News Article

Botti & Y. Wang, ABE

With the end of pandemic restrictions, the ABE Architecture Course has fully resumed one of its most important pedagogic activities: week-long field trips. During the month of April, all students for the Qualifying Year of Architecture and a group of students from our Vertical Design Studio undertook two exciting and formative field trips.

On April 10-14^th, students from the Qualifying Year visited the city of Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, under the guidance of Studio Leader Yimeng Wang with the support of Vuk Radovic and Giaime Botti and the participation of UNNC collaborator Bingqing Yang. During the trip to the Chinese capital of ceramic, students visited some heritage buildings and recent projects like the Imperial Kiln Museum designed by Studio Zhu Pei. The visit to the Museum represented an extraordinary opportunity to see first-hand and discuss several important aspects of an internationally relevant project, from layout composition to spatial configuration, from materiality to tectonics.

The ABE Team also visited the Bingding Wood Kiln, designed by Atelier Zhang Lei, in Jingdezhen‘s countryside. This represented another opportunity of discussing the complexity and richness of architectural design. The day ended up in the Taoxichuan Cultural Area, a new cultural and tourism development master-planned by the 2023 Pritzker Prize winner David Chipperfield. This tour also provided the opportunity to discuss projects at the urban scale and contemporary urban design practices related to tourism and urban regeneration, as the day ended at the nearby Taoxichuan Cultural Park, where several industrial buildings have been repurposed for commercial and touristic activities.

The pedagogic value of the field trip was enhanced by the strict coordination with the other Architecture modules. While implementing a learning-by-experience teaching, ABE staff have also coordinated cross-module activities related to the field trip. Students have investigated buildings through photography and sketches for the module Integrated Design in Architecture 1, led by Wang, while Jun Lu has briefed students on vaulted structures in the module Tectonics 1 also using the Imperial Kiln Museum as a case study. Finally, barrel vaults in modern architecture are investigated by students in the module of Architectural Humanities 1 led by Botti through several presentations to understand the relevance of an ancient typology of structure in contemporary architecture.

On April 16-20^th, 23 students from the Vertical Design Studio travelled to Chengdu and Chongqing for an optional field trip rich in highlights, organised by Giaime Botti with the support of Andrea Palmioli and two Final Year students, Shiming Chen and Sihui Shen. On the second day of the trip, the group visited the Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Museum, designed by Liu Jiakun on the outskirts of Chengdu and the West Village, an urban project by the same architect. During the day, students and tutors had multiple moments of discussion touching on several themes stimulated by the first-hand experience of these projects. On the other days, the group also visited different areas of the city, gaining a critical and comparative understanding of urban commercial projects such as Steven Holl’s Raffles City, the Sino-Ocean Taikoo Li, and the new SKP mall.

The trip then continued in Chongqing, where the ABE group extensively walked along the peninsula, visiting the Baixiang Residential, an example of a high-density, topographic-adapted building now popular for its intricate system of internal passages, pedestrian bridges, and panoramic corridors with stunning views on the city, and the Raffles City by Safdie Architects. To conclude this important day, a typical Chongqing hot pot dinner was organised. On the final day of the trip, students were hosted in the office of local architect Weitao Li, who gave an interesting talk about some of his projects, also explaining the regeneration project of the former industrial area where the office is located, Testbed2, by Will Alsop. The visit was also important as it strengthened our connections with the industry and promoted career opportunities for our Architecture students, who in the future will be able to apply for internships in his office.

In the end, these trips offer a great opportunity for our students to know contemporary projects in person and debate about them with tutors while inside these buildings, making the learning process more profound and complete. Furthermore, they promote our graduates and reinforce ABE’s connection with partners in the industry across different regions of China. Finally, they represent great moments of sharing between students and staff.