ARGI-CULTURE: LIVE IN THE FIELD
URBANIZATION OF AGRICULTURE | TIANJIN, CHINA
UIA-HYP CUP 2020 International Student Competition | Summer 2020
In Collaboration with Jiaming Gu
Since the 1970s when China started its urban-centric developments, Chinese cities have been growing at an increasingly fast speed. Globally the average population density is 25 people per km2, and the average Chinese population density is 153 people per km2 of land area, which is around 2.5 times more than the global average. Although the world population growth rate has been decreasing for decades, the rapid increase of land use on urban developments results in food deficiency and lack of quality control. The food supply in China has been heavily dependent on international food supports since its farmlands have been decreasing progressively since the expansion of the urban area. Moreover, densifications of large cities lead to unbalanced conditions between the cities and rural regions. The marginalized city boundary has been overlooked and stayed in abeyance. As an effort to overcome the current circumstance and to secure China’s food production, this project redefines the urbanization of farms and agriculture and seeks unique relationships between the farm field and the city.
Our site Yangliuqing sits on the outskirt of Tianjin city, allowing it to form an intimate relationship with the city. With different transportation means, Yangliuqing is able to maintain its low-density developments and convenience to travel. This project utilizes this unique characteristic to densify this outskirt area without anchoring a heavy urban center. To celebrate its infamous cultural heritages, this urban complex consists of three major components: cultural center, agriculture, residential space, and a self-sustained agricultural and food processing system. All these three elements are dispersed and located sporadically throughout our site, aiming to provide a more dynamic connection and an integral experience through forming smaller assemblages of functions.
The core functionality, cultural component, intends to combine new forms of media with traditional media, by enhancing its social and cultural connections to the open green spaces, the farmland. The cultural center is located in the southern heart of the site with activated roof themes for different platforms of media performances such as personal media outreach, computer animation center, new platforms of social media, and virtual reality installations. The open roof with diverse formal themes allows content creators to be more innovative and incentive with their products. More critically, the diversity of spatial qualities provide the public with easier access to these communicational outlets and reshape their perception of the traditional cultural center and media compositions.
REDEFINE THE URBANIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
The design aims to reconsider the city lifestyle and introduce an ecological social co-living prototype to the occupants.
The residential design transforms the Chinese compacted apartments into a less compressed urban-dwelling complex. The setbacks on each level allow for more daylight and better ventilation. The design includes movable greenhouses for each dwelling unit to create a customizable “farm field”. Those movable greenhouses can migrate to communal spaces for inter-communal exchanges. Moving to the Northern facade of the complex, our design introduces the large and integrated exhibition and gallery spaces. The open floor plates allow a more flexible way to celebrate cultural heritage.
North-South Longitudinal Section
This project intends to use agriculture as a medium to connect the dwelling space and cultural space as a way to activate the city boundary and form a 21st-century city development model. With this prototype, the relationship between dwelling and food is being reconsidered. Through food production and processing at various scales, this project also speculates a new food mechanism that can be combined with urban development. As such, this design reconsiders the city lifestyle and introduces an ecological social co-living prototype.