Studio 03

DOUBLE HAPPINESS

Toby Reed

Brief

The students will be designing a mixed-use thermal spa resort hotel and shopping development including apartment buildings and entertainment. Students will design the overall urban scheme and then work up the thermal hot spring/spa resort hotel buildings in detail. The project requires a design that is propositional about the morphology of the modern city, recent urbanism in China and concepts surrounding architectural form and space.

Concept

The concept behind this studio is two-fold: the shaping of the contemporary city and the design of a hot springs hotel resort. Therefore students will focus on the individual architecture and how it connects to the larger urban fabric. Issues of the conflicting requirements of density and individuality in the contemporary city, which is played out in a most extreme manner in China, will form a key investigation.

DENSITY + INDIVIDUALITY = DOUBLE HAPPINESS

Double Happiness refers to the studios aim to include both density and individuality in the one project.

Spa resorts have an ancient history in China. Students will study this history, as well as the history of form and space making in order to discover new design methodologies for generating architecture. The urban aspect of the brief is to design a section of the city which is both a building (or buildings) and public space with plazas and laneways. This will require analysis of the modern Chinese city as well as the traditional village.

Site

Gongchangling, Lyoning, China.

The site is a large area of land facing a river in the mountain resort town of Gongchangling, outside Shenyang.

Issues/Learning Outcomes

Students will deal with the following issues and tasks in relation to a contemporary Chinese building:

• The design of a modern spa hotel resort
• The planning of city blocks, public spaces, shops, apartment buildings and offices.
• The morphology of the contemporary city.
• The organisation and design of social activity.
• The aesthetics and critique of the contemporary city and social activity.
• The role of the image in the public building in the 21^st century city.
• The design of a public building and public spaces.
• Students will study the evolution of art and architecture techniques and its relation to architecture.

Readings & References

• PRD (Pearl River Delta) Mutations - Koolhaas
• The Society of the Spectacle - Debord
• Made In Tokyo - Kaijima, Kuroda, Tsukamoto
• Made In Shanghai - Li, Li, Jiang, Tsukamoto
• Hal Foster  - The Art Architecture Complex
• Verb List – Richard Serra
• Vertical Village - MVRDV

Schedule Tuesdays 15:15-21:15 in Room 140

Contact Handbook Key Dates