THE MEGA BLOCKS

from Selected Works of Sheng Guo

by Sheng Guo

THE FRAMEWORK

urban reneWal plan for hang Da neW VIllage SITe

ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF CIVIL ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE

Urban Planning and Design Urban Design Year 4 Fall and Winter 2019.09. - 2020.01

Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

Supervisor: WANG Jiaqi - wjqnancy0@zju.edu.cn Individual Work

When asked about impressions of Chinese buildings, The Forbidden City or CCTV Tower may come to your mind, but those similar and everyday residential buildings tend to disappear not because they easily assimilate into the Chinese urban environment, if there is any, rather because they just look all the same, from south to north, from east to west. This is where my design begins or this is what my design tries to end.

We may easily conclude that the Chinese real estate market is largely based on government policies and Chinese residential buildings are mostly results from satisfying national regulations and code. My very first idea is to go against that traditional dogmatic method while also adopting the meaningful experiences from the usual practice and meeting the demands. It always is easier to demolish something but faces more challenges to rebuild something.

When I try to connect those blocks into one single gigantic linear building, HOW is actually more important than WHY. How to solve all those circulation and ventilation problems brought about by this simple idea? How to create an open atmosphere and to reduce the tightness of this autocratic style building? How to bring peace to two seemingly contrary groups of residents in the original site? The proposal is still rather immature but puts forward my imaginary visions of one of the possibilities of the future Chinese urban environment.