Reforming gated communities: Shanghai towards a productive megacity. by Jacopo Reale

REFORMING GATED COMMUNITIES Shanghai, towards a productive megacity

重构封闭社区上海，走向异质的大都市

Politecnico di Milano Scuola di Architettura e società Master of Science in Architecture A.A. 2016 / 2017

Student: Matricola: Supervisors:

Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning Master in Architecture A.A. 2016 / 2017

Jacopo Reale 816776 Ivica Covic Politecnico di Milano Xiahong Hua Tongji University

Abstract

The State Council of the People’s Republic of China has on February 21, 2016 issued the guideline in an effort to treat the problems associated with the country’s urbanization and the growth of city sprawl. The rules, which include a ban on “bizarre or odd-shaped architecture” as well, are the product of the country’s first Central Urban Work Conference in nearly four decades and they take into account also the emerging problems related to the overspread of the gated communities around China. The guideline stated that the roads in the newly established communities will be open to the public, becoming part of the urban road system. That is to better utilize the urban land and optimize the urban road network. In addition, no new gated communities can be built in the future. The paradigm of urbanization based on fast speed, development of huge scale, and speculative real estate is under serious criticism, while the demand for a model or philosophy of urbanization is requested urgently by Chinese government. This can represent the opportunity for a total rethinking of the developmental city, aiming to the recuperation of the idea of the city by offering an alternative to its ideological premise. The developmental city is conceived and constructed through megaplots and it used primarily as a developmental tool driven by speculative capital. The urbanization of these megaplots results in the dissolution of the city as a legible artifact: it is bereft of civic dimension or public sphere. This ensuing sea of enclave urbanism does not constitute the idea of the city, either in the European tradition, as a space of partnership or coexistence, or in the Chinese tradition, as a framework with a clear and legible deep structure that regulates spaces and social relations - the idea of the city as a common space is lost. The first part of this essay argues that a critical reading of the history and tradition of city making in China has the potential to counter this imbalance in development. It does not aspire to a recreation of the city form or urban fabric of ancient China. Rather, it proposes a recuperation of the cultural and philosophical ideas that have underpinned the political, artistic, and aesthetic production of the city as a total work of art - a collective artifact. By this historical investigation, the project proposes the identification of a common framework as the new paradigm of urbanization to dissolute the megaplot and realize an open community without total reconstruction, accommodating housing, work space, outdoor space, retails and leisure space and related civic functions. A common framework is the deep structure of the city, the structure that embodies the space of coexistence. Such an accommodative framework promotes inclusivity through exacerbating difference, it insists that the city is first and foremost a space of plurality, able to frame, absorb, sequence, mark, enclose, layer, limit, separate, compress, and imprint.

China is nowadays facing a turning point in its history: after the economic miracle, it is now defining and consolidating its position as a world power. Chinese Industrial revolution is considered the most important economic and geopolitical phenomena since the original Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. Since the founding of New China, and especially following the reform and opening up period, China’s manufacturing sector has supported China’s position as a economic power. Compared with the advanced economies, China’s manufacturing sector is large but not strong, with obvious gaps in innovation capacity, efficiency of resource utilization, quality of industrial infrastructure and degree of digitalization. The production that China accounts for in many of these industries is still very much low value add and energy intensive, not to mention highly polluting, which is a source of increasing social discontent. In 2015, China has charted out a $300 billion plan to become nearly self-sufficient by 2025 in a range of important industries, from planes to computer chips to electric cars, as it looks to kick-start its next stage of economic development. The goal of ”Made in China 2025” is to comprehensively upgrade Chinese industry, making it more efficient and integrated so that it can occupy the highest parts of global production chains. The plan identifies the goal of raising domestic content of core components and materials to 40% by 2020 and 70% by 2025. At present, we find ourselves at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, which is characterized by so-called “Cyber-Physical Systems”. These systems are a consequence of the far-reaching integration of production, sustainability and customer-satisfaction forming the basis of intelligent network systems and processes. Factory floors are already teeming with “Internet of Things”. It is becoming easier to connect appliances, machines, things, complete factories and other industrial environments and processes to the Internet. Architects and urbanists have the opportunity to proactively challenge the assumptions of the global factory and rethink the idea of the heterotopic urban factory and workers’ conditions in general. Considering contemporary definitions of industry - post bubble and beyond oil economics - there are opportunities for the factory to establish a new paradigm, with nascent potential in design challenges similar to those of the early Modern era, when architects, urbanists, and engineers responded to the novel technologies of their time. Today we can ask - with a flexible, new economy, as well as cleaner, smallerscaled production processes made possible by advanced, real-time manufacturing techniques - what ways can urban manufacturing reenvision, both ecologically and economically, the factory in newly sustainable cities?

Contents

1 Urbanization as a tool for economic growth 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

Developmental City Shanghai case study Megaplot North Hongkou case study Conclusion

2 The city as a Common Framework 2.1 Confucian ethic 2.2 Traditional city 2.3 A comparison between Rome and Beijing 2.4 Courtyard house 2.5 Lilong 2.6 Socialist danwei 2.7 Gated Community 2.8 Conclusion 3 The new paradigm of the contemporary factory 3.1 China, from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;world factoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to high-end production 3.2 The 4th Industrial Revolution 3.3 Vertical urban factory

1 - URBANIZATION AS A TOOL FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH

1.1 Shanghai, aerial view

1.1 - Developmental City

We are living in a world of speed, magnitude, and multiplicity. In a new round of “time-space compression,” with developments such as digital networking, ideological liberalization, and the urbanization of populous nations such as China, India, and other developing countries (together constituting some 70 percent of the global population), the newly emerged landscape of modernity is unprecedented: it is much larger in size of market and production force, more heterogeneous in terms of a coexistence of cultures, and far more dynamic due to instant transmission of ideas, images, capital, services, and products. These circumstances have fostered a critical interest in magnitude and multiplicity in various academic circles. Rem Koolhaas has written on aspects of the landscape of global modernization in which scale and magnitude recur as an issue, as in “Bigness, or the Problem of Large” in his book S, M, L,XL.

1.2 Tim Franco, Metamorpolis, Chongqing (China)

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

“From a single, bustling Chinatown, Singapore has become a city with a Chinatown. It seems complete. But as an old theater of a tabula rasa, Singapore now has the low quality of a still image, a stopped movement that can be restarted at any time, towards further configuration; Is a city that is continually transforming into its next state.” In the 2000s and 2010s, the rapid development of China seems to repeat these miracles at a larger scale, and with an impact that may be broader and deeper in the context of world history. The contemporary Chinese city is a developmental city. In the developmental city, the political legitimacy of the governing party is sustained by, above all other considerations, its ability to initiate, promote, and administer economic growth. The developmental city relies on market speculation as its modus operandi; it requires that planning strategies and parameters

have minimal developmental restriction or political resistance in order to attract developers and financiers. The developmental city-state is driven by two important ideas. First, the state prioritizes the transformation of economic conditions above everything else. Second, economic development is elevated to a high status both due to its larger goals and as an end in itself. Singapore is ruled by a one-party system with a highly centralized decision-making structure that micromanages all aspects of economic and social development. This structure takes the view that the city is an apparatus for development as well as a demonstration of the state’s ability to deliver tangible improvements to the lives of its citizens. A city conceived through this ideology is always in a state of becoming; continually remolded according to a political agenda, the city is made suitable and adaptive for capital accumulation following the economic logic of neoliberalism. In China, the developmental state, or

local government, was an outcome of the economic liberalization of 1979, in which the transformation and development of the city was central to China’s transition from a planned to a more market-oriented economy. As noted by Fu long Wu, Jiang Xu and Anthony Gar-On Yeh, this transition can be summarized as one “from stateled extensive industrialization to urban-based intensive urbanization.” Given that land is owned by the state or collectively and that the state is unable to address the infrastructural shortage, the government opted for extracting rent from stateowned land. With the land and housing reform that followed, urban spaces were put to work, commodified through land-leasing that turned housing into real estate. This ideological flip did not diminish the power of the state but represented a shift from the state defending “proletariat ideology’’ to promoting “economic rationality.” Eager to attract foreign direct investment, local governments began

1.3 Tim Franco, Urban expansion, Shiyan (China)

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Developemental city

adopting the methods of global-oriented production, thereby turning urbanization into a tool for economic growth. Urbanization was no longer reactive to demands for housing the proletariat, as in Britain and Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. It was now predictive, in the form of speculative real estate. The socialist city, which emphasized production in both function and symbolic representation, had been reconceptualized as the developmental city.

1.4 Workers demolish older buildings in Shanghai in preparation for new construction

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1.5 Tim Franco, Made by Chinese

1.2 - Shanghai case study

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Shanghai is strategically positioned at the T-shaped junction of two major economic belts in China: the Eastern coast and the Yangtze River Valley. This advantageous location spurred the formation and growth of Shanghai, which quickly developed into a major financial centre within a century after the early 1840s when it was a small town. To date, Shanghai has already experienced three eras of urbanisation, each stage exhibiting distinct characteristics in terms of population, industry, role in national and regional financial systems, urban expansion and so on. These complex and rich historical processes have left their mark on the city; each one morphing and transforming the urban fabric of Shanghai. Shanghai’s first era of urbanisation in modern times began in the 1840s with the forced establishment of the British Settlement and the French Concession in the area. By the 1920s–1930s (the so-called Golden Era of modern Shanghai), the city developed into the financial centre of the Far East. When Shanghai opened up for development in 1843, the small town’s territory was mainly made up of the area enclosed by its city walls and the wharf area along the Huangpu River. The town existing at that time is today’s Lao-Cheng-Xiang or the traditional town, nearly 2 km 2 in size. The first foreign settlements were planned north of this town along the river, with the intention to separate foreign settlements from Chinese areas. This separation formed the twin town structure of Shanghai half a century later. When wars struck the areas around Shanghai, an increasing number of Chinese fled to the foreign areas for protection and then settled there. The foreign settlement and concession continued to expand. Over time, modern Shanghai’s development was based around the foreign settlement and concession; these areas eventually constitute the major part of the core of Shanghai city until today. Modern Shanghai’s urbanisation process took place around the same time as major large cities in developed countries of the West. At the time, Shanghai’s population, industry, scale of the city’s economy and urban area were generally balanced and comparable to the then Western cities. Similarly, the problems faced by Western capitalist cities, such as 1.6 Aerial view of Shanghai

Shanghai Study case

slums, were also found in Shanghai. However, while the industrialisation of the West was stimulated by internal forces, Shanghai’s first era of urbanisation took place under very special historical circumstances, mostly a result of external factors. The second era of urbanisation happened after New China (the People’s Republic of China) was founded in 1949. As Shanghai bore a large part of the burden of rebuilding the country’s economy, developing the manufacturing and industrial sectors was highly prioritised. Due to national and international circumstances during that historical period, the country had to sustain itself and develop in a self-sufficient manner. In response, Shanghai swiftly transformed from a financial centre into a comprehensive manufacturing hub. Under a highly centralised and planned economic system, the city developed to become China’s greatest manufacturing

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

site, converting from a consumer city to a productive city. For quite a long period, Shanghai contributed one-tenth to one-sixth of the total national revenue despite having only 1 % of the national population. Although China was influenced by the Soviet Union, causing the national proportion of light and heavy industrial manufacturing to be imbalanced, Shanghai maintained itself as a wellbalanced comprehensive manufacturing centre. Apart from steel, textile, ship manufacturing, chemical and other major industries, Chinese people living during this era recall that most domestic goods such as bicycles, sewing machines, watches and radios were made in Shanghai. These were reliable products of an assured quality, and under the planned economy, demand for these goods always exceeded supply nationwide. From 1949 to the late 1970s when the Cultural Revolution ended, Shanghai’s population doubled from 6 million (in the early 1950s) to about 12 million (in 1982). Apart

1.8 The district around and the approaches to Shanghai Whangpoo Concervancy Board, 1920 Virtual Shanghai project

1.7 Shanghai map, 1904-14 Virtual Shanghai project

Shanghai Study case

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

1.9 New map of Shanghai Shao Cheng, 1945 Virtual Shanghai project

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Shanghai Study case

from natural growth, a large part of this growth was a result of the planned immigration of people to support the manufacturing industries. In terms of the physical environment, this era of urbanisation expanded the city through the construction of manufacturing districts at the fringes of the original city or modern Shanghai. Strictly speaking, these manufacturing districts could not be considered urban areas – they were just large plots of factories with workers’ living quarters built beside. However, the living quarters included amenities such as kindergartens, primary schools and healthcare facilities that were all provided by state-owned work units. During this socialist period in China, all forms of business and companies were state-owned and termed ‘work units’. They had a strong socialist character, but did not truly form city-like urban areas. Important institutes such as universities and research institutes also took the form of a production site or work unit and

1.10 Shanghai map, 1959 Virtual Shanghai project

its accompanying living quarter. Every facility required for daily life was wholly provided by state-run work units. Portions of Shanghai built during this time were similar to other industrial cities that China developed in the 1950s–1960s, such as Daqing. The planned economic model, together with the rationing system for daily provisions, the Household Registration System or Hukou in Chinese and the system of distributing and assigning jobs – these forces distinctively shaped that era, as well as the city areas built during that time. However, this wave of expansion did not have a great impact on Shanghai’s overall urban spatial framework. Despite greatly increasing population, manufacturing and production levels, the real urban area did not experience significant physical growth. Instead, key areas in the central part of the city already developed during Shanghai’s modern era grew in intensity of use. For example, Nanjing Road during this time became a national famous shopping

street, attracting thousands of visitors from all countries, forcing it to cope with overcrowding on a daily basis. At the early stage of the China Reform and Opening, from 1978 to 1990, development in the Pearl River Delta region centred on the new city of Shenzhen, which became the test-bed for the nation’s reform and opening ideas, while Shanghai took the back seat in China’s economic reform plan at that period. At Shanghai during the ten some years, since new economic sectors had taken over the old manufacturing sectors, the new and old economic systems experienced much friction. Although Shanghai’s economic growth had always been strong, its rate of growth was lagging behind that of the Pearl River region at that time, so Shanghai’s economic importance in the country fell. Consequently, during this period, there was no significant change in the urban framework of Shanghai. As for physical urban development, contrary to Shanghai’s contribution to the country, the

Shanghainese quality of life kept falling. Up till the early 1990s, Shanghai’s average living space per capita, green space per capita, public transport situation and other key indexes of living conditions ranked among the country’s worst. It was also during this prolonged period of declining living conditions that Linong 3 areas and other historical areas became extremely densely populated, giving such places a slum image. China’s open door policy forms the backdrop of Shanghai’s third era of urbanisation, which took place in line with the larger context of China’s urbanisation in this period. In 1991, Shanghai’s urban development entered an era of great change. This is according to the Chinese central government’s strategy and policy that ‘with the development and opening of Shanghai Pudong as the spur, the cities along the Yangtze River will be further opened up, in order to shape Shanghai

1.11 Shanghai map, 1974 Virtual Shanghai project

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Shanghai Study case

as one of the international economic, finance, and trade centres and thus bring along new leaps of regional economy in the Yangtze River Delta and the whole Yangtze River Valley, which led to the development and opening of Shanghai Pudong and its official launch in 1991. Shanghai’s population has risen to 23 million in 2011, almost doubling in the past 30 years, while the built area of the city increased from 1,000 to 2,860 km. Under the Hukou system of socialist China, rights to education, health care and other public services in a city were only available to those who had been registered in the locality. However, of the 23 million people live in Shanghai today, only 13.4 million are registered in the Hukou system. That is a little increase compared to 30 years ago, when 12 million were registered as such in Shanghai. Hence, about 10 million people today do not enjoy the same privileges as registered Shanghai residents. As such, Shanghai’s third era of urbanisation is characterised by a spatial and physical transformation of the city, happening before the urbanisation of the population – a complete reversal of the second era. In the 1990s, two crucial policies provided the great driving force for the rapid urbanisation of the entire country. The first policy modified the allocation of central and local government tax revenue, changing the role of central government from distribution of the production plan to largescale (macro-economic) planning and allocating construction funds to the local governments. This gave more financial and autonomous decisionmaking power to local governments, creating the conditions for cityinitiated development of infrastructure and city-oriented management and operation for various cities. The second major change was the implementation of land leasing and housing reform in the 1990s. Converting the previous socialist welfare housing system into a real estate market model contributed to the extraordinary speed of urban development. In the 1980s, where Shanghai’s highly challenging housing problem almost wholly relied on government funding, it was now replaced by the rapid development of the real estate market. The government now had an adequate budget for the construction of urban infrastructure. The enormous force of real estate

development swept across the city and tackled issues of urban renewal in older areas of the city as well. Shanghai thus underwent a fundamental change within the 10-year span of the 1990s. The rapid momentum of Shanghai’s growth since Pudong Development began in 1991 has continued into the twenty-first century, with the Shanghai World EXPO in 2010, continuing to attract global attention. On the one hand, this change brought about a rapid improvement in basic urban infrastructure and a substantial improvement in the living conditions of the public. Shanghai’s living space per capita rose from 6.9 m 2 in 1992 to 13.1 m 2 in 2002. On the other hand, such rapid development has also raised questions and criticism of various aspects of the city’s history, culture and social problems. The Comprehensive Plan of Pudong New District published in 1991 expanded and almost doubled Shanghai’s urban territory across the Huangpu River. Crossing the river with several bridges and tunnels and plans for Lujiazui Central Business District (CBD), Huamu Civic Centre, manufacturing and industrial zones, Century Avenue, major iconic public buildings and a series of building initiatives signalled Pudong Development in full force. A new Pudong presented itself before everyone at the turn of the century, after 10 years of rapid development under the slogan ‘A new look every year, an astonishing change every three years’. This was also the most evident symbol of Shanghai’s success in the 1990s. The rapid development of Shanghai in the 1990s brought it back to the forefront of China’s leading cities. Its urban patterns, urban planning and development practices, appropriate or otherwise, have inevitably become a role model for other cities throughout China. Pudong’s Lujiazui CBD and Century Avenue, Nanjing Road Pedestrian Commercial Street, Shanghai Xintiandi urban redevelopment project, large green spaces and parks, metros, municipal libraries, grand theatres and other building initiatives in Shanghai have been emulated by other cities, but the consequences are undoubtedly an issue worth investigating.

1.12 Pudong area in 1990 and 2010

Shanghai Study case

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

1.13 The comprehensive plan of Shanghai Pudong new area, 1991 Virtual Shanghai project

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1.3 - Megaplot

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

The developmental city uses the megaplot as a basic planning module. This oversized tract can vary greatly in size between urban areas and the peripheries of the city. It is an efficient planning apparatus that allows the government to urbanize rapidly by shifting to developers the investment required for infrastructure. The state is responsible only for widely spaced infrastructure; the developer must provide infrastructure and public goods within the plot. The lack or architectural and spalial attributes promotes efficiency in planning and land transactions. The megaplot is a tabula rasa, a condition that is favored by speculative developers for the speed and freedom of development it offers. Within the megaplots, buildings are regulated by planning parameters that result in either freestanding towers in large unconsolidated open spaces or colossal superblock housing developments, gated luxury communities or, in the cheaper version, urnrelenting rubber-stamped blocks. The urbanization of these megaplots results in the dissolution of the city as a legible artifact; the civic dimension and public sphere play no part. This sea of speculative enclaves does not constitute any idea of the city, either in the European tradition, as a space of coexistence, or in the Chinese sense, as an administrative framework with a clear and legible deep structure. What is lost is the idea of the city as a common space par excellence. The urban studies literature shows that the rapid emergence of enclave urbanism is part of a global process, resulting in mosaics of closed, homogeneous spheres that have replaced open, heterogeneous public spaces. It is not hard to read post modern american, european and asian city as a system formed by a series of enclaves of specific typologies. The enclaves in this system act as heterotopias, spaces of high efficiency and great specialization which temporarily serve as pinnacles of profit. New enclaves with innovative governance forms such as special economic zones, gated communities, shopping malls, and factory towns are grafted into the existing spatial mosaic of neighborhoods, cities, and states. Infrastructures selectively connect these new enclaves to more distant places while disconnecting 1.14 Residential development in Boca Raton, Florida, USA. DailyOverview

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Megaplot

them from their immediate surroundings. The resulting new form of urbanismâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;enclave urbanismâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is marked by an intrametropolitan structure that consists of specialized areas containing distinct combinations of cultural, functional, and economic groups and/ or activities. Essential to enclave urbanism is the introduction of social, legal, and physical boundaries that demarcate each of these areas. Enclave urbanism is most sharply expressed in residential developments. Developers design housing estates themed in terms of borrowed nostalgia, ultra-modernity, and most recently ecological sustainability. The public domain is reduced to controlled commercial environments; spaces in between the enclaves are relegated to the status of leftovers. Increasingly inaccessible and of desperately poor quality, the only barely hold the city together. If the city is nothing more than a collection of islands and in between space its role as a communal environment

1.15 Housing developement on typical megaplot Shanghai, Ruihong road

is at stake. An urbanization process that offers the least resistance to capital, encourages speed in its realization, and absolves the state from the provision of public goods found its physical model in the megaplot. The 1989 City Planning Act vested in local government the right to regulate development and authorized it to prepare tiered plans for development. At the apex of this process is the master plan, a document accompanied by a series of maps that outlines the designated functions of a city, its development goals, target size, and general land-use structure. Guiding the growth of a city over twenty years, it is essentially a general perspective of the prospective city. Once approved, the master plan becomes a statutory plan. The document represents the city as patches of color, each one designating the land use for a developmental plot, or megaplot. These parcels are necessarily large, ranging from approximately four hectares in city centers to forty hectares in its

1.16 Typical master plan, with colored patches indicating land use

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Megaplot

peripheries, surrounded by oversized arterial roads. The responsibility for secondary roads, along with other public goods, is transferred to the developer. These planning trade-offs are often negotiated between local government and developers rather than legislated; flexibility makes investment more attractive and development of the megaplots more likely. However, more often than not, the delivery of public goods is delayed (sometimes indefinitely) because it is an expense that generates no profit for the developer. The architecture of the megaplot can be dividided into two categories - the norm and the exception. The former is architecture at its most efficient, a product of pure real estate logic that maximizes the number of units or the amount of floor area allowable on a plot with the lowest construction cost alongside an image sufficiently tolerable for purchase. Buildings

are usually monotonous residential towers or slab blocks with landscape beautification inserted into the leftover spaces on the ground. The form of these highrises results entirely from the extrusion of the plans of the most sellable apartment. The uniformity and pervasiveness of this architecture are the outcome of the pure marketization of urbanization and its generic planning parameters and developmental controls. The architecture on a typical megaplot is generated by a procedure that starts with defining the plot boundaries. Regulations prescribe a thirty-meter setback from major roads and a fifteen-meter setback from minor roads. Infrastructure within the megaplot, implemented by the developer, often incorporates a redundant perimeter road for local access, exacerbating the disconnection between the megaplot and its neighbors. Buildings are placed within the site according to spacing regulations. When the buildings are positioned in a

north-south orientation, the spacing is equal to their height; the typical height limit for a residential tower is approximately fifty meters. Within this limit, height is dictated by parameters derived from the desired floor area ratio. The building footprint is further controlled by coverage and green area ratio. The implementation of the planning parameters and its regulations can lead to only one outcome: a Corbusian city of towers in a field. The city of towers, a model developed in the 1920s, accepts standardization and utilitarianism as the sole architectural strategies that can be used to design new habitable spaces. A diagram prepared by Walter Gropius clearly shows the “scientific” method for solving housing problems, which is much like a mathematical puzzle; this formula can be implemented in any number of places. This method was discredited, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, for its indifference to the heterogeneity of urban life. Its most devastating critique came from Colin Rowe. Rowe used figure-ground plans to emphasize the striking contrast between the building figure in typical modernist architecture and that in a historic European city. Comparing Le Corbusier’s Saint Dié and the italian cily of Parma, Rowe argued that in the former, the buildings are the figures, spaced apart as markers. In Parma, the void is the figure; tightly spaced buildings are space definers. Rowe believed that the Corbusian city laundered the ground plane of its textural richness while the urban spaces of Parma, defined by the city’s architecture, expand and contract, creating friction and containment for the urban encounters so crucial to social intercourse.

1.18 Walter Gropius, diagrams illustrating parallel rows of different heights on a rectangular site

In cases where the megaplot is utilized to serve up an alluring image of the city, the architecture is designed as the exception, not the norm. Local governments, usually the city planning bureaus, engage urban design consultants to make a development attractive and unique. Once the designs have been accepted by the local government, the urban pian is subjected to the planning parameters and color patches of the master plan, but in a way that is calibrated to encourage the intended outcome. The central business district 1.17 Real Estate developement exhibition

1.19 Le Corbusier, project for Saint Dié, figure-ground plan (top); Parma, figure-ground plan (bottom)

Megaplot

- an oxyrmoron - is the most common example of this exception in China. In a CBD, the form of an office tower is anything but the pure extrusion of a plan. Instead, the high-rise, never less than thirty stories, tapers, chamfers, folds, bends, twists, and contorts. Exterior form molds interior floor plates. The building announces, bombastically, the ability of the sponsor to accumulate the capital necessary to build the vast structure and to afford the cutting-edge building technology required. The spectacular image of the CBD conveys the promise of success and disguises speculation as certainty. As a result, the architecture of both norm and exception serves up an urbanism of enclaves fragmented and closed off according to social class. They are fragmented by inflated and duplicated roadways, spaced out towers, large building blocks, remedial decorative landscape, and lifeless ground planes. And they are closed off by fences, security gates, hoarded open spaces and luxury

1.20 The architecture of exception in the megaplot Shanghai Lujiazui, 2015

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

amenities, and roads so wide that they make walking onerous if not hazardous. This sea of urbanization is not what constitutes the true meaning of the city, the space of coexistence. The procedure to develop a residential compaund do not contribute to clear-cut city planning either. The government allocates an area and invites a small group of investors to take part in the development. The area is broken up into different building sitesand rough directives are defined such as maximum building height, buildable area, and the type of facilities. Then, true to form, the developers withdraw into seclusion. The chinese business tradition prescribes absolute secrecy and the conjoining sites are developed without any mutual consultation. As a result, although each developer has carried out their own delimited market research, no one has considered the sum of mutual needs across the area. Generally there is a surplus of commercial facilities, a lack of public facilities, and oddly mismatched infrastructure.

Practitioners of “new urbanism” and purveyors of “transport-oriented development” claim that the remedy to such ills is simple: narrower roads; bulildings that define the edges of streets; mixed programs; reasonably scaled blocks that promote walking and bicycling; public transport with dense transportation node. While practical and commendable, these solutions neglect the fact that the city is not just the efficient management of spaces for work, living, and leisure with a functional and mechanistic inevitability that is outside a cultural and political will.

1.21 Typical megaplot

1.22 Peter Calthorpe Transformation of arterial grid into urban network

1.4 - North Hongkou case study

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

1.23 Aerial view of Zhangqiao shanty town

North Hongkou case study

The case-study area is located in North Hongkou district, Shanghai. The area is defined by the intersections of four main roads, Siping road, Dalian road, Linping road and Zhoujiazui road. Served by two metro lines, line 10 (Youdian Xincun) and line 4 (Linping road), it is located in a quite strategic position being along Siping Road - the main axis connecting the old city centre to Tongji University, Fudan University and and Yangpu district - and Dalian road - crossing the Hangpu river and connecting Hongkou to Pudong. This area hosted until 2010 one of the biggest shanty town in Shanghai but, after Premier Li Keqiang’s decision to complete the redevelopment of the country’s urban villages by 2020, is now facing a total renewal with the gadual demolition of the old barracks in order to give space to more modern gated communities. Ruihong Lu New Town is the name of the approved masterplan; devided into four phases, it is going to replace gradually the exhisting buildings

1.24 Hongkou area, 1932 Virtual Shanghai project

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

with brand new residential communities, shopping malls and leisure facilities. Zhangqiao is the name of the remaining of the original urban village that once existed in this area. It is situated beside a small creek and the community appears as a blemish among the modern high-rise residential buildings worth more than 100,000 yuan per square meter in China’s most cosmopolitan city. In the early 1950s, Zhangqiao was the place where the city’s human waste was loaded before being shipped for disposal in remote areas. Many boatmen, mostly migrants from neighboring provinces, moved ashore and built makeshift singlestory houses in the district. As a result, hundreds of buildings of different shapes and sizes sprang up, facing in all directions; a stark contrast to most of the buildings in the city, which stand in neatly regulated lines. In the first phase of urbanization process, between 1949 and 1990, China has managed the rapid

1.25 Hongkou district, 1998 Virtual Shanghai project

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

North Hongkou case study

urban growth without the creation of large slum areas thanks to a strictly control of rural-urban migrations. During these time the government provided housing for 300 million people without inequality. With the liberalization of migration policy as part of the economic reforms after 1978, rural-urban migration has turned into a massive flow. Already in 1995 it was estimated that more than 80 million rural-urban migrants resided in China’s major cities. This would be one of the largest flows of labor migration in history. Such rapid urbanization has transformed the spatial and social landscapes of Chinese cities. One of the most visible product of this explosive growth are China’s urban villages or “chengzhongcun”, literally “villages within the city”. These villages were once located on the fringes of huge cities, but as the cities grew, they encroached upon rural areas. Farmlands that were formerly cultivated by the villages were compulsorily purchased and turned into urban land by the government, while the villages themselves were left untouched because of the high economic cost to relocate and compensate the villagers. As a result, small pockets of rural areas surrounded by towering skyscrapers, transportation infrastructures, and other modern urban constructions exists in many large cities that have experienced significant expansion and received large numbers of migrants. Urban villages in China, just as its name implies, are rural enclaves, that lost its original farmlands, situated inside large cities characterized by the high building densities, poor building quality and irregular narrow streets. Anyway these neighborhoods typologies share some important characteristics with informal settlements: a big part of buildings violate against building and urban planning regulations, most of the inhabitants have illegal connections to water and electricity, toilets and kitchen spaces are usually shared, most settlers page belong to the lower income groups working mainly 144 as laborers in construction, transportation, privately owned small informal enterprises. The urban villages are not regulated by any form of centralized urban planning and typically receive no public services from

1. NATIVE VILLAGE

2. EMBRYONIC URBAN VILLAGE

3. GROWING URBAN VILLAGE

4. MATURE URBAN VILLAGE

5. REDEVELOPED AREA

(7. 12) Urban village evolution

1.26 From the urban village to the new compound

1.27 Rainbow City Concept Masterplan

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

North Hongkou case study

city governments because their household registration status remains rural so they cannot enjoy any of the welfare benefits offered to urban residents. Deprived of their land, the primary means of livelihood, the villagers take to building high-density houses and offer them to rent to migrant workers. Most of these villages are now heavily populated and intensely developed, crowded with multi-story buildings ranging from three to five (or more) floors, and narrow alleys, resulting in slum-like living environments. While urban villages provide cheap accommodation for the impoverished population who come from the rural areas, they have become the breeding grounds for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, and prostitution. Redevelopment of urban villages is one of the priority issues on the agenda of Chinese government, but the process is highly contested. The most commonly used approach in redeveloping urban villages is to demolish

1.28 Ruihong Lu new Town masterplan

all existing structures and build high-rise apartment towers while the residents are compensated with a relocation usually in a more rural area. This strategy is being applying also within the selected case study area, where a new masterplan - Ruihong Lu new Town- is going to give a new brand image to the area. The new masterplan is characterized by the intensive use of gathed communities as residentail typologies. Shopping malls provide retail and leisure functions to the new neighbourhood while there is a lack of public facilities, and an oddly mismatched infrastructure. The selected area represents a perfect example of the previously described architecture of the megaplot resulting from the land use strategy dictated by the masterplan.

Body text (2 column)

1.29 Gated communities in Ruihong Lu new Town

2.8 - Conclusion

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

The State Council of the People’s Republic of China has on February 21, 2016 issued the guideline in an effort to treat the problems associated with the country’s urbanization and the growth of city sprawl. The rules, which include a ban on “bizarre” or “odd-shaped” architecture as well, are the product of the country’s first Central Urban Work Conference in nearly four decades and they take into account also the emerging problems related to the overspread of the gated communities aroung China. The guideline stated that the roads in the newly established communities will be open to the public, becoming part of the urban road system, and the old communities will gradually connect their roads to the public roads. That is to better utilize the urban land and optimize the urban road network. In addition, no new gated communities can be built in the future. The new guideline declared the will of reforming the gated community system in China; but can this be also the opprtunity for a total rethinking of the developmental city, aiming to the recuperation of the idea of the city by offering an alternative to its ideological premise. This essay argues that a critical reading of the history and tradition of city making in China has the potential to counter this imbalance in development. It does not aspire to a re-creation of the city form or urban fabric of ancient China. Rather, it proposes a recuperation of the cultural and philosophical ideas that have underpinned the political, artistic, and aesthetic production of the city as a total work of art - a collective artifact. Any attempt to recuperate the idea of the historic Chinese city with the goal of rethinking the developmental city can be informed by Aldo Rossi. The dominant type for Rossi is both the element that constitutes an idea of the city and a reification of the idea of what is common. For this dominant type to be common, it must persist over time and take part in the continuous transformation of the city. Through this capacity to remain permanent it becomes a collective artifact or framework, for it is sanctioned by its acceptance. The capacity for permanence mirrors Aldo Rossi’s conception of the urban artifact. While Rossi’s argues the permanence of urban artifacts through the notion of the collective memory, and uses the historic European city as the site for the identification of the urban artifact, the dominant type is found rather in the context of a globalized production of architecture and is focused on the organizational potential of the deep structure. So what does a common framework look like for the contemporary Chinese city? The first task in attempting to create a common framework is to identify the dominant type and its deep structure through a critical reading of the history of Chinese city planning.

Bibliography

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Singapore Songlines - S,M,L,XL: Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large’, New York, Monacelli, 1995.

Michel Foucault, ‘Des espaces autres’, Mouvement, Continuite’ n. 5, Octobre 1984.

Manuel Castells, ‘Four Asian tigers with a Dragon Head: A Comparative Analysis of the State, Economy, and Development in the Pacific Rim’, Newbury Park, Sage, 1992.

David Grahame Shane, ‘Heterotopias and Urban Design’, ACSA Publications, Routledge, New York 2008.

Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, ‘Collage City’, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1978. Aldo Rossi, ‘L’architettura della città’, Padova, Marsilio, 1966. Arkaraprasertkul, ‘Towards modern urban housing: redefining Shanghai’s Lilong’, Routledge Journal of Urbanism, Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2009, 11–29. Iossifova, ‘Blurring the joint line? Urban life on the edge between Old and New in Shanghai’, Tokyo Institute of Technology, June 2007. Alexandra Staub, Qingyang Yu, ‘The New Gated Housing Communities in China: Implications for Urban Identity’, The Pennsylvania State University. Douglass, Wissink, Kempen, ‘Enclave Urbanism in China: consequences and implications’, Urban Geography journal, 2013. Yang zhiyi, ‘More than living’ ,Shanghai, Tongji University Press, 2015.

Friedman, ‘China’s urban transition’, University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Campanella, ‘The concrete Architectural Press, 2008.

dragon’,

Princeton

Gil, ‘Shanghai Transforming’, Actar , 2007. Haarmann, ‘Shanghai urban public space’, Jovis, 2009. Mars / Hornsby, ‘The Chinese Dream – a society under construction’, 010 Publishers, 2008. Duanfang Lu, ‘Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space’, 1949–2005, London, Routledge, 2006. Neeraj Bhatia, ‘The Rise of the Private: Shanghai’s Transforming Housing Typologies, Mapping Urban Complexity in an Asian Context’, DelftArchitecture theory Journal, 2006. Arkaraprasertkul, ‘Politicisation and the Rhetoric of Shanghai Urbanism, Mapping Urban Complexity in an Asian Context’, Delft Architecture theory Journal, 2006.

Mia, Pu, ‘Public places in Asia-Pacific Cities: current issues and strategies’, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.

Jie Shen and Fulong Wu, ‘The development of masterplanned communities in chinese suburbs: a case study of shanghai’s thames town’, Urban geography volume 33, 2012 - issue 2: living in chinese enclave cities.

Harry den Hartog, ‘Shanghai New Towns - Searching for community and identity in a sprawling metropolis’, 010 Publishers, 2011.

Edward Denison and Guang Yu Ren, ‘Building shanghai, the story of China’s gateway’, John Wiley & Sons, 2006.

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Weiping Wu, ‘Cultural strategies regenerating cosmopolitanism in globalization’, Elsevier, 2003.

seeing

between

Pier Vittorio Aureli, ‘The city as a project’, Berlin, Ruby Press, 2014. Lieven De Cauter and Michiel Dehaene, ‘Heterotopia in the post-civil society’, London-New York, Routledge, 2008. Zygmunt Bauman, ‘Liquid Modernity’, Roma, Laterza, 2002.

in Shanghai: an era of

Richard Walker & Daniel Buck, ‘The chinese road cities in the transition to capitalism’, New Left Review, Julyaugust 2007. Miao Xu, Gated communities in china: urban design concerns, school o f city and regional planning, Cardiff university, 2009.

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

North Hongkou District Location

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

2016 1998

2000

2002

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Ten years of transormations From a shanty town to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Ruihong Lu New Townâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

I Dispossetion

II Tabula rasa

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

III Contruction of the megaplot

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

IV Real estate marketing

V Gated community enclave

160

280

220

Currunt Situation

220

210

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

240 m

Megaplot

Informal settlements 54

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Rome

Milan

Barcelona

Paris

New York

Tokyo

Urban Grid With an oveall dimension of 200x200 m, the plots in the case-study area exceed by far the dimension of the compared citiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; grid.

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Section B

Section A

30 m

Section C

Infrastructure network The width of the primary and secondary roads is oversized in comparison to the traffic needs and the barriers (fence, gates, steps) between the buildings and the public streets donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t promote a lively urban life. 58

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Reform Period

Informal settlements

Socialist Period

Typologies

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

High-rise Monotonous residential towers or slab blocks resulting entirely from the extrusion of the plans of the most sellable apartment. Characterized by stylistic excesses and coarseness this style is applied to many of the new high-rise towers which take the appearance of floating palaces dressed with columns and various kinds of ornaments.

Landscape Landscape beautification is inserted in between the high-rises, taking as stylistic example the European classicism. Without a clear and coherent form, the landscape occupies the leftover spaces generating unmeaningful spaces.

Gates Most of the gated communities have some kind of barrier - a wall or fence - enclosing them, and many have security guards who monitor and control entry to the compound.

Gated communities

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Segregation Interruption of the urban grid Repetiton Unconfined urban space voids Residential Compound It is a planned neighbourhood where housing, restaurants, convenience shops, sport facilities, and communication and road infrastructure are all under the control of a professional property management company. 64

Lack of sense of community Undifferentiated social composition

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Private Compund The neighbourhood is completely fenced. Checkpoints controlled by guards allow the entrance of the residents to the compund.

Semi-private Compound The neighbourhood is partially fenced. Residents has a separate acces to the compund, while a commercial promenade is opened to the public allowing the crossing within the plot. 67

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Retail facing street Compound The neighbourhood is partially fenced, while building gathering retail and services are positioned at the border to provide closure and security to the compaund. The commercial border is accessible both by residents and public. 68

Single object Compound The neighbourhood doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enclose a open space. Usually it is composed by a retail/leisure base while the acces to the residential highrises is above.

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Reatil facing street

Private

Semi-private

Single Object

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Fences and Gates The result of gated communities planning is a city composed by fences, gates, walls and checkpoints. The relation to the public realm is often neglected and the role of the street is reduced to its functional meaning of mere infrastructure.

Urbanization as a tool for economic growth

Retail border Neighbourhoods are partially eclosed by commercial buildings. Being designed only for a protective purpose, this mismatched and odd structure does not create a comprehensive infrastructure. The commercial activities are spreaded without a clear hierarchical understanding. Abandoned or unused spaces are often the result of this design process. 74

2 - THE CITY AS A COMMON FRAMEWORK

Detailed map of Beijing around Longfusi temple, 1750

The city as a Common Framework

“ A whole history remains to be written of space – which would at the same time be the history of powers – from the great strategies of geo-politics to the tactics of the habitat… Anchorage in a space is an economico-political form that needs to be studied in detail.” Michel Foucault The Eye of Power (1977) Aiming at an identification of a common framework for the contemporary city, this chapter intends to examine the design and morphological history of China’s gated cities, dissecting the ingrained prototypes of enclosed physical forms and organisational patterns in the Chinese history of city planning, especially for residential compounds. Henri Lefebvre (1991) insists that space, in its socially constructed form, is shaped by history, politics and ideology. Therefore, this retrospective examination of the design history is not only about spatial forms, but also about the political-economic background of the time. The first part of this review examines the differences between the Chinese and Greek European paths of thinking and the tradition of gated cities, neighbourhoods and residential compounds in Chinese history. The second part of the historical inquiry traces the evolution of gated community during the post-socialist era after 1978 when it emerged from the commodity housing market after housing reform and has gradually gained overwhelming prevalence in China. While reviewing in detail the socio-cultural and political-economic factors in the evolving process, it summarises the general features of gated community in China. This historical review will follow a chronological order and is classified into three categories: the lengthy pre-1949 feudal monarchy, when walled residential quarters and introspective courtyard archetypes were sustained; the socialist period from 1949 to 1978 when gated work-compounds (danwai) came to dominate the Chinese urban landscape; and the post-socialist era after 1978 when the contemporary gated community has gradually come into being in China and gained overwhelming prevalence in the commodity housing market. A general chronology of Chinese history is attached on the next page for clarity.

Dates

Dynasty

ca.2000 - 1500 B.C.

Xia

1700 - 1027 B.C.

Shang

1027 - 771 B.C.

Western Zhou

1771 - 475 B.C.

Spring and Autumn period

475 - 221 B.C.

Warring States period

224 - 206B.C.

Qin (the first united state)

206 B.C. - 9 A.D

Xin (Wang Mang interregnum)

9 - 25 A.D.

Eartern Han

25 - 220 A.D

Period of fragmentation

220 - 581 A.D.

Sui

581 - 907 A.D.

Tang

907 - 960 A.D.

Period of fragmentation

960 - 1279 A.D.

Song

1279 - 1368 A.D.

Yuan

1368 - 1644 A.D.

Ming

1644 - 1911 A.D.

Qing

1911 - 1949 A.D.

Republic of China

1949 A.D. - present

People’s Republic of China

1949 - 1978 A.D. 1978 A.D. - present

Socialist period Reform period

2.1 - Confucian Theory

Notable differences exist between the Chinese and Greek European paths of thinking in the flow from general metaphysics to political ethics. According to ancient Chinese philosophy, the universe is generated by itself, from within; the universe is immanent; all is here, included and internalized; no outside is possible (all outside relates back to this universe). This metaphysics leads to a moral and familial political construct, with an emphasis on oneness, from the person to the family, the state, and the universe, as one moral order. For Europeans in classical antiquity, however, the universe is generated by something else, from outside, by something transcendent, ultimately by an external agent, an unmoved mover, the First Cause (God), outside the universe; with this externality, all things can be externalized and opposed to each other, and the world can be abstracted into a pure scheme of absolute opposites, a position that leads to a legal and contractual

The city as a Common Framework

political construct with individuals and social entities conceived as autonomous and opposed in an open outside. This Chinese logic of thinking, which leads to Confucian political ethics, has three important ideas: that the world is a “within” and so humans are all inside as well; that there is an inner good in humans, but it is not always manifested, and state leadership is needed to assure this manifestation; and that all entities, from humans to the universe, are related in one moral order. While these three ideas are logically related, they contrast with Greek-European thought. In terms of first idea, that the world is a within, Chinese philosophy conceives of nature as self-generated from within through a rational dynamics of constant interactions between yin and yang forces, which generates a multitude of “ten thousand things” (wan wu). When the universe is self-generated and all are within, humans are also included and embedded, and are related as yin-yang

relations, which are not equal and autonomous but bioethically folded or connected relations between husband and wife, father and son, senior and junior, officials and the emperor, and so on. In his Metaphysics, however, Aristotele wrote that the world is generated by an agent from outside, the unmoved mover, the First Cause; with such a conviction, the universe can be conceived as a system of autonomous opposites in an open outside. ln Politics, Aristotele posited social beings as “citizens” in the forum of city-states; in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, individuals are thought of as autonomous and external to each other, poised to compete for resources in a “natural state”, as a logical starting point in his theory of government. For the second idea, Chinese Confucian thinkers have postulated a sequence of ideas on the inner good and the reason for state government. According to these philosophers, there is an inner good in all humans, yet this inner good

is potential, not always evidenced; to make it manifest, an emperor with a state government must lead and cultivate humans through moral teaching and exemplification. In such a conception, state government is conceived first and foremost as a moral agent. In European antiquity, by contrast, Aristotele’s Politics put forward humans as social beings in the citystates as “political animals” in an urban outside, pursuing their own agendas. Centuries later, at the dawn of modern Europe, in the 1690s, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government offered a conception of humans as necessarily competing, as in wilderness, in a “natural state”; state government is considered to be a “contract” with the people that protects this right to compete. In addition, this state government must be limited, with a separation of powers to prevent it from corruption. In the context of the third idea, that of an all-relatedness in a comprehensive moral sequence from the individual to

2.1 A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains Wang Ximeng, 1113

Confucian Theory

The city as a Common Framework

the universe, Confucian thinkers in antiquity proposed that to materialize human kindness and to follow the emperor to manifest one’s inner good were merely to follow nature and the ways of heaven. One of the most popular expressions is that “the family, the state, and the universe are one”. The key points are inclusiveness and the impossibility of separation and opposition. This inclusiveness differs from the European tradition, which is analytical and oppositional, with a dualistic split and an externalization as a basic conceptual approach. This position is manifested in the constructed opposition, so widely used, between culture and nature, self and other, state and society, state and market, civil liberty and authoritarian regime, individuals and institutions, and the various political parties. Inclusiveness, Largeness with Multiplicity, and Moral Statehood the core ideas of Chinese Confucian thinking in antiquity have contributed to the formation of a rich and long-standing tradition in the past two millenniums, a tradition that displays three characteristics: inclusiveness, a large oneness with multiplicities included, and moral statehood. First, in Chinese culture and tradition, the universe is conceived as internal and all-inclusive. Second, this culture promotes a conception of oneness that includes a multiplicity of ten thousand things. Third, in this cultural tradition, state government is considered as morally justified and is within a social and natural oneness that advances from the person and the family all the way to a large social world and natural universe. These three characteristics contribute to the emergence of a powerful state, with moral and comprehensive leadership, in a state-society hybrid with no “outside,” where society, market, religion, culture, and academy are absorbed into the hybrid oneness. A mechanism to achieve this was a nationwide civil examination system established as early as 600 A.D., a system that was open to all and would select the best students to become government officials based on examinations on Confucian classics. This examination system absorbed the social elite and knowledge production into the state. In Confucianism, the family unit is inherently harmonious, since it is the natural training ground for morality, and it

serves as the bridge between individuals and their society; the family is therefore the model for the state. This differs significantly from the viewpoint of Aristotele, who made a clear distinction between the space and interests of the household and those of the polis. The former is bound by blood relations; the latter by the common good that must be derived through politics. Besides Confucianism, the architecture of the Chinese city is greatly influenced by Daoism and its core concept of yin yang. Like Confucianism, Daoism arose in response to the collapse of prefeudal society during the Eastern Zhou Period (770-475 B.C.), an era characterized by moral decay and political and economic chaos. Unlike Confucianism, Daoism is a philosophy of noninterference. It was promulgated by Laozi, a librarian of the Zhou Dynasty imperial court, and emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge via reasoning, sequential thought, and logic. Its core concepts, yin yang and qi, relate to cosmic harmony. The preservation of harmony, maintaining an equilibrium between binary opposites in all aspects and categories of environmental, social, governmental, and aesthetic production, is fundamental. The duality of yin yang translates to female-male, coldhot, mountain-water, and so on, and finds its harmonious relations in the conduct that both Confucianism and Daoism draw heavily from the ancient Chinese understanding of the environment. The term “natural environment” is associated with morality, human behavior, and ethics. Ancient Chinese artistic production attests to the enhancement of the natural and cosmic environment. Traditional Chinese society views humans and nature within a single system; their survival is mutually dependent. The society and behaviors of humankind suit the natural environment, seeking equilibrium. Therefore in the imperial Chinese city, the presence of the natural environment is paramount, exemplified always by the placement of the city between mountains to the north and water bodies to the south. This differs significantly from Western models, which suggest detachment from the immediate natural environment as the source of survival. Aristotele exalts the polis as a finite space for association, education, and

contemplation, one that is separate from the expanded territory made up of agricultural land and wilderness. Sebastian Serlio, in his Five Books of Architecture (1537), depicted the city in three scenes: noble, comic, and satiric. The first is an orderly composition of the monuments of Rome, the second is a chaotic amalgamation of shops in the market, and the third is a foreboding scene of a village on the verge of being engulfed by nature. In the Enlightenment, with the rise of Newtonian science, nature was something to be understood, harnessed, and thus subjugated. For the Chinese, the maintenance of equilibrium between opposites-perpetual alternation rather than confrontation or displacement-is the feature that binds the teachings of Confucianism and Daoism.

2.2 Scena Tragica, Comica e Satirica Sebastiano Serlio, 1611

2.2. - Traditional city

The traditional Chinese city generally exhibited five major morphological characteristics, namely walled enclosure, axiality, north-south orientation, symmetrical layout and closed courtyard. Both “walled enclosure” and “closed courtyard” indicate the long-existing tradition of walled urban morphology and introverted living patterns during over two thousand years of highly centralised feudal monarchy. While the former describes the urban form at the macro-level, the latter is the elementary urban dwelling typology at the micro-level. This section will firstly discuss the dominant ideologies underpinning the design of ancient Chinese cities. This will aid understanding of the political and cultural factors behind the spatial manifestations over the two thousand years of highly centralized feudal monarchy, which was virtually ended in 1911, and then followed by about thirty years of national political turmoil before 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was established. Walled city in china, can be traced back as far as the fifteenth century BC. However, the earliest surviving written records that set down the principles for the design of cities are those found in the Kaogongji section of the Zhou Li, or Rites of Zhou, a text that probably dates from around the time of the Han dinasty emperor Han Wudi (141 - 87 BC). It elucidated for the first time the principles about the design of the imperial city or capital city of a dynasty. The general rules are: 1) The city should be a square of nine by nine Li. (an ancient Chinese measure of distance of approx. 400 m) 2) it should be divided by nine main streets running north-south and nine east-west. 3) According to these eighteen streets, twelve city gates should be located on the four sides of the walled city. 4) The palace, where the emperor and his family and the court dwell, should be located in the middle of the city, facing the south. 5) The administration body of the dynasty should be

The city as a Common Framework

located immediately in front of the palace complex.

Body text (2 column)

2.3 Chang’an, 583- 907

6) An Altar of Soil and Grain should be place to the right of that administration complex, and a Temple of Ancestor to its left. Manipulated by aristocratic power Chinese cities before the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) had a highly hierarchical and controlled social structure while commercial activities were rigidly suppressed. Tang Chang’an (618906 AD), housing over a million people with a welldeveloped urban form, is the most typical and influential model of this kind. Tang Chang’an was physically a city of walls and fortresses. The city as a whole was walled with 16 city gates, and the perimeter of a rammed earth wall measured 37km. Within this fortified perimeter, the walled palace was located to the north. Eleven northsouth and fourteen east-west major streets divided the walled city into 108 fang, or wards (residential quarters), and two designated markets. The residential areas within the city walls were divided into blocks defined by the interlocking grid of avenues. In turn, each block – known variously as li, luli or later fang- was enclosed by its own walls. In this way the walled city was itself made up of numerous walled residential compounds. The earliest justification for these neighbourhood walls has been found in the writings of Guanzi, a philosopher from the Warring States period (475-221 BC). He believed that a system of enclosed residential areas would reduce the opportunities for crime and for illicit contact between men and women. In order to facilitate the policing of social and moral order, Guanzi also stipulated that each li have only one central avenue with a gate at either end. The gates were to be guarded at all times by an official known as luyousi.This system operated until the Northern Song Dynasty, when the walls were pulled down in order to facilitate greater commercial activity. The economic growth facilitated by long-term social stability and the revolutionary improvement in agricultural technologies in the Song Dynasty (9601279 AD) was the decisive driving force to overthrow the previous highly demarcated and controlled 2.4 Wangcheng, Nalan, San li tu.

Traditional city

urban form. Eventually, the physical and institutional constraints on the city were officially abandoned for an open urban structure. Although the main streetblock structure remained, the previously internal roads of the residential wards became accessible to the general public. The residential pattern of li fang was replaced by fang xiang with free movement and mixed land-use, and this pattern ran through the following thousand years until today. Fang was commonly a long rectangular residential site naturally divided by a main road and branching streets. Xiang (also called hutong in northern China) is the street connecting the dwelling units in fang. It became in practice a communal linear public space with a strong sense of community for local inhabitants. The sense of belonging and territorial control became even stronger when there was a door with a nameplate at the gateway of xiang. Shops gathered around the gateway, serving the daily needs

The city as a Common Framework

of local residents within a handy distance. Although streets (xiang / hutong) were entirely accessible to the passer-by, most streets were still continuously confronted by high blank walls of housing units, even in the bustling urban areas. length later. Although the ward walls were dismantled, the wall was still an elementary component in the renewed order of the urban form, separating the private and quiet family space from the public and chaotic urban environment. It is still the wall rather than the home building itself that faces directly onto the street. However, with the demolition of the ward walls that gated dozens of households and the internal streets connecting them, the enclosure size was largely reduced and the permeability of urban settlements were greatly increased. From the Tang dynasty onward, there was a steady decline in the imperial power to intervene effectively in local affairs. In this case, local elites, organized into federations of trade, craft, temple,

neighbourhood, and native place associations, provided the necessary arrangements for construction and/ or maintenance of urban infrastructure.This sort of informal city administration provided by mercantile elites continued right on through the following feudal monarchies and even into the Republican Era.

2.5 Along the River During the Qingming Festival Zhang Zeduan, 1085-1145

2.3 - A comparison between Rome and Beijing

Beijing was vast but low-rise with a sea of courtyards; Rome was small and tall with massive stone buildings. The first was a field of mutually internalized spaces; the second was an object, or set of objects, standing tall and exposed, especially to the squares and along the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s avenues, which had a visual axis of one to one and a half kilometers to guide visitors toward the monument at the end of the vista. Rome is relatively easy for a visitor to identify and understand in its overall form, whereas Beijing is deep and remote; a visitor staying in one area around a temple may not realize that there are more and more temples behind and farther away, not to mention the palaces and imperial altars hidden from view inside layers of walls. lt is in this sense that we may claim that Rome is a city and Beijing is a collection of cities, or a city of cities . The typical European city is composed of an architecture of rule and exception. Housing, the architecture that allows the management of private and family life, is the rule, often bearing the same deep structure that creates entire housing districts - the terrace house, the courtyard block, and so on. The exceptions to this rule are the monuments of the city - churches, town halls, libraries, buildings for the administration of public life. These monuments are built as an expression of the collective will, as something permanent, as singularities in the vast uniformity that surrounds them, as punctuators and concentrations of artistic achievement and capital expenditure. The city as the reification of the idea of what is held in common, as a space of coexistence and therefore a space of plurality. In contrast to the architecture of the historic European city, with a deep structure that can be understood as the dialectics of rule and exception, the Chinese city is constructed from one dominant type, the court yard house, and its corresponding deep structure, the courtyard wall. The Chinese courtyard house should not be confused with other courtyard configurations. Here, the courtyard void is not carved out but actually built up by the construction of one or two-story pavilions. The courtyard houses themselves aggregate to form entire neighborhoods (hutong). The Chinese courtyard house does not have an articulated front facade, for it is not

The city as a Common Framework

intended to be viewed from a distance. lt is experienced instead in sequence, as a visitor moves from wall to courtyard to pavilion to yet an other courtyard. The sequence of open and closed space, nature and dwelling, adheres to the yin yang concept of alternation. This singular deep structure defines the entire city at various scales. For instance, the city of Beijing has been defined by city walls. The outermost delineates the extreme border of the original city while another, on the south, outlines the extension of the city. At ever smaller scales, walls surround the imperial compound, then neighborhoods, and finally the courtyard house. All share the deep structure of walls enclosing an agglomeration of pavilions. lt is worthwhile nothing that the deep structure of the city is independent of program. That is to say, the same courtyard forms served as family dwelling, administrative office, school, clinic, clan association, and so on. An enlarged courtyard form serves as the

Forbidden City. In the house, the organization reflected family hierarchy- quarters for the elders had high roofs, those for children and servants were lower. In the Forbidden City, the tallest buildings, with wide spacing and big pavilions, reflected the emperor as the father of the country. Yet the organization is the same. The city thus physically represents the ethics of Confucianism and the importance of unity, community, harmony, and balance. The ideai society is one that has strong moral values based on the family; individuals are conscious of their ethical responsibilities. Unlike a traditional European city, which has centers of concent ration and is marked by an architecture of exception, monuments set apart from housing, the Chinese city can be viewed as a monument in its entirety. lts singular deep structure acts as a self-similar, fractal organizing structure, a neutral form that defines and accommodates all the plurality of city life: a common framework.

2.6 The True City Leon Krier, 1983

2.7 Detailed map of Beijing around the Forbidden City, 1750

2.4 - Courtyard house

One morphological characteristic is too important to be ignored in the previous review of the traditional urban form and residential pattern. That is enclosed open space. This existed ubiquitously in traditional Chinese cities and especially housing compounds, although it varied endlessly in number and size with respect to the vast territory, tremendously diverse climatic conditions, and fifty-five minority nationalities in China apart from the ethnic majority of Han. The enclosed open space embodies a distinct difference in the building-space relationship of housing layout between western and Chinese traditions. Compared to the openness and accessibility of a typical western house standing in a yard or garden, the Chinese tradition inclines towards internalising the open space and enclosing it within walls and building. This inward-looking open space in a housing compound is named courtyard or quadrangular yard (si heyuan) in northern China, and sky well (tian

2.8 Courtyard houses formino a hutong, Beijing, 2010

The city as a Common Framework

jing) in the south. In addition, this courtyard prototype was so ingrained in traditional Chinese architecture that it can be discovered in palaces, temples, gardens and other types of built environment in ancient China. As a basic unit of ancient urban form, it conforms to and reflects Daoist nature-human views and Confucian ritual rules, which are recognised as the two main sets of tenets shaping traditional Chinese cities. The courtyard embodies the Daoist views of the void-entity relationship and geomantic principles for living. In the philosophy of Daoism, everything should be regarded as and resemble the integrated world composed by the positive (yang) and negative (yin) substances. While buildings, the entities and the man-made settings, form the positive structures, it is the enclosed open space, the void and the natural settings, which complements the negative part in composing an integrated house. The courtyard, the open space enclosed by buildings and walls, stands

for the void, and is therefore an indispensable component of the house. Therefore, courtyard was regarded as the means to express/realize a harmonious relationship between the human and nature in a housing building. The proverb â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;four generations under one roofâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; describes precisely the collective living tradition of the big Chinese family which is descended from the same ancestor through the patrilineal line. The ingrained Confucian ritual believes that the best spatial organisation of a house should felicitously respect or exhibit not only the kinship relationships between household members, but also the spatial transition between private individual spaces, the communal spaces shared by the whole family, reception spaces for guests, and the outer public world. In this regard, the housing layout with a sequential series of courtyards fits in perfectly with the desired spatial hierarchies. Moreover, the courtyard prototype is very adaptable by endless replication to the irregular requirements of an extended family. The most important part of the house was the building sited along the northern side of the courtyard facing South. It was known as the zhengfang and was always occupied by the most senior male, the patriarch of the family, and his wife (or wifes). As with other winfs of the courtyaed this building consisted of three rooms: a central room with an externally opening door (to the South), known as ting, or tangwu; and two side rooms, one opening off each side of the ting, known as jian. The ting was central to the household not only because of its dominating position but also because it was the site through which families were linked to their ancestors. Ancestor tablets, images of elders, and sometimes genealogical scrolls were displayed there while offerings of food and other valuables were regurarly left out to placate the ancestral spirits. As well as being used for ceremonial and ritual purpose, the ting was used for greeting important guests and for family or clan meetings. In short the ting was the center of family power. The rooms that opened off the ting, the jian, were generally used as bedrooms for the patriarch and his wife (or wives). For of the three rooms that constituted the zhengfang, only the central one, the ting had an external door. To enter or exit the 2.9 Quadrangle house, Beijing

Courtyard house

The city as a Common Framework

zhengfang necessitated passing through the ting and under the gaze of the patriarch. Flanking the courtyard to the East and the West, lower in height and smaller in scale than the zhengfang, were the xiangfang. The wings were occupied by those male members of he family, and their wives and children, who ranked next below the patriarch in the family hierarchy. The fourth side of the courtyard house, sited to the South and facing North, known as daozuofang, occupied the least favorable position having no acces to direct sunlight and often being separated from the main courtyard by an internal wall.The purpose of such a wall was to show that these rooms did not properly form part of the family structure as they would generally be occupied by servants, house, the kitchen, or be used for storage.

2.10 Entrance of a courtyard house, Beijing

2.11 Plan of courtyard houses in Xiangan, Xiamen

2.5 - Lilong

The urban transformation described above was by and large an evolutionary process based mainly on a traditional agricultural economy. It progressed very slowly in both size and form. Until 1840 when western capitalistic forces began to encroach upon Chinese territory, there were no modem industries and cities in China. But very soon, over thirty treaty ports were set up in the major cities along the coastline and the Yangtze River, where foreigners were not only permitted to carry out business but also allowed to build their settlements in the leased territories (twenty-seven in all). With western urban structures and lifestyles grafted onto the indigenous residential patterns, these new colonial cities experienced a drastic transformation. The pattern of lilong appeared in this modernisation process in company with the collision of dwelling culture between the west and east, and gradually became the dominant residential form for the mass of bourgeois citizens.

2.12 Aerial view of Lilong settlements, Shanghai

The city as a Common Framework

Longtang and the longtang houses were native products of Shanghai soon after the city was forced to be opened to the West as a treaty port. Longtang is the local term used by Shanghai people for lilong. As “long” means a lane and “tang” means an important building or the front room of a house, “longtang” either means a lane that connects houses or a group of houses connected by lanes. “Li” means communities, “Long” means lanes. Simply put, lilong housing, is a type of lane-andcommunity based urban dwelling form. Many stories, legends, eminent persons and many memories have been tightly associated with “shikumen” (a stonedframed front gate that leads to a small front courtyard) and “Tingzijian” (a small back room of the longtang house). It can be said if there were no longtang there would be neither Shanghai nor Shanghainese. Longtangs constituted the main architectural features of modern Shanghai, constituted the most common living spaces

2.13 Development of Lilong settlements, Shanghai

Lilong

The city as a Common Framework

of millions of Shanghainese, and constituted the most important component part of the city’s modern local culture. In the wake of the Opium War, Shanghai was forced to be opened as one of the treaty port cities, and since then foreigners were allowed to reside and do business in Shanghai. In 1845, the Shanghai local government issued a Land Law, which officially defined the circumference of the first foreign Settlement in this city. The spheres and methods of leasing land to foreigners, and the ways of city management in the Settlement were clearly stipulated. That “foreigners could not let the houses they built to the Chinese” was clearly mentioned in this law, thus making the Chinese and foreigners live separately at the early stage. At that time no Chinese was allowed to live in the foreign Settlement, except those who were already there before the Settlement took shape. Nevertheless, the uprising of “the Small Daggers Society” in 1853 changed the situation. In September, 1853, the men of “the Small Daggers Society” occupied the seat of Shanghai County, and launched a seesaw battle with the Qing troops which lasted one year and a half. Then a big number of Shanghai citizens, in order to avoid the war, moved to the Settlement where they found safer. Thus the rule that Chinese and foreigners should live separately was broken. In 1854, the Consul General of Britain, the US and France authorities stroke out the stipulation that foreigners could not let the houses they built to the Chinese. Since then that the Chinese and foreigners live together was legally permitted, and it was also legal for foreigners to do real estate business in the Settlement. In 1853, there were only 500 Chinese in the settlements, but the number rose drastically to 20,000 in 1854. The big increase of Chinese living in the settlements gave an impetus to the development of real estate business. Many foreign businessmen realized that they could earn much more benefits by letting the houses to the Chinese than by doing trade business. Therefore, most of the foreign businessmen soon shifted their interest to real estate business. The earliest houses built by foreigner for the purpose of letting to Chinese were made of wood boards. They were houses of low cost could be quickly

and simply constructed. Up to 1860, there were already 8740 houses built. After 1870, these simple wooden houses, being inflammable and unsafe, were prohibited by the authority of the concessions. After the banning of the simple wooden houses, a newstyled residential house form appeared. This kind of residence basically kept the enclosed form of the Chinese traditional residence. Though living in the bustling of a city, one still could find comfort and tranquility at home after closing the gate. Therefore, “gates” became important. The gates were made of solid wood and painted black, and were encased in a stone frame. People called this kind of houses as “shikumen”. The site of a lilong generally has one or two sides bordered by urban commercial streets, and the rest of shores given to other developments but enclosed by walls. Every lilong consists of housing and commercial units. The housing units, tightly attached in rows, except the later variation of Garden or Apartment

2.14 Dailylife in a Lilong, Shanghai

lilong house models, are evenly aligned and distributed inside of the site in a Western row-housing pattern. Commercial units, in a similar layouts as housing’s, occupy all street-front lots. The housing units are accessible from internal circulation lanes, and the commercial units are accessible from external commercial streets. The internal circulation structure comprises of a couple of main lanes and a series of side lanes. The main lanes are directly connected with an entry gate-way, accessible from external urban streets. Located in the central positions of the site, they form the public circulation space of the community, and are often used as gathering place for socializing. The sidelanes, normally connecting to the main lanes perpendicularly but paralleling to each other, lead to housing units. Mostly dead-ended, they are used as extensions of homes since the high safety is assured within this space. The framework of main lanes and

2.15 Entrance of a Lilong, Shanghai

Lilong

The city as a Common Framework

side-lanes, apart from its circulation function, is a part of residential living space. Commercial and social type of small scale services - groceries, barber shops, newspaper and cigarettes stands - are integrated into the site, taking the space adjacent to main lanes or entrance area. Not only do they provide for the daily needs of the residents but also enrich the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; life. In 1949, the Lilong housing was the most common housing type in Shanghai. It is estimated that more than 69% of the total floor space of residential buildings in Shanghai were constituted by Lilong. With the SinoJapan war and the Japanese occupation, the economy 7 construction 7 5 of Shanghai had a block and with it the industry. After the liberation of 1949, the Lilong typology 4 now considered dated was abandoned in favor of more efficient types such as the slab block and the high-rise 3 3 2 tower. The changes of the Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; republic of China had a significant impact on the future development. With the 7 7 Socialization of housing policy in the major cities like Shanghai, owned houses with a more than 150 square 1 meters surface were immediately confiscated, divided 3 3 and redistributed at no cost to the poorest people, this led to a redistribution and an overcrowding of part of the lilongs previously built. With 1949 and the new communist government ends the era of this lilong housing. With the choice of the government to redistribute this typology as low-cost housing the efficient houses are further subdivided. Originally designed for a single family are divided in order to 7 Single-family 5 6 accommodate 5 or 7 different families. 4 homes were converted to cram as many people as possible through the use of cloth curtains, framed walls, furnitures and paper. Bedrooms were 3 converted 2 3to multi-functional room, complete with dining, sitting, sleeping and personal space for an entire family and 7 5 1 kitchens were converted in communal cooking facilities 4 for all the new residents of the building.

page 42

4 3

(4. 26) 5 bays Old Shikumen Lilong house

1 3

5 4

4 2

3 7 (4. 26) 5 bays Old Shikumen Lilong house

(4. 26) 5 bays Old Shikumen Lilong 1house 7 5 4 1

(4. 26) 3 bays Old Shikumen Lilong house 3 3 3

1. courtyard 2. jian 3. shang/bedroom 4. service patio 5. kitchen 6. storage 7. service room

1. courtyard 2. jian of the London Row-house and the internal layout of the 1 3. shang/bedroom d bui-patio traditional Sanheyuan or Siheyuan from the southeast 4. service ding closed on the front by a courtyard and connected to a rear one-storied building through a light wel 5. kitchen 3 3 3 courtyard 6. storage 3 bays Old Shikumen centrally placed on the front connected with (4. the26) main hall or jian, used as aLilong living house room or ancestral room,7.and late-room service 1. courtyard rally connected two secondary symmetric rooms or sh is usually 2. jian 7 6 divided from the patio by French windows which allow the maximum opening to the outside in terms of ventilation 3. shang/bedroom e jian. In the one-storied building on the back are placed service ro4. service patio page oms such as the kitchen and storage. It is detached from the main building by a service patio of and about meters of the London Row-house the1.2/1.5 internal layout of the 5. kitchen 42 dividual bathroom, each family used a chamber pot usually d buitraditional Sanheyuan or Siheyuan6.from the southeast storage inding theLilong service court and every morning. Upstairs the more private areasa of thewel house (4. Shikumen 3house 3 emptied closed on the front by a 3courtyard and connected to aare reararranged one-storied building through light 3 2 3 26) 3 bays Oldplaced 7. service room of load-bearing brick walls placed the east and west sides of courtyard 1. courtyard the unit,centrally they are shared with the neighboring units. Instead thehall wood used in the manne placed on the front connected with the main or isjian, used as atraditional living room or ancestral room, and late2.gsjian theorname rally connected two secondary symmetric rooms sh is placed in main patio. Finely decorated it makesis usually 1 3.Ashang/bedroom the rhythm of thefrom several units in the graywindows brick wall.which second smaller entranceopening is located on the backinofterms the house. divided the patio by French allow the maximum to the outside of ventilation of the London Row-house and the internal layout of the patio 4. service e jian. In the one-storied building on the back are placed service rod buitraditional Sanheyuan or Siheyuan from the southeast 5. kitchen such as the kitchen and storage. is detached from the main building by a service patio of about 1.2/1.5 meters 2.16 page 2.17 ding closed on the front by a courtyard and connected to a rearoms one-storied building through a lightItwel 6. storage 42 dividual bathroom, each family chamber pot usually (4.Typical 26) 3 bays Old Shikumen Lilong house courtyard floorpans of a Lilong, Shanghai Aerialused viewa of a Lilong near the Bund, Shanghai 7. service room placed in the service court and emptied every morning. Upstairs are arranged the more private areas of the house centrally placed on the front connected with the main hall or jian, used as a living room or ancestral room, and laterally connected two secondary symmetric rooms or sh is usually of load-bearing brick walls placed the east and west sides of the unit,opening they are shared with theinneighboring units. Instead the wood is used in the traditional manne divided from the patio by French windows which allow the maximum to the outside terms of ventilation name is placed in main patio. Finely decorated it makes e jian. In the one-storied the back are servicelayout ro-gs the of thebuilding Londonon Row-house andplaced the internal of the the rhythm of the several units in the gray brick wall. A second oms suchtraditional as the kitchen and storage. It is detached the main building by a service patio of about 1.2/1.5 meters d bui- smaller entrance is located on the back of the house. Sanheyuan or Siheyuan from from the southeast dividual bathroom, each family used athrough chamber pot usually ding closed on the front by a courtyard and connected to a rear one-storied building a light wel placed in the service court and emptied every morning. Upstairs are arranged the more private areas of the housecourtyard 7 Lilong house (4. 26) 5 bays Old Shikumen

2.6 - Socialist Danwei

The city as a Common Framework

After the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the urbanisation process was dominated by a socialist political framework until 1978, when the new agenda of reform towards a market-oriented economy was set up. After a four-year recovery from severe war damage, the first Five-Year Plan (1953-1957) was deployed for a full-scale industrial modernization. A core component of heavy industrial development in the first Five-Year Plan was 156 key industrial projects which received direct Soviet assistance in technology, equipment and personnel. Meanwhile, as most of the Chinese cities were still in a pre-industrial condition and needed to be modernised, the Soviet model of urban planning was quickly taken up in China. Based on socialist ideology, the rationale of Soviet urban planning presumed that industrial production was the major function of cities. Consumption was disdained as associated with waste and the bourgeois lifestyle, so cities should be transformed into engines of production, rather than remaining sites of decadent consumption. The slogan of the time, ‘Production first, livelihood second’, accurately conveyed this mainstay ideology. The essentials for living would be guaranteed by the urban welfare system. Therefore, to convert ‘cities of consumption’ into ‘cities of production’, a series of policies aiming at high industrial accumulation and low consumption were put into effect with low cash wages and significant in-kind welfare supplements like housing. In this process, the work unit (danwei), including state-owned enterprises or other service institutions (health care, education, research, or administration), appeared to be the principal entity for both production and distribution in the resource allocation system of a highly centralised planned economy. However, although Chinese institutional economy and urban planning in the socialist era were heavily influenced by the former Soviet Union, the cities went far beyond Soviet models by means of the work-unit compound, which was actually a distinctive Chinese invention. Rather than adopting the Soviet model in which residential districts were spatially separate from the workplace allowing for up to a forty-minute commute on public transportation, 2.18 Aerial view of Danwei

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The city as a Common Framework

Socialist Danwei

the work unit in China attempted to integrate working and living space in close territorial proximity, combining housing, workplace, and the provision of social services. Basically, work-unit compounds shared three common features in social and spatial outcomes: • A self-contained and high level of social facilities: small work units generally had canteens, social halls, clinics and public bathhouses; medium-sized units may have added nurseries, kindergartens, parks, libraries, sports fields, guesthouses and shops; large work units, especially those in remote suburban or rural areas, were often so self-contained as to resemble a miniature city. • A high level of social mix and close affiliation: working and living closely in a work-unit compound, the diversity of workers and their family members in terms of age and sex fostered a high level of social mix. Furthermore, the dense network of human relationships between members cultivated by joint living and the patriarchal authority exerted by the work unit over its members are reminiscent of the living conditions of a big kinship family in ancient times. In this regard, the work unit can be argued to be ‘feudalism in a period of industrialisation.’ • Walled enclosure: although there was wide variation among work-unit compounds in terms of scale, layout, supplied facilities and social services, etc., the overwhelmingly ubiquitous presence of walls and 956 guarded gates in most work-unit compounds was 1the most visible common feature. Thus, the multifunctional compound built by work units in socialist China became a miniature city within its own walls, somewhat reminiscent of the walled wards of the early traditional Chinese cities.

1956

1978

2.20 Typical plans of a Danwei

1978

This enclosed form brings to mind the walled family compounds that constituted the dominant spatial form of traditional China. Although the traditional family and the danwei clearly belong to vastly different social orders, the compound wall operates in both architectural formations as a marker of social space. In traditional 2.19 1990 Danwei development (1956, 1978, 1990), Shanghai

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2.21 Typical plans of a Danwei

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Socialist Danwei

The city as a Common Framework

China, the wall defined the realm of the Confucian family and the space within which the family patriarch ruled supreme. In socialist China, the wall marks the realm of the collective production unit and the space within which the danwei reigns. As a spatial unit, then the danwei had its genesis in the project-style investment practices of the central plan. Because of this, the actual process through which the danwei compound came into being was rapidly standardized. Once funding was approved for the construction of a danwei, the relevant city or regional authorities were required to provide a suitable piece of land to accommodate the new development. As soon as this allocation was made, the land became the sole domain of the new danwei. The first task facing the leaders of the danwei was its construction. According to standard procedures, the first buildings to be constructed in a danwei were those that where to house danwei staff. Initially, however, it was the construction workers who occupied these quarters, living on-site during the building period. There were several reasons for this practice: it was convenient for workers to be close to the work site, many construction workers had no permanent housing themselves, and, pheraps most significantly in administrative and organizational terms, a construction team was also a danwei so, like the members of any danwei, construction workers received page page a range of benefits through their workplace. The only 84 84 major difference between construction teams and other danwei was that the former periodically changed location, as they moved from one construction project to another. From its very inception, then, a new danwei became a living community in which productive labor was closely wedded to everyday collective life. The basic deisgn principle was to align key architectural elements along a central axis, while less subsidiary elements were arranged in groups on either side of the main axis. The architectural focal building of the danwei, often simply called the zhulou, or principal building, usually housed the main administrative offices for the danwei, including offices for the party branch committee and other senior danwei officials. The effect of axial arrangements in traditional China was to situate power deep behind

layers of walls, hidden, impenetrable, and far removed from the ordinary subject. By contrast, the architectural language of the danwei spoke to a more open, populist, and at times egalitarian face of state power. In short, while the spatial symbolism of the danwei represented the centrality of party and state to the life of the danwei, it also embodied the ideals of Maoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famous mass line - namely, that leaders must live and work among the masses. According to standard designs, the other imporant buildings of the compound were arranged along the central axis behind the zhulou. Whereas the function of the zhulou was usually related directly to the party and central government, other buildings were generally associated with the business of the particulal danwei. These buildings housed the major workshop or plants for a factory, the offices for an administrative department, or the lecture theaters and classrooms for an educational istitution. The raison dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;etre of the

2.22 Dailylife in a Danwei Virtual Shanghai Project

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danwei was the organization of labor; therefore, within the danwei compound, dailylife revolved around the demands of production - whether it be production of material goods, knowledge, or information. The most prominent architecture feature of the danwei is undoubtedly the high enclosing wall that surrounds it. This wall marks out the realm of the danwei; within this territory the rules and norms of the danwei are supreme. Like the walls of Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s past, the danwei wall performs a positive function through marking out social space and defining the realms within which particular regimes of government and social interaction hold sway. The danwei walls signifies, in clear unambiguous terms, the independence of the danwei from the surrounding city, while at the same time it produces the space within which a unique form of collectivized social life and socialist government operates. Danwei space was designed with two central aims: to symbolize, and

2.23 Aerial view of a factory Danwei, Beijing

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Socialist Danwei

reproduce in miniature, the order of socialist state; and to promote a socialist collectivised lifestyle among its resident members. Because of the walls, the wide public streets defined by such blank boundaries were dull in image and monotonous in uses as the provisions within the wall fulfilled most of the needs from people who in fact lived a highly homogeneous lifestyle. Therefore, the major function of the public streets beyond the walls in everyday life was to sustain the transport vehicles. This arrangement was congruent with the concept of modernist planning in specialising roads for traffic, and also promulgated throughout other countries by planning experts of the time in the enhancement of vehicle speed and traffic efficiency. However, the economic shortage during the recovery period made even public buses and bicycles sparse, not to mention private cars. In this regard, the street was devoid of life and the street space was severely neglected by urban design. Lastly,

2.24 Parallel rows of buildings, Shanghai

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The city as a Common Framework

because of the wall, there was little need for the work unit to respect the surrounding context with respect to the spatial structure. Rather than integrating with the outer urban structure, the walled compounds generally formed a system of their own with a flexible pattern to fit geographical and functional needs. As a result, Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s socialist cities dominated by walled work units became demarcated by inward-looking and inaccessible largescale urban blocks with underused streets and other public spaces connecting them.

2.25 Entrance of a Danwei (top); Family poster inside a Danwei (bottom) Beijing

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2.7 - Gated community

The city as a Common Framework

The private sector, which had been all but suppressed during the Maoist period, reemerged soon after the launch of economic reform in 1978. Initially the growth of private business was slow, but after the formulation of a clear set of guidelines in July 1981, the sector began to expand dramatically. According to official statistics, the number of urban residents engaged in private business, referred to as getihu, increased from 150.000 in 1978 to around 8 million in 1992 and an incredible 24 million by 1999. The rapd rise of the getihu has signified the dramatic emergence of a nonstate sector within the urban economy. In a relatively short space of time, the getihu almost completely replaced the state as primary actor in the retailing, food, and service industries. At the same time, this trend has resulted in the focal point of urban life shifting from the danwei compound out onto the newly commodified street. One of the principal results of the new commercial activity has been the rapid expansion of street-side shopping strips. The rise of the shopping street could be understood to signal the return of a feature that had been important to Chinese urban formations since at least the tenth century. At the same time, however, it implies a shift toward a monumental streetscape that is more characteristic of Western cities. The appearence of large modern department stores, shopping malls, and luxury hotels is particularly indicative of this westernizing trend. By the mid-1990s â&#x20AC;&#x153;kids preferred to identify themselves by their individual identity cards rather than revealing their danwei. Zhu Haxin takes this as a sign that conceptions of urban social identity were beginning to shift. In his view, it represented the start of a gradual transition from the person of the work unit ( danwei ren) to the social person (shehui ren). This passage marks the rise of the modern individual in urban China and the death of the danwei. But what has led to the decline of the danwei and the rise of the individual? Economic reform in recent years, of course, has brought enormous change to urban China, especially with the escalation in economic restructuring since 1992. If the kids no longer want to identify with their danwei and the workers are being exhorted to behave as responsible individuals then perhaps the danwei and its 2.26 Aerial view of new housing compounds, Shanghai

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Gated community

associated forms of identity and subjectivity really are on the way out. The transition from a planned economy to a market economy implies shifting from a danwei organizational formation based on abstract collective interests to a contractual organizational formation guided by specific individual interests. Undoubtedly the most obvious outcome of economic reform has been the extraordinary construction boom that has raged through China’s cities virtually without a break since the early 1980s. To understand the changing dynamics of urban life then, we need to examine the ways in which the new housing estates are refiguring social space. Due to the minimum investment strategy in the non-productive sector of housing after the founding of P. R. China, and almost ten years of stagnation in housing construction during the Cultural Revolution, there was an overwhelming housing shortage and poor living conditions in China at the end of the 1970s. The rigid housing welfare system, in which urban housing was offered at nominal rent by work units and municipal housing bureaus, became a heavy fiscal burden and an institutional constraint on governmental capacity to improve housing conditions. Therefore, since 1980 when the economic reforms toward a socialist market economy were officially announced, the Chinese government launched a series of housing reform programmes to tackle this pressing housing deficiency. A major change in housing reform was that housing benefits would be provided in cash wages rather than in kind. This led to a full-scale national boom in commodity housing markets in the following decades. Before reform, a large proportion of the services and maintenance of urban housing was taken over by work units. As for other urban living quarters beyond the work units, the local Department or Housing Bureau would take charge of the maintenance services. This management system imposed huge pressure on local government during the process of market-oriented housing reforms. Therefore, an urgent challenge for housing reform was to find a new pattern of urban housing production and management within the existing economic and institutional structure. In the mid-1980s, the first array of property management

The city as a Common Framework

companies following the model in Hong Kong were established in Shenzhen. They collected service fees directly from residents and provided estate management in return. This service was well accepted by urban residents and was gradually introduced to cities throughout the country. It developed rapidly in the fast growing commodity housing market, especially after the central government legitimated property management services in the ‘Measure for the Management of Newly Constructed Residential Areas in Cities’ issued in 1994. Therefore, enclosed residential developments were soon seen in China after specialized estate management companies took over the maintenance of commodity housing. As a result, these gated residential developments managed by specialized agencies reproduced the exclusive feature of the Chinese work units, and presented arguably the strongest echo of the global phenomenon of the ‘gated community’. The

basic spatial unit of the new planning regime is the socalled small district (xiaoqu), which in many ways bears an uncanny resemblance to the danwei residential compound. It is a planned neighbourhood where housing, restaurants, convenience shops, sport facilities, and communications infrastructure all under the control of a professional property management company. While the xiaqu clearly bears some resemblance to the danwei of the past it also differs in important respects. Some xiaqu are atched to a large-scale enterprises or institutions, but the grater majority of them are not connected to any sort of workplace. Not only does this mean that the link between daily life has been severed; it also ensures that residents within any given xiaqu will come from arrange of background and workplaces. As a result residential space will no longer be charged with the intense careerfocused social networking that was engendered by the danwei system. Instead, relations between neighbors

2.27 (6. 17) Layouts types (2-3-4 unit per stairs) Typical floorplans of tower typologies (6. 17) Layouts types (2-3-4 unit per stairs) (6. 17) Layouts types (2-3-4 unit per stairs)

2.28 Marketing advertisement of a gated community, Shanghai

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Gated community

will be centered on the more mundane concerns of dayto-day life. Although a form of communal space, the xiaoqu is a privatized realm that residents have bought their way into. Unlike the danwei, to which people were assigned, residence in a xiaoqu is determined by choice and the ability to pay. Whereas the socialist cities had generated a fairly ad hoc and largely undifferentiated distribution of social groups throughout urban space, the new city is a place in which social differentiation is becoming increasingly linked to oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s location within a stratified spatial order. Money buys a bigger apartment in a better-serviced compound, but it also buys peace of mind and greater sense of security. Most xiaqu have some kind of barrier - a wall or fence - enclosing them, and many have security guards who monitor and control entry to the compound. In China as in manty other places throughout the globe the elite are buying themselves into luxury gated communities where they can relax and

The city as a Common Framework

enjoy the rewards that wealth brings. The difference today is the degree of control over the architecture of the city that can be imposed by the state (central and local government). Planning has been largely confined to resource allocation, and the form an d building types of the city are driven not by the ethics of the city but by the logic of the market. With the opening of the new real estate market the production of housing was most developed in order to suit the new demand. New social classes are formed. The new tastes that were form are usually defined as nouveau riche or gaudy. Characterized by stylistic excesses and coarseness they take as exaple the European classicism. In Shanghai this style is applied to many of the new high-rise towers which take the appearance of floating palaces dressed with columns and various kinds of ornaments. Advertising creates a desire for global and luxury assets.

2.29 Luxurious interior design of a new apartment.

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2.8 - Conclusion

This part has explored the long history of enclosed residential form in China, dating back to the walled cities including fortresslike palaces for the gentry and enclosed courtyard housing for ordinary people in ancient times, through to the enclosed work-unit compounds of the socialist era and pervasive gated communities to date. wWestern studies reads the wall in purely negative terms – it closes off, limits, and entraps those caught within its embrace. Indeed, through its very act of enclosure the wall is taken to be an architectural exemplification of a culture that has become hopelessly inward-looking and moribund. Thus the various types of wall theat exist in China, from the Grat Wall to the traditional walled family compound and the modern wall enclosing the danwei are all seen as repetitions of a universal Chinese cultural trait. W.J.F. Jenner, for example, dedicates an antire chapter to the subject of walls. The opening statement sets the scene for the chapter: “This is a chapter about enclosures, walls and boxes. Walls on the ground and walls in the mind. Enclosures within which all can be controlled and safety structured.” Jenner’s discussion ranges from the walls of ancient cities to the walls of contemporary danwei, from physical walls to so-called invisible walls such as the limits on the internal migration and obstructions to transfrring workplace. This reinforce the view that Jenner reads the walls as a metaphor for social control, the significance of walls trascends historical change and stands for enclosure, limitation, and social control. The problem with attributing universal cultural significance to the Chinese wall in general is that it necessarily erases all the multiple meanings inherent within the many different forms of walls. In making their generalization about the wall, the critics at once empty a multiform architectural technology of its own specific historical development and wide variety of functional uses. The operation of the Empire within the Great Wall is of an order very different from the operation of a family within its courtyard walls. It is true that there are common points of reference that impart an element of cultural unity to the different types of walls, particularly in respect to a unifying Confucian cosmology which underpins and influences the ordering of society within enclosed spaces – nevertheless, the generalizations that associate all Chinese walls with the ideas of limitation, enclosure, inwardness, and so are too reductionist. The central problem with this body of work is that it focuses too much on the walls themselves while failing to address what lies within them. Thus it is not the walls, nor the fact that they enclose per se, which is crucial; rather it is the space which they create and the spatial arrangements and practices that operate there which are of primary significance. Chinese walls should be considered not in the predominantly sense of enclosure and containment, as they are in the works examined above, but 114

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rather as positive technologies for the production and bolstering of collective forms of social relationships and is therefore open to a broad range of appropiations. In this respect, it is the spaces produced by the walls, rather than the walls themselves, that are of primary analytical significance. Throughout China’s history, walls have been widely utilized to demarcate social spaces. What is most significant about the wall is not the act of enclosure or exclusion per se, but rather the spaces created by the wall and the forms of spatial practice which are inscribed within these spaces. The walled city and the walled household compound were the two most significant spatial realms in traditional China. The former was the realm of imperial government, while the latter was the realm of the Confucian family. If the socialist danwei adopted the walled compound form, it was not because the danwei was an inherently Confucian institution, but rather because this special form had a certain mimetic resonance as a technology that could be productively utilized for the ordering of collective forms of social relationship. The danwei is clearly a modern institution, but one that has reemployed a familiar spatial repertoire to the service of a new social purpose. Where the traditional courtyard house defined the realm of the Confucian family, the danwei compound established the territory of the socialist collective. Whereas Confucian spaces were encoded to represent and reproduce the clearly defined hierarchical social relationships that underpinned the Confucian moral order, danwei space was designed to represent the centrality of collective labor and egalitarian social relationships that exemplified the socialist deal. The predominance of walled spaces within Chinese history, then, is not indicative of a certain cultural closure or xenophobia as some have argued but rather shows the way in which modern social formations have redeployed an old architectural technique. Two features are remarkable for this morphological continuity in the analysis. One is the persistent culture of collective living with a territorial control, illustrated by the courtyard-style family housing complex, its adaptation in colonist time, the work-unit compound and gated community, although the bonding relationships are based on family/kinship, territory-based community, fellowship, and the business contract respectively. The other is the introverted housing compound with buildings and walls deployed around the communal outdoor spaces. This kind of spatial arrangement for housing can be ubiquitously found in Chinese urban settlements of all ages. Apart from persistence, these two features also demonstrate their great adaptability, as they were widely adopted in ancient urban fabrics, westernised cities at treaty ports in colonial times, socialist work-unit compounds, and diverse gated 115

The city as a Common Framework

communities today, on greatly varied scales. With a capacity to renew itself, the ingrained tradition of gated residence is malleable enough to enable old ways of living to operate in new contexts in a new era. This, on the one hand, provides a contextual interpretation for the particular popularity of gated community in China; on the other hand, it presents a comprehensive historical and cultural background for understanding the performance of gated communities in Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cities today. Notwithstanding the obvious continuity of the introverted spatial form, the specific design features have always been changing over time. For instance, the walled courtyard of Beijing can be used as a family dwelling, a temple, or an imperial residence. What it lacks in programmatic specificity it compensates for in organizational precision: the walled courtyard maintains an alternating sequence of covered space and open area, with a gradation of privacy along its circulatory path; domestic, religious, and administrative activities unfold in the same organizational configuration. The deep structure thus acts as a common framework, not only as an administrative tool for the formation and management of the imperial city (which emphasizes central control and authority) but also, crudally, as an embodiment of the collective culture that underlies Chinese ethics, culture, and artistic production. Because deep structure is transparent to function, it is inherently a projective element. That is to say, the same deep structure can accommodate new uses and thus may be transformed in terms of program without any change to its configuration. The deep structure can be defined as the irreducible structure that is weathered by use, by time; it bears the traces of daily life or exceptional events. More important, it holds the potential to organize new functions while maintaining a precise spatial arrangement. Using the deep structure of the dominant type offers the opportunity to discover what is common without resorting to the re-creation of an image of the past, a tendency all too often- and wrongly associated with a typological approach.

116

So what does a common framework look like for the contemporary Chinese city? It is not what it looks like that is important, precisely because a common framework is an architecture that acts as a background. It is a framework that accommodates the plurality of city life and is in constant alternation with its natural environment. It must maintain a certain formal and organizational coherence, and it must be repetitive and scalable to be recognizable. The common framework is conceived as a singular discursive idea but realized through addition and accumulation. It is most identifiable when it is shared, lived, experienced, and viewed as a whole, as a city- as a collective work of art.

117

Bibliography

The city as a Common Framework

François Jullien, ‘A treatise on efficacy: between western and Chinese thinking’, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1996. Sebastiano Serlio, ‘The five books of architecture: an unabridged reprint of the english version of 1611’, London, Dover Publications, 1982. Gideon Golany, ‘Urban Design Ethics in ancient China’, Wales, Edwind Mellen Press, 2001. Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, ‘Chinese Imperial City Planning’, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1990. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, ‘Empire’, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, ‘A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia’, London, Anthlone, 1987. Tu Wei-ming, ‘Confucian traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economie Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons’, Cambridge, Harvard University Press,1996. Jianfei Zhu, ‘Chinese spatial Strategies: Imperial Beijing 1420-1911’, London, Routledge Curzon, 2004. Maggie Keswick, ‘The Chinese garden’, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2003. Ronald G. Knapp, ‘China’s old dwellings’, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2000. Luo Xiaowei Wu Jiang, ‘Shanghai Longtang’, 1997. Susan Naquin, ‘Peking: temples and city life 1400-1900’, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2000. Jia Jun, ‘Beijing Sihejuan’. David Bray, ‘Social Space and Governance in Urban China, The Danwei System from Origins to Reform’, Standford University Press, 2005.

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Collective living

Cluster structure

Sense of security

Communal enclosed outdoor space

Introverted housing compound

Proximity

Human scale

Hierarchical buildings

Proximity

Human scale

Spread services Hierarchical network

Siheyuan - Courtyard house

120

Lilong

121

The city as a Common Framework

Collective living

Segregation

Cluster structure

Interruption of the urban grid

Sense of security

Repetiton

Communal enclosed outdoor space

Unconfined urban space voids

Introverted housing compound

Lack of sense of community

Function mixitè

Undifferentiated social composition

Spread services Typological mixitè Social mixitè

Danwei

122

Gated community

123

Collective living Cluster structure Sense of security Communal enclosed outdoor space Introverted housing compound Segregation Interruption of the urban grid Repetiton Unconfined urban space voids Lack of sense of community Undifferentiated social composition

The city as a Common Framework

COMMON FEATURES TO BE PRESERVED Collective living Cluster structure Sense of security Communal enclosed outdoor space Introverted housing compound

Collective living Cluster structure Sense of security Communal enclosed outdoor space Introverted housing compound Function mixitè Spread services Typological mixitè Social mixitè

Collective living Cluster structure Sense of security Communal enclosed outdoor space Introverted housing compound Human scale Proximity Spread services Hierarchical network

FEATURES TO BE IMPLEMENTED Human scale Proximity

Collective living Cluster structure Sense of security Communal enclosed outdoor space Introverted housing compound Proximity Hierarchical buildings Human scale

Spread services Hierarchical network Function mixitè Typological mixitè Social mixitè Hierarchical buildings

124

125

The city as a Common Framework

Historical framework It is a framework that accommodates the plurality of city life and is in constant alternation with its natural environment. It must maintain a certain formal and organizational coherence, and it must be repetitive and scalable to be recognizable. The common framework is conceived as a singular discursive idea but realized through addition and accumulation. It is most identifiable when it is shared, lived, experienced, and viewed as a whole, as a city- as a collective work of art.

126

127

The city as a Common Framework

I. Existing Situation

III. Internal circulation

The neighbourhood is unaccessible by the public. Private roads crossing the compounds are of exclusive use by the residents. The Highrises are protecting by fences, walls running around the border of the plot. At the main entrance are located commercial line buildings and a checkpoint providing security to the residents of the community.

The neighborhood, once broken into differents portions, is crossed by a public circulation system. The avarage dimension of the existing megaplots in the case-study area is 250x250 m. This oversized proportion don’t encourage a rich and heterogeneous urban life. The proposed dimension is set at 100x100 m.

II. Demolition of border buildings

IV. Construction of the new borders

The commercial buildings located at the border of the plot, designed only for a protective purpose and presenting a mismatched structure, are demolished in order to broke the megaplot into different parts allowing the public circulation into its once private and unaccessible interior space.

The common features (collective living, cluster structure, sense of security, communal enclosed outdoor space, introverted housing compound) are preserved in the final design. The closed structure is kept, the gated community is broken into different parts but its fortified border is preserved and it becomes the main element able to create a more active and rich urban life, introducing features such as Human scale Proximity Spread services Hierarchical network Function mixitè Typological mixitè Social mixitè Hierarchical buildings

Proposed Design strategy The walled courtyard maintains an alternating sequence of covered space and open area, with a gradation of privacy along its circulatory path; domestic, religious, and administrative activities unfold in the same organizational configuration. Courtyard of Beijing can be used as a family dwelling, a temple, or an imperial residence The deep structure thus acts as a common framework.

128

129

The city as a Common Framework

Proposed common framework It is a framework that accommodates the plurality of city life and is in constant alternation with its natural environment. It must maintain a certain formal and organizational coherence, and it must be repetitive and scalable to be recognizable. The common framework is conceived as a singular discursive idea but realized through addition and accumulation. It is most identifiable when it is shared, lived, experienced, and viewed as a whole, as a city- as a collective work of art.

130

131

The city as a Common Framework

132

133

The city as a Common Framework

Dormitory

School

Office

Housing

Flexibile to time and function. Because deep structure is transparent to function, it is inherently a projective element. The same deep structure can accommodate new uses and thus may be transformed in terms of program without any change to its configuration. It holds the potential to organize new functions while maintaining a precise spatial arrangement

134

135

160

220

210

The city as a Common Framework

Existing megaplots

136

280

Proposed Plots The proposed dimension of the plots is set approximate at 100x100 m.

137

The city as a Common Framework

Existing road network

138

Proposed road network

139

The city as a Common Framework

Green ray The proposed green ray conntect the main crucial points of the area. Peace Park is planned to be connected with the two metro line stations ( Youdian Xincun and Linping road) with a pedestrian green corridor that, crossing the neighbourhood, create a livable biosphere for the inhabitants. 140

141

The city as a Common Framework

Commercial promenade The proposed commercial boulevard connect the two metro lines (Youdian Xincun and Linping road) crossing the main existing retail/leisure hubs within the plot. The once mismatched commercial spots are now connected into a comprehensive system that brings the flow from the two main accessibility gates into the core of the neighboorhood 142

143

The city as a Common Framework

Satellite view Proposed Masterplan

144

145

The city as a Common Framework

Satellite view Proposed Masterplan

146

147

The city as a Common Framework

Proposed Masterplan

148

149

3 - THE NEW PARADIGM OF THE CONTEMPORARY FACTORY

3.1 Edward Burtynsky ‘Work in China’

3.2 Die Glaserne Manufaktur Henn Architekten, Dresden, 1999-2001

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

The twentieth century Czech philosopher Vilem Flusser describes mankind as a maker of things, homo faber rather than homo sapiens. Distinguishing man the maker from man the intellect, he asserted, “Production center or ‘factory’ is the characteristic of humans, what was once called man’s ‘reason for existence’ — by their factories you will know them.”’ He suggests that one can gain greater insight into historical events by looking at workshops, because that is where great revolutions occurred, not in the isolated monasteries where art was produced. We may learn more from looking at factories, he adds, because that is where the common man labored. “Those wanting to find out about our past should dig in the ruins of factories. Those wanting to find out about the present day should study present-day factories. And those wanting to speculate on the future should ask questions about the factories of the future. Manifest as places of production, factories are influenced by changing technologies and, in turn, impact the nature of work and the conditions for workers. While recognizing a change in both the definition of industry and its global space, my study intends to spark discussion stemming from the demise of urban manufacturing, and to provoke the integration of industries back into cities with equity. As inventors required workspaces outfitted with sometimes dangerous machinery, the manufactory came into being. The manufactory’s trajectory throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century was a catalyst for engineers, architects, and inventors as it traversed a more nonlinear history. By the end of the nineteenth century the factory became ubiquitous and at certain points served not only as a place of making, but also as a community and social center where human relations developed. Such relationships were often hierarchically conceived as control mechanisms. As a new building type, the factory provided architects and erigineers-Vith freedom to explore the spatial, structural, and organizational systems often led by machines and processes. Early vertical urban factories, while perhaps not considered environmentally clean or safe for today’s standards, were supportive of the urban context and its economics: In the nineteenth century, factories rose in multistories to harness natural resources in mechanistic spaces and fostered experimentation in vertical conveyance systems such as chutes, spiral conveyors, and lifts. In the twentieth century, with elevator capacities increasing and factories rising higher, companies saved on land costs, and the new vertical factories became a dominant typology in cities. However, Modernist architects never addressed appropriate urban integration of the new building typologies. In the postwar period, with the desire for cheaper space and prefabricated shed buildings, and influenced 152

by wartime production, factories shifted to the urban peripheries and were eventually zoned out of cities. Considering contemporary definitions of industry - post bubble and beyond oil economics - there are opportunities for the factory to establish a new paradigm, with nascent potential in design challenges similar to those of the early Modern era, when architects, urbanists, and engineers responded to the novel technologies of their time. Today we can ask - with a flexible, new economy, as well as cleaner, smaller-scaled production processes made possible by advanced, real-time manufacturing techniques - what ways can urban manufacturing reenvision, both ecologically and economically, the factory in newly sustainable cities?

153

3.1 - China, from ‘world factory’ to high end production

China’s industrial revolution is perhaps one of the most important economic and geopolitical phenomena since the original Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. Since the founding of New China, and especially following the reform and opening up period, China’s manufacturing sector has maintained rapid development and has built an industrial system that is both comprehensive and independent. It has greatly supported China’s industrialization and modernization and it has supported China’s position as a world power. Chinese manufacture system is based on mass production. The global factory is defined by high-volume, quickresponse production, and low cost. It is a factory that is highly dependent on robust supply chains to bring its products from one country to the next without the barriers of taxes, human rights laws, and requirements for health and safe work environments. It is this factory that is depicted with increasing frequency in the media today, with cries of injustice. The memorable images of armies of workers in China, for example, all

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

dressed in the same brightly colored uniform, each performing a single, repetitive task for hours on end in an open room, expresses conditions that are often just as bad, if not worse, than those experienced by workers in the first industrial revolution. Enormous in scale and network-dependent, these global factories have led to the development of a new, spectacular urbanism. China, Mexico, India, the Philippines, and Bangladesh are all blanketed with instant factory cities that function like beehives for workers amidst the context of a capital imperialist threshold, often leaching from the local economy and the environment in a parasite-host relationship. China has the highest smog measurements in the world, both from carbon emissions and industrial plants. Beijing, the largest city in China, often rates among the worst. In 2013, the city had readings of air borne particles at 2.5 microns, or PM2.5, more than twenty times higher than the World Health Organization deems safe.

China

Usa

Japan Germany Italy

3.3 Manufacturing output, top five countries (2013)

154

3.4 Aerial view of a factory of an industrial area in Shenzhen

155

China, from ‘world factory’ to high end production

Architects and urbanists have the opportunity to proactively challenge the assumptions of the global factory and rethink the idea of the heterotopic urban factory and workers’ conditions in general. Mass consumption traps society in a cycle of desire and seduction in the supply of goods and their global demand. Wages are not paid as living wages according to each country’s economy, thus the divide between rich and poor widens. The government’s rush to urbanize and jumpstart full-blown cities that normally would develop organically over generations should incite citizens to call this practice into question. By 2005, Shenzhen, directly across the river from Hong Kong, became an “instant city.” This former fishing village of 280,000 residents at the edge of the Pearl River delta became a hub for high-tech electronics, toys, shoes, garments, and other everyday products to be sold around the world in an intensity of commerce similar to the one seen in the first industrial revolution. The new economic growth on the coast along with new

3.5 Edward Burtynsky ‘Work in China’

156

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

opportunities lured workers from the countryside, causing the population to rise to over fourteen million. In Shenzhen’s first seven years, it gained one and a half million people and had over eleven million workerresidents in 2012. The city developed linearly along the Pearl River with simple access and readability. Blocks tangentially connected the disparate economic sectors and allowed for more infrastructure to evolve systematically. To organize the city, a flexible plan has responded to the potential for market growth and has supported increasing urban concentration at an unnerving pace. From its position as a hub for smaller factories during the 1980s, Shenzhen had grown to be a city of high-rises by 1985, a new city of contradictions and odd juxtapositions through its hybridity. The region of southern China’s metropolis is representative of Castells’ “new spatial form” - an interdependent unit, economically and functionally, in a single contiguous megalopolis space. The technology infrastructures are united through a system of “flows that define the

spatial form and the processes.”The flows contributed to advantages for the factory contractors and the transnational corporations harnessing China’s new status as “factory to the world.” As Andrew Ross describes, the example of China is so stunning, and alarming, in its “jumbo scale of operations, but also in its allencompassing spread. China is leap-frogging over the technology curve so quickly that it is attracting the highest level of investments - in product design and innovation, for example - from industry leaders.” At the same time, as China skipped the incremental growth of industrial development, it ruptured its culture and made it difficult for its citizens and burgeoning economy to adapt to daily life. China’s new capitalist ideology is now called “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” or “market socialism,” but its workers continue to be exploited by capitalist interests. Now the second largest economy after the U.S., China has attracted the attention of numerous labor watchdog organizations that are demanding increased transparency. In China,

the Special Economics Zones are controlled by the central government as industrial real estate developments and are often grouped by industrial types - either through the provision of low-cost, warehouse-type factories for lease, or land for new construction. Many manufacturing sectors are clusters, with each region taking on a specialization and a name to reflect it. Datang is nicknamed Socks City, as 75 percent of the international market’s sock supply is produced there. Other towns are Sweaters City, Electronics City, and so on. This identification makes it easy for the foreign manufacturer to arrive and source their supply chain all in one place. Products for different companies using the same materials and processing are made by one factory. This means that sneakers, electronics, and garments made for different brands are actually all produced in the same way; what might differ is the company’s design. For instance, one contract factory, Stella, produces sneakers and shoes in ﬁve factories in Dongguan for Nike, Reebok, and

3.6 Edward Burtynsky ‘Work in China’

157

China, from ‘world factory’ to high end production

Timberland. The factory in China was a significant opportunity for the rural population. Even though factory salaries were only around $100 per month, it was much more than what people could earn on a family farm. In 1990, the government dismantled its industrial investments, causing millions of formerly rural workers to lose their jobs as Deng Xiaoping closed state-run factories. People from the rural provinces moving to the cities are required to have residence permits, called hukou, as well as documentation for social security, health care, and food rations. The migrant workers are considered a transient population as an element of labor flux. They are temporary residents and are denied benefits as they move from job to job, floating in the labor pool between factories. The workers, as is typical, are uneducated rural migrants who leave their families for jobs in the city. Some live in dormitories provided by the factories, limited in mobility and with little access to amenities. Often they find rooms for rent if the densely packed

3.7 Edward Burtynsky ‘Work in China’

158

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

dormitories are full. Countless stories are told of workers separated from their families, hoping to send money back home and to return to the countryside one day. In the factories the workers are not even allowed to talk as they labor shoulder to shoulder, performing repetitive manual tasks. They work long hours and have little leisure time. Factory workers in China are often considered dehumanized machines that are installed in factory cities themselves assembled overnight. The scale of industrial employment in China today far exceeds that of the U.S., even in the early twentieth century when, for instance, the Ford Highland Park plant employed a workforce of 81,000 people; today, Foxconn employs 400,000 at their Longha factory, just one of many in the company network. In 2011, the Taiwanese company Foxconn Technology Group, a subsidiary of the company Hon Hai Precision Industry owned by Terry Gou, came under harsh scrutiny because of a spate of worker suicides. The company, which produces computer and consumer electronics

parts for all of the major global companies, including Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, among others, is located in Longhua, a section of Shenzhen; its factory is vertically integrated, producing everything from the tools used to bend wires to the wires themselves, the internal workings of smartphones, computers, and cameras in a manner similar to Henry Ford’s integrated production line. Foxconn is the country’s largest exporter and one of the largest employers in China, with 1.2 million employees. Foxconn’s primary client is Apple. They produced 137,000 iPhones per day in 2010. Although Apple made huge sales proﬁts, that margin did not transfer to decent wages for Foxconn workers. Over 400,000 people work and live in residential compounds at the Longhua factory, in effect turning the vertical factory into a vertical campus. This makes its possible for the company to expand its production line as quickly as orders increase. Unfortunately, in many cases, these “dormitory labor regimes” have grueling schedules without days off, overcrowding, unsafe

working conditions, and no overtime pay. Employees have a saying that “They use women as men and men as machines.” Foxconn has become more than just a campus; its city has restaurants, cafeterias, stores, recreation facilities, and a university, all companyowned. The dormitories are deemed better than rentals in Shenzhen, but they pack the workers densely into shared rooms. Sometimes, there are eight people to a room and as many as twenty people to a three-room apartment at the Chendeng factory. The typical building is a high-rise tower with balconies where the workers hang lines and lines of monochromatic factory uniforms to dry. Just like their counterparts in any major factory, workers perform repetitive tasks in multistory concrete factory buildings designed specifically for electronics production. They stand or sit in one spot in the artificially lit clean spaces for each ten-hour workday. Underpaid and overworked, employees are often punished for under-production and lateness. Workers’ rights throughout history, and the

3.8 Edward Burtynsky ‘Work in China’

159

China, from ‘world factory’ to high end production

efforts of utopian thinker Robert Owen, who advocated for an eight-hour workday in 1856 in England, have been ignored. Long hours and monotonous tasks led to suicides at Foxconn factories, as 14 were reported in 2010. One CNN reporter talked to a young worker at the Chengdu factory who was assemblying iPads; when the reporter showed the device to her, she had no idea what it was. This distance from the product perhaps also contributes to their emotional and psychological disconnect from their work, resulting in alienation and negative sense of self worth. The workers do not even know that the electronic piece they are making contributes to iPad assembly; not only have they never seen the completed tablet before, but rarely will they own one due to their low wages. But, as the consumer economy grows, China has begun competing in the global marketplace, manufacturing its own products for export and beginning to step beyond its role as the factory for the world. China’s future will require ingenuity and invention, and the development of global

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

marketplace savvy. China’s goal is to raise the standard of living, to increase the domestic demand for goods, and to create a more prosperous country. The higher costs have influenced many manufacturers to “go west” in China, where it is cheaper, and to set up production in other low-cost labor countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and various African nations. In addition, the pool of workers has shrunk due to the prospect of burgeoning jobs moving to the service and technology sectors. Chinese manifucture system is still based on a Labor Intensive Industry. Labour Intensive Industry refers to that industry, which requires substantial amount of human labor to produce the industrial products. As the name suggests, these labor intensive industries use labor intensively. Hospitality industry and coal mining industry are the industries, which hold a labor intensive industry structure. For the under developed and developing economies, labor intensive industry structure can be proved to be a better option than a capital intensive

China’s Export Value by Major Commodities, Jan-Oct, 2006 (Unit: US$10,000) Electromechanical products

43,970,987

Primary electromechanical products

4,484,657

High and new technology products

22,266,766

Accessories of garment and dress

7,777,971

Automatic data processing equipment and components

7,254,786

Yarn, fabric and products

4,014,868

Spare parts for automatic data processing equipment

2,614,525

Wireless telephone, handset or vehicle mounted

2,445,160

Components of TV, radio and telecommunication equipment

2,028,889

Steel

1,967,837

Footwear

1,810,716

Integrate circuit and micro-electronics components

1,711,234

Furniture and parts

1,383,997

Plastic products

1,098,346

TV sets

997,461

China’s Import Value by Major Commodities, Jan-Oct, 2010 (Unit: US$10,000)

3.9 Labour Intensive / Capital Intensive

160

Electromechanical products

34,710,793

High and new technology products

20,043,907

Integrate circuit and micro-electronics components

8,492,510

Crude oil

5,609,034

LCD board

2,607,578

Plastics in primary forms

2,199,163

Iron ore and fine mine

1,697,863

Steel

1,626,670

Components of television, radio and telecommunication equipment

1,608,127

Automatic data processing Equipment and components

1,605,746

Spare parts for automatic data processing equipment

1,442,111

Finished oil

1,359,481

Device and parts for circuitry

1,076,260

Parts of handset wireless telephone

1,022,017

Unwrought coppers and copper products

979,580

Airplane

847,612

161

China, from ‘world factory’ to high end production

one. Capital intensive refers to a business process or an industry that requires large amounts of money and other financial resources to produce a good or service. The large amount of capital invested in these industries generate high level of profit. Automobile industry, chemical industry and oil refinery industry are basically capital intensive industries. Requiring large volume of financial resources for staring up, the number of new entrants to any capital intensive industry is relatively less compared to any labor intensive industry. The main problem about Chinese manifacture system is the lack of high tech production. As we can see from the dates from import-export, China makes and exports a lot of high-tech products like mobile phones and automatic data processing equipment. But, observing the ranking of “Integrate circuit and micro-electronics components” on the import list, it’s clear that they are made in China with imported chips. This is China’s position in the high-end industries, it has produced 400 million cell phones for the first three quarters this year,

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

but all the chips are imported. Stan Shih’s ‘smile curve’. If we have a look to Stan Shih’s ‘smile curve’, highly profitable product R&D, branding and design sit at the beginning of the process, with distribution, marketing and sales/after service sitting at the other end – these represent the high points of the curve; between these two peaks nestles the far less profitable stage of actual manufacturing and assembly, the segment where China’s economy is still primarily focused. Compared with the advanced economies, China’s manufacturing sector is large but not strong, with obvious gaps in innovation capacity, efficiency of resource utilization, quality of industrial infrastructure and degree of digitalization. The production that China accounts for in many of these industries is still very much low value add and energy intensive, not to mention highly polluting, which is a source of increasing social discontent. Chinese Governi s completely aware about its manifacture system situation, for this reason in 2015, China has charted out

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a $300 billion plan to become nearly self-sufficient by 2025 in a range of important industries, from planes to computer chips to electric cars, as it looks to kick-start its next stage of economic development. ”Made in China 2025” is an initiative to upgrade Chinese industry. The goal is to comprehensively upgrade Chinese industry, making it more efficient and integrated so that it can occupy the highest parts of global production chains. The plan identifies the goal of raising domestic content of core components and materials to 40% by 2020 and 70% by 2025. Covering the 10-year period 2016 to 2025, and with targets set for both 2020 and 2025, the CM2025 initiative constitutes the first of a three-stage plan for establishing China as a leading global manufacturing power by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It aims to do so by addressing the fact that China’s manufacturing industry is currently large without being strong due to its continuing lack of internationally-competitive companies and products of

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

its own,36 as well as its dependence on foreign companies for many core technologies and classes of capital equipment.

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From the first mechanical loom, dating from 1784, exactly 230 years ago, we can distinguish four stages in the ongoing process called the Industrial Revolution. The first “acceleration” occurred toward the end of the 18th century: mechanical production on the basis of water and steam. We place the Second Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century: the introduction of the conveyor belt and mass production, to which the names of icons such as Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor are linked. Number three is the digital automation of production by means of electronics and it. At present, we find ourselves at the beginning of this fourth stage, which is characterized by socalled “Cyber-Physical Systems” (cps). These systems are a consequence of the far-reaching integration of production, sustainability and customer-satisfaction forming the basis of intelligent network systems and processes. Factory floors are already teeming with “Internet of Things”.Video cameras, rfid readers, tablets, entrance tickets, etc. – all these kinds of

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Internet devices improve the quality, efficiency and security of production and process operations. It is becoming easier to connect appliances, machines, things, entire factories and other industrial environments and processes to the Internet. New business services are now being developed on the basis of their capacity to link the physical and virtual worlds. Today, robots are already present in large numbers in industry but mostly they can be found in cages or behind a fence on the workfloor. With the 4th industrail revolution this has started to change. Intelligent machines that can learn independently, that are flexible and take their environment into account, must be able to collaborate organically with their human colleagues. At present, traditional industrial robots are evolving into assistants to humans. In accordance with the vision of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, humans and intelligent machines will jointly perform production tasks in the future. Sensors, cameras and self-learning software will be indispensible to this process. The leitmotiv is that

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production facilities with the internet of

Combining IT and electronics allows for further automation of production process.

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Mass production fuels the 2nd Industrial Revolution with the help of electrical power.

Introduction of mechanical production facilities supported by water and steam power. 3.15 Industrial Revolutions

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robots will have to adapt to humans, and not vice versa. Thanks to the Internet, sensors and embedded systems, completely new opportunities are opening up for new combinations of mental, physical and mechanical work. Last year, in an article entitled “The Internet of Things and the Future of Manufacturing” in the McKinsey Quarterly, Bosch top man Siegfried Dasch made the prediction that, in industry, everything will eventually be connected to everything else. “This is nothing less than a paradigm shift in industry: the real manifacturing world is converging with the digital manifacturing world to anable organizations to digitally plan and project the entire lifecycle of products and production facilities” The inew technologies introduced by the 4th Industrail revolution are already visible in the mutating relations between men and machines:

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Smart: new relation between men and machines In the contemporary factory, technology has a great positive impact on the workforce. Relatively new high and always upgrading technology systems and methods are changing how production happens and, most of all, the role of the worker himself. Some examples are automation and cyber-physical assistance system. Automation increases reliability and product quality, and often makes it easier to adapt production lines and create flexible production processes. utomation requires high initial cost and increased staff training. Collectively, this will lead to a shift to safer, more highly skilled jobs in manufacturing. One significant development in workplace automation is that the factory robot of the future will be able to safely interact and cooperate with its human co-workers, manoeuvring safely around them, thanks to multi-sensory interaction and control. The aim of industrial designers is to combine the ingenuity and versatility of people with the precision and repeatability of robots, enabling human-machine collaboration in dynamic and reconfigurable manufacturing

environments. The design of the production spaces, therefore, should become optimised for both humans and robots and their collaboration. These systems will enable the physical world to merge with the virtual world, allowing factory workers to design products, control processes and manage operations. Integrated: designers and producers In a productive system, value is created by breaking down barriers and enabling dialogue and interaction across different disciplines. As manufacturing becomes more highly skilled and the roles for these workers begin to merge, the configuration of factories will change to reflect this. The design of factories should enable the different divisions - research, engineering development and design - to work on the same factory floor and in proximity to manufacturing. Another crucial point is the passage from linear to cellular production. Rather than following a step-by-step line of production, the assembly line is organized into groups, or cells, which worked collaboratively. The workers are reorganized

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Die Glaserne Manufaktur, Henn Architekten, Dresden, 1999-2001

into team, increasing communication between them and management and providing greater quality control, enhancing the relationships between people, not just machines. These teams have a workshop-like environments rather than a massive horizontal floor area. In its “cell” the worker can see the result of its work in the final product, seeing the full process of its production, and together with the possibility of changing his tasks during the day, relieving boredom, monotony and alienation and improving responsibilities. Closer: open and engaging customer experience The development of computerization and the “internet of things” directly affect how people consume products and services. The mass customization inspired economist Alvin Toffler to coin the term “prosumer” in 1980, indicating the potential for consumers to customize products according to their tastes and desires. Toffler saw the individual as both producer and consumer, selecting things for one’s own consumption rather than depending on companies setting the demand.

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Varying levels of customization – from a choice within design parameters, made-to-order products, flexible production, and modularizing some of the process – and involvement in open innovation processes contribute in making product differentiations along with rapid mass production. Faster: the just-in-time production Mass production lines led inevitably to processing bottlenecks and overproduction. For this reason, they started to invent new strategies for a renewed rational efficiency. In the mid twentieth century, the Japanese company Toyota invented Just-in-time (JIT) production, focusing on faster manufacturing oriented towards consumer demand, a new system of teamwork enhanced with automated technologies encouraging creativity in the production line and minimal stock in warehouses. JIT is demand-focused, so that no more than is needed is produced. The fact that this production method is actually able to drastically reduce the stocking space is relevant considering the possibility of inserting

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

production activities again in the city. Moreover, this method provides a more condensed processing system and an efficient organization. Intelligence based on big data and advanced analytics creates new opportunities for competitive advantage. Analysis of selected data enables companies to reveal customer insights in more detail, identify new product opportunities sooner, and get new product and design variations to market faster. Smaller: 3-D printing and shrinking of space As for the first industrial revolution it was a machine, the steam engine, to trigger the radical change, even in this case there is a machine: the 3d printer. It is also known as additive manufacturing (AM) and it refers to processes used to synthesize a three-dimensional object in which successive layers of material are formed under computer control to create an object. This is not something completely new, it is 30 years that similar instruments are used in factories. The innovation is that now it is available for a small amount of price, making it accessible to a larger amount of people and enterprises.

The utilisation of 3D-printing in manufacturing can reduce the amount of waste produced as well as the amount of energy used. The process consists on the addition of different additive layers of material such as plastic powders, building up the final product. Although mass customisation has been the ‘next big thing’ for decades, relevant technologies are finally sufficiently developed and affordable enough to make it a reality. Large-scale mass-produced items can be made in smaller factories with lower cost per volume. Microfactories can create products on demand, producing objects specifically thought for a customer. This changes the economy of making a product as well, because the investment of capital is not as intensive upfront.

spaces occupied by one or more companies sharing common areas such as elevators and loading docks, common areas and services such as lobbies, or services such as power and water, reducing costs and energy consumption. Like office buildings, these production spaces are usually formed by real estate developers as rental properties rather than by factory operators who integrate the building with their machinery. This combination of manufacturing, automated machines, and human capital is a new model for an urban system that can multiply in cities, promoting production and skills, and strengthening interpersonal bond.

Shared: democratization of production A growing practice in productive space is the sharing of machinery and software. This is an important step towards autonomous and ubiquitous production. It reduces operating costs, people can design a product that is then printed via computer software linked to shared hardware, which is leased or rented by the hour in a common workshop space. The sharing of knowledge, machinery and different skills can help, economically and practically, small and medium scale company to set up, in particular in the urban context where connections and exchanges are higher. The manufacturing process has become democratized as people are manufacturing in smaller batches, firms are smaller but solvent, and the quality control is more immediate and manageable. Maker-space, hacker-space, fab-labs and other collaborative workshops are growing all over the world and they are already following this idea, but it could be further scaled. For example, the model of the vertical urban factory shows how various facilities can be shared between different company in one building. Smaller activities could relocate themselves in larger, layered, underutilized or abandoned typology of productive buildings spread in the city; as the tendency is that factories don’t need as much space as they once did because production processes have contracted. As the architectural historian and critic Nina Rappaport explains: many urban making spaces are vertical urban factories—really a synonym for dense urban manufacturing. They are organized as integrated spacescompanies that own their building, often with processing that goes up and down, or down and up, using the flow of gravity in many cases, or mechanized conveyors. Or, they are layered in pancake buildings, usually with leased

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As a result of industry’s reconfiguration and redefinition, architecture is implicated in urban manufacturing scenarios in terms of form, scale, invention, and context gaining new relevance and value shaping spaces in which people can make things in parity. Socioeconomic exchanges have instigated a productivity paradox: eventually, factories won’t be essential as a unique typology except for large-scale mass production or for branding purposes. However, I propose that the vertical and urban factory proves a potent model for ameliorating the technical, social, and urban conditions of the future factory in what can be called an super-urban industrial symbiosis. Once manufacturing left the cottages and became housed in larger centers or manufactories, the pollution and nuisances that it produced led to the nineteenth-century utopian factory city schemes, and to the approach in a new field of city planning where factories were segregated from other parts of the city, as described by Leonardo Benevolo. The

3.20 A view of the village of “Unity and mutual

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

sequestering of factories away from daily life became a standard element of - urban design through zoning - along with segregating the poor from the rich which decimated the diversity and vitality of urban hybridity. Due to expansive infrastructure networks and technical changes in manufacturing, a new contextual reconfiguration provided a spatial potential to rethink the space of manufacturing, namely, as the vertical urban factory. As a form of organization, the vertical urban factory sparks ideas for the future of architecture and urbanism. Industry’s impulse is towards a timebased organization in which efficacy and progress technological and architectural - are celebrated; yet, these very virtues often undermine labor rights because of capital control. The city’s multiple and complex layers challenge architects, economists, and planners to formulate methods for planning hybridity, a quality now deemed valuable to growth and sustainability. The city continues to be a magnetic for people to live in due to its energy and dynamism, its opportunities

and complexities, its freedoms and anonymity, and the friction and exchanges between diverse populations, which ultimately cultivates and sparks creativity. In our present ecologically conscious times and with the redefinition of industry, the idea of the vertical factory may again be pertinent in order to conserve land and save costs. The vertical factory provides design and cultural opportunities for new thinking, both in terms of its relationship to the city and within itself - if we can also attend to workers’ conditions, there can be more equity. In contrast to the model of imperialist exploitation, production spaces could be revalued and seen as opportunities for design. A re-evaulation of industry could make possible a factory future in which the more complex political issues of worker equity and employment opportunities are resolved, and in which cities re-evolve into “workshops of the world,” as Philadelphia was called in the nineteenth century. This last chapter proposes scenarios for the future factory that extrapolate from existing conditions to argue for

the factory’s resurrection in the city. The transparent, the local, the small and shared, the hybrid and dense, the connected and dispersed - these characteristics which are taking hold now could be recombined as symbiotic and ecologically situated - both economically and environmentally - and synthesized for the near future. But the architectural and urban issues addressing manufacturing in cities not only present exciting design challenges for integrating production spaces and systems, new fabrication technologies, but also demand expansive solutions that will garner environmental benefits. The vertical urban factory becomes a metaphor and then an actuality, ultimately forming an urban industrial symbiosis. The paradox becomes the question of how designers and inventors can embrace a seemingly outmoded and abandoned typology as a new potential for integrated urban form, and address the issues of equity contained within.

3.21 Vertical Cotton Mill, section, 1952

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of desirable products. Some companies are capitalizing on the visibility of the factory as a branding tool. But transparency could also heighten the value of work. By engaging and educating the public about process, an ethic of labor might be engendered. While the idea for a transparent factory assumes a glazed and often high-designed building, this design can still establish an active relationship between the production space and the urban streetscape. The view of the workers and their work - in contrast to a more normative, sterile, and sealed factory building - could animate the building facades and connect directly with the street and passersby. The worker would thus enliven the city in its streetscape while potentially advertising a company. Simultaneously, the visibility of the worker demonstrates the integrity of craft and labor, as well as satisfies the public’s curiosity for how things are made.

Vertical and dense Synonymous with a holistic vision of urban manufacturing, verticality is a metaphor and actuality of the urban factory from its density, multiplicity, and job potential. The multistoried factory can be both layered with different factories on each floor or integrated as one company. As a typology, historically, it has gone unrecognized, but if regulations allowed, and it was used again by more manufacturers, it would be a natural solution to provide more urban industrial space. The allowable height in many manufacturing areas could be increased with financial incentives and special tax breaks for denser manufacturing. Thus, the vertical urban factory could be reinvented in the densest of cities, so that supply would meet demands for space for future new flexible economies. The spatial typology of factories, along with other building types, multiplying vertically, densifying, and agglomerating in increased proximity in the city assists with its potential sustainablity. In the past, physically dense clusters of industrial innovation bore a negative stigma as potential polluters. Today, density, when accompanied by the appropriate sustainable infrastructures, gains a certain traction because it conserves land, energy, commuting time, carbon footprints, and social and other natural resources. Density also increases the value of a site, as by means of building upward, the land area is multiplied in layers rather than sprawling horizontally. The rapid urbanization and increased populations moving to cities could inspire activated, production spaces providing employment opportunities and integrating them into the city.

Industrial Tourism One way to enter a factory, if you don’t work there, is through a controlled visit, as was prevalent in chocolate

factories, food production such as Heinz and Kellogg, and automotive factories in the early twentieth century. Today, we have an entire “experience economy” - a newly positioned, highly orchestrated area of industrial tourism popular with Kawasaki Motors in its company town in Japan, BMW and VW in Germany, the Murano glassblowers in Venice, film production companies, breweries, and wineries, among many others. Many of there factories have affiliated museums, especially legacy manufacturers; others allow visitors onto the factory floor, if doing so doesn’t interfere with their production or cause insurance problems. Company owners capitalize on the concept by bringing the consumer to the factory for that experience which then captures the consumere’ attention and dollars. Hotel stays in conjunction with factory visits have also become popular. Embracing and capitalizing on the intentional pairing of factory and hotel and extrapolating for the future, a factory owner could build a hotel that would have codependent infrastructures. The two dissimilar programs could feed off of each other for resource management, including

Transparent One scenario within the vertical factory is the concept of the transparent factory - whether it be part of the “society of spectacle” of Guy Debord, or a company’s marketing showcase that is using design as the “decorated shed” to attract attention - which uses the display of the production at the point of sale, thus hypercommodifying a company’s factory. The consumption of production and the public’s gaze onto process encourages the physically transparent factory, in terms of viewing the workers, as with Henn Architects’ transparent VW factory. VW’s design strategy is an attempt to increase profits by allowing people to get close to the source of origin, to understand how a car is made and who makes it, and to seduce the consumer with the product’s authenticity, both emotionally, and viscerally in a display 3.22 Mixing retail and factory Normal, New York, HWKN Architects, 2014

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water, heat, and electricity. Hotels could also be built on top of existing factories, making an interesting mix, each with separate services and vertical circulation systems. With a provocation for hybrid programs, hotel uses could still occur in industrial areas, and property owners could capitalize on this potentially clashing but unusual programmatic mix. Glocal The new cottage industries of the future will be catalytic enterprises that target loyal and local customers. Making things locally fox the local consumer and for global export supports the economy as well as reduces the supply chain. As companies are shrinking workforces, the future entrepreneur and local producer will move beyond long lines of product assembly into the realm of integrated small-scale processing in a networked spatial economy rather than an isolated ex-urban space. With a growing interest in the locally made, new industries, focused on flexibility and versatility, can supply goods to their immediate communities,

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

but maintain broader appeal to a global market. The “Made In” label becomes a popular signifier and brand for companies that choose to prioritize authenticity and local production. What if each neighborhood had local production centers for individual needs, but those goods could also be sold globally? These centers would not only make a region self-sufficient, but provide an identity for a product, enhancing its authenticity. Local sites of manufacturing focused on supplying local urban consumers would reduce transit costs and commute time, and by encouraging goods to be purchased dose at hand, reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. “Made locally and distributed globally” is the essence of economic growth, and it coincides with local initiatives enhancing entrepreneurship in the new economy in various scales of vertical urban factories. Small If industry continues at the small scale with new and light technologies, and innovative and smaller batch production - in contrast to massive factories - new

production spaces become financially less burdensome. Spatially, small-scale manufacturing with its tabletop technologies and nano-scaled tools, has the potential to be located anywhere. The functions of the company can spread out to smaller factories, each specializing in different product aspects that then come together under a larger umbrella. The smaller firm can react and respond more quickly, contributing to its longevity and flexibility. The scale of the multinational corporation, while still dominant, could find ways in the future to be “small is beautiful” or manifest a “smallness within bigness” through Just-in-Time production, small batches, flexibility, and use of skilled and unskilled, but not low-paid laborers in local workshops. Hybrid The Modemist separation of functions - residential and factory work, in particular - made each part of life separated. Highly capitalist consumer society of the second industrial revolution never anticipated the disaggregation of the workplace from residence. In

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process removal, the city became monofunctional by district, and hierarchical in a more exclusive urbanism. The Modemist city became as rational as Taylor attempted in the factory itself. But even in the location of industrial sectors, diversity was essential, and limiting land uses killed the potential for the unexpected entrepreneur to introduce a business to an area or a manufacturing ecology that capitalized on the interdependence of skills and resources. The prevailing attitude of Modemist architects and planners was not to focus on the relationship between the factory and the city, beyond merery isolating industry from the city. But I argue that, with the shift to smaller, cleaner, and greener technologies, as well as virtual networks and e-commerce, factories can be physically dispersed within cities, eliminating the need for exclusive industrial zones and sequestered industry. The city is then remixed to the maximum, inﬁniter exchanging physical and spatial realms, in the vein that urbanist Grahame Shane deﬁnes as “recombinant urbanism,” based on the recombining of DNA, which would allow for industry

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to occupy diverse areas rather than be sequestered through a zoning code, which limits the ability to react to changing economies. Within an individual building, mixes naturally occur and could be emphasized. Perhaps, a bit in the vein of Rem Koolhaas’ analysis of the Downtown Athletic Club in New York, the interrelationships and juxtapositions in a hybrid building can hold surprising and often overlooked synergies.” Hybridity is then what results when this maximum mix is taken into account, as well as the potential for combinatory resources and programs. The hybridity results in a multifunctionality that then can play off the complex input from all the various uses. If a building is like a beehive, and includes living, working, making, and recreation, the mix increases economic diversity and enhances urban energy. The potential for a mixed industrial community in the pragmatic utopian sense of the early twentieth century could rise vertically rather than be spread out in different buildings in a planned company town. Instead, the company town could be a vertical company town, mixing residential and manufacturing in one place. Housing could be a workers coop or social housing joined together in a building rather than separating the workplace from home. But, in order to incentivize residential as an amenity to the workspace, these could be conjoined with community uses. This mix is dynamic and provides a 24/7 community. Mixed-use and ﬂexibility to the market are now touted by real estate investors as a plus for commercial and residential, but industry is never included in that mix, mainly because of traditional perspectives of what industry is.

placed in a system as the city has a great potential and opportunity to create and distributes clean energy and products because of adjacencies. With the synergetic combination of different strategies, it is possible to foster a new urban “industrial ecology”. Inside this scenario, three strategies have been recognised. A. Smart envelope The first strategy can be compared to the “traditional” concept of architectural sustainability, form the point of view of the construction techniques and energy requirements. Due to climate change and resource constraints it will be necessary that the construction and operation of factories will be both sustainable and resilient. This includes reduced energy, water and material consumption, and design and location choices that limit climate related weather risks and reduce transportation needs. B. Sustainable production Historically, industry has been dominated by a linear

model of production and consumption in which goods are manufactured from raw materials, sold, used and then discarded as waste (take-make-consume). In a circular economy, rather than entering the waste stream, products are reused to extract their maximum value before being safely and productively returned to the techno-sphere or biosphere as an input. Industry, nurtured by the principles of the three Rs (reduce, reuse and recycle), can apply the same strategy to production. Together with energy efficiency and lean production it can evolve into what is called eco-efficiency. C. Productive ecology Clustering and connecting factories in an urban setting, rather than in distant and distinct locations, is a relevant strategy for implementing sustainability in industry. It generates an urban industrial ecology in which machineries and (energetic and material) resources are shared. Companies network, taking advantage of unused energy, materials and natural resources, generate a zero waste and zero emissions

Sustainable The lasting image of a traditional factory is linked to the time of the industrial revolution. These highly polluting factories first scarred the urban centre, before moving out to the industrial hinterland. Factories nowadays are cleaner, greener, quieter and no longer demand large-scale rectilinear spaces, reducing their footprint impact. It is important to understand how a factory can be sustainable and how inserting it in a dense urban context can be beneficial. A sustainable factory is not just one that is integrated with the natural environment, disappears into the landscape, revitalizes an existing factory building instead of building a new one, or has a minimum ecological impact, but is one that contributes to an ecological system symbiotically - literally becoming an industrial organism that influences social, as well as environmental, sustainability. The factory 3.26 Desity and Mixitè Industry City, Brooklyn NY, S9 Architecture,2011

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3.27 Valdemingomez recycling plant, Madrid, Estudio Herreros

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loop. Two aspects are important: the differentiation of the activities involved in the system and the proximity of the companies because connections that are too distant can constitute an economical issue. Flexible The flexible factory follows the “new industrial divide”, wherein production has to merge with the new economy in order to be agile and responsive to continuously changing production lines or new technology. As such, the factory will need to accommodate a range of floor layouts, production systems, equipment configurations and extensions. As in the flexibility of widely spaced columns of Modernist factory, where architecture was reduced to its bared minimum perimeter, maintaining the façade and the internal structure, contemporary productive building must provide for future manufacturing technologies, otherwise, it would be obsolescent and production should be moved somewhere else. Inside this scenario, two strategies have been recognised.

The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

A. Adaptable : form follows function Flexible productive space means that the industrial equipment can be easily reconfigured, as the processing changes over time, to meet the company’s needs. If the flow of production changes, therefore, also the factory design should change, the layout should be integrated both with the production and organizational systems. It also means that the factory itself or sectors of the factory can be expanded according to increased necessity of space. B. Interchangeable: modularity allows growth Improved flexibility will also mean that factories can be constructed from modular components that are easily disassembled and relocated. Modular structures can be expanded quickly and easily to meet changing spatial requirements. Tented factories, for example, can be used for extra capacity or as stand-alone moveable facilities. A freely interchangeable building system enables rapid and efficient changes to layout and function.

3.28 Flexibility Freitag Factory, Zurich, Spillmann echsle architekten, 2010-2011

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Bibliography

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Anderson, Chris. 2012. Makers, ‘The New Industrial Revolution’, New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2012

ChenXiangguo, ‘Is China the Factory of the World?’, Asia Pacific University, 2007.

Leonardo Benevolo, ‘L’origine dell’urbanistica moderna’, Bari-Roma, Laterza Editore, 1976.

Yang Yao, ‘The Chinese Growth Miracle’, Peking University, Handbook of Economics Growth, 2014.

Jacobs, Jane, ‘The Economy of Cities’, New York: Random House, 1969. Rappaport, Nina, ‘Vertical Urban Factory’, New York, Actar Publishers, 2015. Zhang Xing Quan, ‘The economic role of cities’, Nairobi, UN-HABITAT, 2011. Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, ‘Telecommunications and the city: Electronic spaces’, New york, Routledge, 1996. Henri Lefebcre, ‘The right to the city’, Cambridge, Blackwell Publishing, 1996. Rem Koolhaas, ‘Delirious New York’, New York, The Monacelli Press, 1994. David Grahame Shane, ‘Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modeling in Architecture’, London, Wiley Academy, 2005. Peter Kropotkin, ‘Field, Factories and Workshop’, New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901. Vilem Flusser, ‘The Factory’, London, Reaktion Books Ltd, 1999. E.F. Schmaucher, ‘Small is beautiful’, London, Blond & Biggs, 1973. Chris Anderson, ‘The new Industrial Revolution’, New York, Crown Business, 2012. ‘Industry 4.0: Building the digital enterprise’, 2016 Global Industry 4.0 survey, PWC. ‘China Manufacturing 2025: putting industrial policies ahead of market forces’, European Chamber. Karel Eloot, ‘A new Era for Manufacturing in China’, Mc Kinsey Quarterly, 2013. Yun Wing Sun, ‘Made in China: From World Sweatshop to a global Manufacturing Center?’, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics.

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Density The spatial typology of factories, along with other building types, multiplying vertically, densifying, and agglomerating in increased proximity in the city assists with its potential sustainablity. In the past, physically dense clusters of industrial innovation bore a negative stigma as potential polluters. Today, density, when accompanied by the appropriate sustainable infrastructures, gains a certain traction because it conserves land, energy, commuting time, carbon footprints, and social and other natural resources. 184

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PRODUCTION

LIVING

RETAIL / LEISURE

MixitĂ¨ The potential of a mix industrial communities is the coexistance of different function within one cluster. The percentage of living spaces increase with the height of the buildings, while the production spaces decrease. The multistoried factory can be both layered with different factories on each floor or integrated as one company. Retail, open spaces and leisure facilities are inserted in the buildings at different heights to enhances urban energy. 186

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Open spaces

Logistic

Living Service

Vertical urban factory

Office

Retail

Created by H Alberto Gongora from the Noun Project

Production

Leisure

Hybridity The interrelationships and juxtapositions in a hybrid building can hold surprising and often overlooked synergies. Hybridity is then what results when this maximum mix is taken into account, as well as the potential for combinatory resources and programs. If a building is like a beehive, and includes living, working, making, and recreation, the mix increases economic diversity and enhances urban energy.

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Axonometry Single Cluster 190

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Axonometry Ground Floor

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Axonometry 1-4 Floor

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Axonometry 4-12 Floor

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Axonometry 12 + Floor

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Axonometry

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Exterior view

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Production / Design Interior View

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Inhabited wall Interior view

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The new paradigm of the contemporary factory

Living / Working Interior view

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