Abstract: The research Horizontal Metropolis led by Prof. Paola Viganò at EPFL, Switzerland focuses on the form of the contemporary city – the fragmentary spatial condition and dispersed urbanity all over the world. This study on Yangtze River delta is part of its research frame including different territories in Switzerland, Italy, US, and China. The research cooperates with Superstudio and Lab-U at EPFL.

The urbanization in Yangtze River Delta today is looking for a new interpretation and paradigm. The delta today is a territory with city cores but also a vast dispersed urbanization where the agricultural and non-agricultural activities and spaces are mixed and interlinked, in the definition of McGee a desakota. By closely examining the physical elements: the water, the trees, the houses, the road, the industry, the facilities, etc., this work attempts to answer a basic question: what is the desakota in the Yangtze River Delta made of?

The first part of the presentation tries to present a process of different urbanization in Yangtze River Delta, in the context of a long tradition of diffuse urbanization in the world. The second part tries to exam the space built through the urbanization process from an elementary point of view. The third part is an imagination, an exercise not in providing concrete solutions but in imagining specific qualities of life in a society where the urban-rural divide is eliminated by transforming the elements.

About the speaker: Qinyi Zhang is an architect and urbanist in Studio Paola Viganò, a leading designer and project manager responsible for urban and landscape projects, metropolitan visions, and exhibitions.

From 2018 to 2020, he was a Postdoc researcher at the Lab-U and Habitat Research Center in EPFL, Lausanne, teaching and working on research projects including the Consultation Greater Geneva, and “TOD-IS-RUR Transit Oriented Development for Inclusive and Sustainable Rural-Urban Regions”.

He received the diploma of PhD in Urbanism at IUAV Venezia in 2018, and his thesis “Elements in desakota, Yangtze River Delta, China” was partially exhibited in the collateral event “HORIZONTAL METROPOLIS” at the Venice Biennale 2016. He received the master degree from the European Postgraduate Master in Urbanism (EMU) in TU Delft and IUAV Venezia.