Pirates of the Suzhou!
The Ohio State University, Spring 2010
Prof. Ann Pendleton-Jullian & Prof. Sarah Cowles
Shanghai Travel Studio with Tongji University
In collaboration with Nick Bruckelmeyer, Jonathan Leonard, and Kyle Schneider.
In a rapidly swelling city of almost 20 million people, it’s difficult to believe that any area would need reactivation. A global shift, however, has rendered waterways, and many warehouses and factories unused, leaving no post-industrial metropolis immune to the abandonment. Once thriving arteries, these secondary rivers have become scars in the urban fabric that was born of them. Shanghai is no exception.
Ten days in the streets of China’s most contemporary city drew more questions than answers and left us wondering how to address this global issue at a local scale with sensitivity to the immediate context. The objective of the Shanghai Studio addressed issues of scale, system, pattern, play, and emergence with the goal of reactivating the once bustling waters and banks of the Suzhou River. To approach these topics we aimed at identifying existing systems, and through the addition of familiar elements, re-activating a diminishing Shanghainese lilong vernacular housing strategy on the river itself.
Scale
Overall, our proposal is a system of multiples that emerge from individual pieces. The individual piece is a specifically designed boat that when multiplied, becomes a lively peripatetic market. The design of the boat functions on a series of dichotomies: public and private, retail and residential, service and storage. Each of these programs relates to the others sectionally allowing for aligning relationships to other boats in a collective arrangement. With these associations, the boats are able to connect to other boats on all four sides in plan. As more boats connect, the public market spaces become larger and the river turns into a dynamic network of spaces.
Pattern
The activation of spaces through connection typologies allows Shanghai’s underground economies to emerge. Orientation of the vessels present in a market dictate the type of market present, and reversal of the archetypal orientation become a socially constructed signal of the underground markets presence. This reversal of orientation between vessels creates commerce only shared by the individuals piloting the merchant ships. Through a specific, coordinated alignment, the underground market remains hidden and protected from authority, analogous to the prevalent socioeconomic construct present in Shanghai today.
Play
Having identified the elements of the context, we drafted a reductive rule-set to play scenarios of interaction and possibly exploit unanticipated patterns. This yielded an understanding of the types of interaction over the collective system in terms of cooperation, coordination and conflict.
Cooperation: boats dock allowing a public passageway similar to lilong alleys;
Coordination: a temporary assembly of adjoining market spaces in one place appeal to crowds (e.g. tourists, students after school, professionals at lunch);
Conflict: orientation veils illicit market connections, allows for a quick disconnection and escape to elude police.
Emergence
The proposed design attempts to embrace existing cultural and physical elements within the context. Under this premise, the proposed system becomes a part of the existing urban socioeconomic fabric and both become reliant on each other. In sharp contrast to the barrier the Suzhou River presents now to the city, this proposal affords fluid passage and development about the river.
This project is in essence a global issue, but relies on the individual specificities of the Shanghai culture and dynamics that cannot be replicated elsewhere. Specifically, a project like this cannot be immediately replicated anywhere without being closely bound to ways the affected population lives. Heavily composed of existing systems, the Suzhou project proposes an interesting way of reactivating the world’s abandoned waterways and industrial shores, but only hints at the explicit dynamics required to resolve the global issue.
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The Ohio State University, Spring 2010
Prof. Ann Pendleton-Jullian & Prof. Sarah Cowles
Shanghai Travel Studio with Tongji University
In collaboration with Nick Bruckelmeyer, Jonathan Leonard, and Kyle Schneider.
In a rapidly swelling city of almost 20 million people, it’s difficult to believe that any area would need reactivation. A global shift, however, has rendered waterways, and many warehouses and factories unused, leaving no post-industrial metropolis immune to the abandonment. Once thriving arteries, these secondary rivers have become scars in the urban fabric that was born of them. Shanghai is no exception.
Ten days in the streets of China’s most contemporary city drew more questions than answers and left us wondering how to address this global issue at a local scale with sensitivity to the immediate context. The objective of the Shanghai Studio addressed issues of scale, system, pattern, play, and emergence with the goal of reactivating the once bustling waters and banks of the Suzhou River. To approach these topics we aimed at identifying existing systems, and through the addition of familiar elements, re-activating a diminishing Shanghainese lilong vernacular housing strategy on the river itself.
Scale
Overall, our proposal is a system of multiples that emerge from individual pieces. The individual piece is a specifically designed boat that when multiplied, becomes a lively peripatetic market. The design of the boat functions on a series of dichotomies: public and private, retail and residential, service and storage. Each of these programs relates to the others sectionally allowing for aligning relationships to other boats in a collective arrangement. With these associations, the boats are able to connect to other boats on all four sides in plan. As more boats connect, the public market spaces become larger and the river turns into a dynamic network of spaces.
Pattern
The activation of spaces through connection typologies allows Shanghai’s underground economies to emerge. Orientation of the vessels present in a market dictate the type of market present, and reversal of the archetypal orientation become a socially constructed signal of the underground markets presence. This reversal of orientation between vessels creates commerce only shared by the individuals piloting the merchant ships. Through a specific, coordinated alignment, the underground market remains hidden and protected from authority, analogous to the prevalent socioeconomic construct present in Shanghai today.
Play
Having identified the elements of the context, we drafted a reductive rule-set to play scenarios of interaction and possibly exploit unanticipated patterns. This yielded an understanding of the types of interaction over the collective system in terms of cooperation, coordination and conflict.
Cooperation: boats dock allowing a public passageway similar to lilong alleys;
Coordination: a temporary assembly of adjoining market spaces in one place appeal to crowds (e.g. tourists, students after school, professionals at lunch);
Conflict: orientation veils illicit market connections, allows for a quick disconnection and escape to elude police.
Emergence
The proposed design attempts to embrace existing cultural and physical elements within the context. Under this premise, the proposed system becomes a part of the existing urban socioeconomic fabric and both become reliant on each other. In sharp contrast to the barrier the Suzhou River presents now to the city, this proposal affords fluid passage and development about the river.
This project is in essence a global issue, but relies on the individual specificities of the Shanghai culture and dynamics that cannot be replicated elsewhere. Specifically, a project like this cannot be immediately replicated anywhere without being closely bound to ways the affected population lives. Heavily composed of existing systems, the Suzhou project proposes an interesting way of reactivating the world’s abandoned waterways and industrial shores, but only hints at the explicit dynamics required to resolve the global issue.
TOP OF PAGE
