Street Life and the ‘People’s City’

Could large-scale urban development and an erosion of rights to public space prove the death knoll for China’s vibrant street life? Shi Jian , Planning Director of ISreading Culture in Beijing, looks at the tradition of Chinese street culture and how it is currently shifting and reinventing itself for new urban contexts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Taxonomy of Contemporary Chinese Cities (We Make Cities): A Sampling

Rem Koolhaas famously highlighted the uniformity of Chinese cities with his identification of ‘the generic city’ in the Pearl River Delta in the 1990s. Here Jiang Jun , Editor-in-Chief of Urban China magazine, and Kuang Xiaoming highlight the ‘unified diversity’ and complexity of contemporary urbanism through his own system of classification. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The AADRL: Design,Collaboration and Convergence

Brett Steele, former director of the Architectural Association's Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) and now director of the Architectural Association, reflects upon the DRL as a laboratory for the production of a different kind of student and teacher, and ultimately as a new model for architectural education. His ‘screenshots’ offer an informal image/text-based window through which to browse the general atmosphere of that research endeavour. The DRL was also very active in employing outside specialists from a variety of disciplines including computer programming and robotics. These interests were situated within the DRL's much larger ambition of rethinking the very definition of research itself, not isolated in the purely reflective interests of history and criticism but based on the projective desires of innovation. Moreover, the organisation of these new laboratories of design life begin to resemble their objects of study. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The ‘valley of ashes’ and the ‘fresh green breast’: metaphors from The Great Gatsby in planning New York

ABSTRACT

Visions in planning of what a city could or should be tend to be constructed around metaphors, rhetorical tropes that crystalize the image of a preferable future city. Such metaphorizations are never innocent: they draw on pre-existing cultural narratives and activate particular frames of expectation. This article examines two metaphors used in the planning of New York City, and its shores, in particular: the spectre of the ‘valley of ashes’ and the dream of the ‘fresh green breast’. These metaphors, taken from F. Scott Fizgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925), appear time and again in the planning and thinking of the New York shoreline, from Robert Moses’s plans for Flushing Meadow to Major Bloomberg’s waterfront development and Eric Sanderson’s vision of a 2406 New York in Mannahatta (2006). This article examines how the metaphors of the ‘valley of ashes’ and the ‘fresh green breast’ have been adapted throughout decades of planning New York City to accommodate changing relationships, conflicts and ideals, always infused by a pastoral undercurrent that is already questioned in Fitzgerald’s novel.     

After China: The World? Three Perspectives on a Critical Question

Are China’s cities now poised for global influence? This challenging question initiates a tripartite response from three authors: Kyong Park , Laurence Liauw and Doreen Heng Liu . In order to fully speculate on the potential of Chinese urbanism and architecture beyond its own borders: Park looks at whether China is a fully replicable capitalist model; Liauw outlines recent indicators of urban Sinofication around the world, whether it is the exporting of high-end designer furniture to the West or the injection of Chinese capital into Africa; and Heng Liu examines the dissemination of the Pearl River Delta both as an idea - first proliferated by Rem Koolhaas in the mid-1990s - and in its physical manifestations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

No Frills and Bare Life: Cheapness and Democracy

Alejandro Zaera-Polo looks at the implication of ‘cheapness’ pursued by some of today's most successful companies, which deliver no-frills services and products to the biggest number of customers possible. This is a strategy perhaps best exemplified by EasyJet and IKEA. Setting aside the impact on global warming, what implications does this approach have for democratisation and urbanisation? And what can architecture, in particular, learn from it at time when it is turning its back on its aspirations for the iconic and the grand visions of the first decade of this century.     

应对突发传染性疫情的城市民生商业供应布局规划研究

民生商业供应是满足民众居家隔离的关键环节,如何在控制疫情发展的前提下实现民众基本生活商品的采买成为一项重要问题。文章对传统城市商业网点发展规划中与民生商业息息相关的要素展开思考,从最低等级商业中心结构强化、开放性市场规划、城市便利店防灾体系构建和居住街坊级物流配送点设置等维度提出应对突发传染性疫情的城市民生商业供应布局规划建议,对应实现扁平化与公共化、限制性、网格化和特定性的价值属性。     

Urban Wash

Sean Lally of WEATHERS urges designers to realise the performative capabilities of the ambient effects of the urban wash – the artificial light given off by cities at night. Taking up this principle of a wash within his designs for the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, he demonstrates how a ‘climatic wash’ could create an artificial microclimate that extends the seasonal activities of the museum's programmes.     

Low-Tech Transgression: The Interventional Work of EXYZT

Alex Romer and Naïm Aït-Sidhoum define EXYZT's practice as one characterised by ‘transgressive forms’ and ‘construction devices’. They explain how this has come about through the studio's penchant for the loose conditions of leftover spaces – derelict urban sites or marginal spaces by the sides of roads and railway lines – which require the building of temporary structures in tight timetables on limited budgets.     

The ‘People’s City’

The mid-20th-century communist ideal was for cities that were ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. Wang Jun , an editor at Outlook Weekly magazine and author of a best-selling book on the planning of Beijing, describes how the ambition to accommodate public life in urban space is a relatively modern phenomenon that goes against the grain of a long tradition of landownership in China. Given this background, can the original notion of the ‘People's City’ ultimately survive the current wave of property privatisation? Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

One Space,Many Worlds

‘Cities hold two-thirds of their residents in slums, and the rest in stiflingly limiting, inflexible structures.’ Thus the impoverished parochial Mumbai is one and the same metropolis as the cosmopolitan globalised ‘Bombay’. Ramesh Biswas examines how the speculative housing developments of the aspirational middle classes are creating townships that intensify sprawl and further decentralise cities, squandering the potential for upgrading public space and creating an architecture for the common good. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intimacy: Eragatory's Experiments in Materiality,Deep Texture and Mood

Because of their textural and sensory qualities – even or uneven, smooth or rough, cold or warm, reflective or matt – particular materials tend to evoke particular moods. But this does not mean that their nature and structure cannot be played with in order to create surprising atmospheres. London-based design practice Eragatory's ‘Intimacy’ series of interiors does just that, producing visual anomalies that distort the viewer's material understanding of space. Isaie Bloch , the firm's founder, describes how.     

合约控制功能对承包商合作行为影响研究:业主权力的调节作用

现有研究中关于合约治理对组织间合作的影响仍存在一定分歧,合约治理与权力机制如何共同影响组织间合作有待进一步研究。基于交易成本理论检验了合约控制功能对承包商角色内行为和角色外行为的影响,探究合约控制功能与业主权力对承包商合作行为的共同影响;采用问卷调查方式收回有效数据181份进行实证研究。研究结果表明:合约控制功能对承包商角色内行为有显著的正向影响,但对承包商角色外行为没有显著影响;业主的专业权力和强制权力对合约控制功能与承包商角色内行为之间的关系有正向的调节作用。研究结果强调了合约与权力的重要作用,有助于缓解现有研究中存在的分歧,为工程实践中业主如何设计合同及管理承包商提供了启示和指导。     

Putting the ‘I’ back into Architecture

Neil Spiller gets personal in a bid to put the ‘I’ back into architecture. He celebrates the spatial experimentation of the work of Charlotte Erckrath. Creating a space of desire, she produces a subjective ‘synthesis of architect, body, space and view’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross the River by Touching the Stones: Chinese Architecture and Political Economy in the Reform Era: 1978-2008

China's Open Door Policy and economic development set in motion in 1978 can be regarded as the triumph of pragmatism over theory - specifically Chairman Mao's brand of Marxist theory. Tao Zhu traces the progress of reform over the last 30 years, and its impact on Chinese architectural culture. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

发现与训育:20世纪初中国儿童游戏场的发展

结合20世纪初西方儿童游戏场的建设和中国对于儿童观念转变的背景,分析同时期中国儿童游戏场的出现及其发展.中国儿童游戏场建设的参考主要来自开埠城市的租界公园和国外的相关著述;其设计以体育健身器械为中心,注重儿童体质的增强而非玩耍的乐趣;其活动的组织由改革者们由上至下进行界定,而非激发儿童的创造性.这些儿童游戏场物化了上层阶级对儿童发现与训育的需求,而出现这一现象的原因在于20世纪初中国体育文化的演进和国家民族主义的发展.     

Biodiversity Targets as the Basis for Green Design

Mike Wells , the Director of Biodiversity by Design, and Ken Yeang outline the need for biodiversity targets in architecture to provide a more far-reaching basis for green design. Rather than just literally ‘greening’ a building by covering it with foliage, they seek to encourage designers to engage with wider ecological processes and in more specific detail. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cultivating the Field in the Global Hinterland: Community Building for Mass Housing in the Amazon Region

The large-scale residential settlements that have sprung up over the last decade to house migrants flocking to join Brazil's burgeoning rural industries are in urgent need of retrofitting with infrastructure and community facilities if they are to become sustainable. To this end, international urban design practice the BAÚ Collaborative has initiated the ‘Eden’ project – a participatory design process that involves state authorities, local NGOs, residents and social workers. Rainer Hehl , a cofounder of BAÚ, outlines the problem, the project, and its test-site: the mining town of Parauapebas.     

CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects: Through the Looking Glass

CJ Lim is one of architecture’s greatest illustrators, visualising through his beautiful and delicate drawings and models an enchanted world inspired by Lewis Carroll, William Heath Robinson and Chinese fables. Howard Watson describes how Lim is now breaking through the visionary’s glass ceiling with his realisation of a tunnel installation for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and a project at an altogether different scale for an eco-city in China. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

城市中心区服务职能分异研究——以上海人民广场中心区为例

城市中心区是核心服务职能空间的聚集区,根据服务职能空间在中心区范围内的离散程度,可将城市聚集模式分为高度聚集、适度聚集和均匀聚集三种。研究利用洛伦兹离散曲线分析上海人民广场中心区职能空间分布问题,得知其在职能支网结构的进阶力、服务职能的市场竞争力和局部地段的聚集引力的驱动下,其服务功能区主要以围绕聚集的匀散发展模式、匀散间的共生发展模式和匀散条件下的聚集配套模式分布和发展。这一推导过程及其研究结果为中心区服务职能空间的规划提供了科学理论,从而推动了中心区的升级和转型。