Vertical Design Studio Spring Semester Mid-term Review @ UNNC
28 April 2020
The Vertical Design Studio Mid-Term Review took place last 24th April 2020. The review, completely online, has involved external reviewers from the industry and from the academia. The common thread of all unit is the development of designs that respond to disasters caused by human interactions and alterations of the natural environment.
Unit 1 adapts on sustainable strategies in terms of social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects to the design public buildings (final year) and libraries (year 2) in a site next to river Yong in Ningbo. Students design buildings in areas defined by their masterplans in the previous semester. The projects must consider Water Sensitive Design strategies to prevent, reduce or comply with the effects of flooding in the site. The external reviewers were Oliver Huster (design director at ECADI - Shanghai), Han Tao (associate design director at ECADI - Shanghai), and Nicola Saladino (designer co-founder of reMIX Studio - Beijing).
Unit 2 attempts to transform the city, making a typographical re-edit against the fragmentary accumulation of urban models which is made at the expense of depriving identity. With aims to examine the past 30-40 years of the city's development, and envision and plan its next 30 years, we retrospectively explore the potential of the old type and project it into a prospect of Lujiazui and its neighboring Dongchang Road Station area in Pudong, Shanghai. The intention is to preserve the gene of the old type and to formulate ideas for new collective possibilities of the near-future city.
The mid-term review was conducted to share and discuss ideas of individually proposed final year students’ work and proposals for a new public library by the second-year architecture students with the guest critics from all over the world. Special thanks to Renzo Zhang (PUJU Design), Tian Sun (Atelier Liu Yuyang Architect), and Jonace Bascon (Aecom Singapore)
The invited external reviewers for Unit 3 were Per Erik Bjornsen (General Manager at Morph design and consulting), connected from Italy, and Luca Frassanito (Shanghai Area Manager at Hydea Beijing, Architectural & Engineering Design Consulting Co.).
Final year students presented the development of their schemes located on the crossroad between Chifeng Road and Siping Road while Year 2 students are working on an urban façade along Chifeng Road and exploring new spatial solutions for a Fab Lab or for a Cultural Hub. Both years are also required to explore the possibility to transform their buildings into a small isolation ward for COVID-19 patients.
Moreover, it is important to highlight how the students are focused on providing programs and schemes tailored on Siping community’s needs and characteristics and building a series of connections between their site and the Tongji University Main Campus.
Unit 3 is part of the Shanghai Joint Design Studio organized and promoted by Prof. Tiziano Cattaneo of the College of Design & Innovation of Tongji University ( https://jointdesignstudio.org/author/jds20192020/).