and a real field-research work with the construction in Brooklyn had started. The proposed solution was a low-rise high-density dwelling, with similar values and forms as the ones proposed in this work.

Feeling the lack of any other clear alternative the reproduction of identical giant buildings seems the only solution, but is now the time to call on architects and planners in find a new proposal, based both on traditional values and contemporary needs, that will make Chinese cities and dwelling environment a more livable, homelike place.

142

terminology used in: Jie, Zhang and Junhua, Lü and Rowe, Peter G. Modern urban housing in China, 1840-2000. (Munich: Prestel, 2001), 294.

43

143

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List of figures pag 11 - http://aeon.co/magazine/society/james-palmer-chinese-youth/ pag 12 - author pag 17/1 - bing map pag 17/2 -http://w3.uniroma1.it/strappa/?p=1517 pag 17/3 -bing map pag 17/4 -http://shanghieverybody.com/tag/travel/ pag 18/5 -http://www.festivalarchitettura.it/fa5_2013/festival/ pag 18/6 -http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasilia pag 18/7 -bing map pag 18/8 -bing map pag 18/9 -http://www.wd147.com/wangluomeinv/pfzqghp.html pag 18/10 -bing map pag 19/11 -bing map pag 19/12 -bing map pag 19/13 -baidu map pag 19/14 -bing map pag 19/15 -bing map pag 19/16 -bing map pag 20/17 -https://coisasdaarquitetura.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/hbridoconectado/ pag 20/18 -bing map pag 20/19 -http://architizer.com/blog/kanye-west-corbusier-of-rap/ pag 20/20 -http://microstockinsider.com/content/hong-kong-skyline pag 20/21 -http://tokyoarquitetura.blogspot.it/2012_04_01_archive.html pag 20/22 -http://adventuresinhongkong2012.blogspot.it/2013/01/kowloonparks-extravaganza.html pag 21/23-http://oscartenreiro.com/2010/11/07/palabras-de-louis-kahn/ pag 33 -http://www.timecoverstore.com/product/deng-xiaoping-1985-09-23/ pag 35 -http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-11/chinas-economymay-soon-get-a-loosening pag 36 - author pag 37 - author pag 38 -Bracken, Gregory. Aspects of urbanization in China. Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. pag 39 - author pag 40 - author pag 41 - author pag 42 - Gazzola, Luigi. La casa della Fenice. Roma: Diagonale, 1999. pag 43 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/davenicholls/417336045/ pag 44/top - http://londondirect.pl/blog/?p=954 pag 44/bottom - http://www.beijingholiday.com/photo/tiananmen-square. html pag 45/top - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Beijing pag 45/bottom - http://formny.info/2012/09/18/fragrant-hill/ pag 46 - http://www.jiakun-architects.com/projects/1luyeyuan_stone_ sculpture_art_museum pag 47 - http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/chicago-architecture-in-china/ pag 48 - http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21830726 pag 49 - http://www.designboom.com/architecture/ pag 51 -http://www.essential-architecture.com/CHINA/PEKING/PE-017.htm pag 52 -http://www.chinatouradvisors.com/Attractions/pag 55 - baidu map 148

pag 58 - http://www.nonobjectiverealism.com/ pag 59 - http://www.nonobjectiverealism.com/ pag 60 - author pag 62 - author pag 65 - http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-05/06/content_9816894. htm pag 68 - author pag 70 - author pag 75 - baidu maps pag 78 - author pag 79 - baidu map pag 81/top - by Ettore Santi pag 81/bottom - by Ettore Santi pag 84 - http://www.stevenholl.com/ pag 85/top - http://www.newtowninstitute.org/ pag 85/bottom - http://www.urbanus.com.cn/ pag 89 - author pag 91 - http://librairie.immateriel.fr/fr/read_book/ pag 92 - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ pag 93 - http://www.chinasmack.com/2013/pictures/ pag 95 - http://www.lbi.org/2012/05/destination-shanghai-exhibit/ pag 96 - http://www.lbi.org/2012/05/destination-shanghai-exhibit/ pag 98/top - http://www.lbi.org/2012/05/destination-shanghai-exhibit/ pag 98/bottom - http://www.lbi.org/2012/05/destination-shanghai-exhibit/ pag 99 - http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/13443 pag 100 - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki pag 101 - author pag 102 - author pag 106 - author pag 108 - author pag 110/all - author pag 112/all - author pag 114 - http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beato_Angelico pag 115/side- eale, Luca. Densità, città, residenza : tecniche di densificazione e strategie anti-sprawl. Roma: Gangemi Editore spa, 2008. pagg. 116-117/all - author pag 152/top- Qijun, Wang. Vernacular dwellings. Ancient Chinese architecture.

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APPENDIX A - References > studied models TULOU 土楼 Another interesting vernacular architecture diffused in the southern provinces with tropical moist monsoonal climate (hot summer and mild winter), and especially in Fujian province, is the tulou dwelling, literally “earth building”.

This is a communal living structure elaborated by Hakka people, a group of Han Chinese people with their origin from central China, to fit better the climatic conditions of the region. The overhanging roofs and the open air corridors in fact want to promote natural ventilation and shading.

As the siheyuan, tulou is based on an inward-looking structure with a close outside appearance and an internal open space, an organization that favored the harmonious coexistence of few hundred households as a community. For this reason they were known as “a little kingdom for the family” or “bustling small city”. They can have different shapes, such as rounded, rectangular or elliptical, different dimensions (the rounded one can have a diameter between 15 and 70 meters) and can be made by different ring of buildings. Furthermore outside the main building can be built some auxiliary constructions that all together create a small village.

The earthen houses are usually made by three or four floors reaching up to thirteen meters in height for defensive purposes. They have high fortified mud walls with only one entrance covered by tiled roofs with wide over-hanging eaves, and the windows are located only above the first floor. The wall is at the base 3 meters thick while at the first floor it shrinks to 1.5 meters, as the thickness of the wall was reduced higher up in the structure. The rammed earth structure is combined with an interior timber frame and partition walls addition while the floor is made by paved stones on top of compacted earth ground. The first floor is used as the kitchen or dining room, the second level as a store, and the third and fourth ones as bedrooms. The building is then divided vertically between families with each possessing two or three rooms on each floor. The different floors are connected with a corridor about one meter wide and usually four staircases to distribute the over 800 people that can live in the tulou. In contrast with their plain exterior, the interiors are built for comfort and are often highly decorated; in the middle of the courtyard and along the main axis, there is the ancestral hall, the private school and the stage. The ancestors altar represents the respect for the traditional values and the connection with the roots of Hakka people.

A particular kind of earthen house, the earliest one, is the Wufeng typology, that has a rectangular shape and consist of three main halls built along the axis. The first building is for the entrance and is the lowest one, then there is the ancestral hall for guests and ceremonies and at the end the tallest one reserved for the elders members of the family. The three halls are connected by two courtyards and many corridors resembling the structure of the traditional courtyard dwelling.

Tulou building can be seen as a model of community housing. The facilities, as the well or the bathrooms, are in common and located around the central courtyard, and all the rooms have the same size, material and decoration, showing the equal grade of residents. Earthen building can be the archetype of a modern apartment building, with the distribution part in common, but also represent the life style of the family clan that use to share the everyday 150

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activities in an outdoor space. For these characteristics the tulou layout was recently redesigned by some Chinese architectural studios to experiment new form of social housing.

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WORK UNIT - DANWEI 单位 Between 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party took power, and 1978, when Reform and Opening began, an additional housing typology joined the lilong in urban Shanghai, the danwei or work unit. The danwei of the Maoist period mixed the European utopian socialist tradition and the ancient Chinese unit disposition giving birth to a new form for the modern Chinese city.

This typology was introduced to control inflation and reduce consumption in a difficult period of economic change. Its principle was to promote the primary and secondary sectors and for this reason the units distribution was related to the industries’ one around the main developed cities. These units were typically walled and gated compounds inside which employment, housing, schools, welfare and commerce took place. They were strong controlled through central government agencies whom can take primary decisions about the unit’s inhabitants. Socialist planning ideology, focused on the “uniformity” of socio-economic characteristics, in fact promoted the idea of neighborhood as a self-sufficient entity based on the development of work activities, that became the basic unit of urban spatial organization. Satisfying all the main needs of its inhabitants, they could spend their entire everyday life without leaving the danwei.

The use of walls has a long history in China, and this enclosure aspect of the danwei fits that tradition. The walls accessible through one or more gates in fact correspond with China’s traditional style of city and building layouts.

The primary facilities such as bathrooms, kitchens and yards are shared sacrificing comfort and imposing a more dismissed lifestyle. Since this organization the housing building only has to accommodate the sleeping and living functions and can reduce its thickness to the minimum increasing its FAR. Those buildings are identical repeated slabs with equal height and south facing. They have six or seven storey and are disposed one after the other at a standard distance corresponding to at least 1.2 the height of the building for the sunlight regulation. The private courtyard and common spaces disappear because every flat has its own entrance faced a corridor united to the other floors by some staircases. The new connection spaces result unsuitable for community activities and cannot be considered as an extension of dwelling space. Also the outdoor common spaces lose their intimate feature because could be directly connected with the city and are not well defined by the building’s volumes. The increase in size of the city cause the loss of the comfortable human scale of the neighborhood.

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JU’ER HUTONG RENEWAL PROJECT - Wu Liangyong

> reference designs

The rehabilitation project of the professor of Beijing’s Tsinghua University Wu Liangyong was carried out between 1980s and 1990s with the help of numerous collaborator. A long process of analysis was made with direct investigation and studies of the traditional typologies. The final result, actually build in the Beijing’s area of Ju’er Hutong, was an organic renewal of the historical buildings. It was traduced in the preservation of some of them and the growth of some new four-storey courtyard residential construction characterized by traditional chinese features (verandas, sloping roofs, green additions).

Eda Apartments - Ryue Nishizawa year: 2002 location: Yokohama, Japan

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House in China - Ryue Nishizawa year: 2003 location: Tanguu, Tianjin, China

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Immeuble villas - Le Corbusier year: 1922 location: -

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Halen - Atelier 5 year: 1961 location: Bern, Switzerland

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Urban study for Molensloot, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pompeiian carpetâ&#x20AC;? - MVRDV year: 1994 location: The Hague, Netherlands

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> suggestions

Vicinato di Matera

2/2 Two two-part pieces using a cube with opposite sides removed- Sol LeWitt year: 1968

Cretto di Gibellina - Alberto Burri year: 1984-1989

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Gravitaciòn - Eduardo Chillida year: 1992

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