Por Marcelo Gardinetti
El estudio de arquitectos MAD desarrolló un plan maestro para el área centro de de Huaxi en la ciudad de Guiyang, capital de la Provincia de Guizhou, al sur de china occidental. El desarrollo fue elaborado en colaboración con los estudios Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning y Design Institute Studio 6 y fueron invitados 11 estudios internacionales para el diseño de los edificios. Huaxi se destaca por la diversidad de culturas entre sus habitantes y la belleza de su paisaje natural. Las autoridades prevén para el sitio en un futuro cercano un nuevo centro urbano que contenga actividades financieras, culturales y turísticas.
Los estudios invitados diseñaron un edificio para el plan maestro de acurdo a su propia visión del sitio. Participan en el desarrollo los estudios: Atelier Manferdini (USA), BIG (Dinamarca), Dieguez / Fridman (Argentina), Emergent (USA), Hou Liang Architecture (China), JDS (Dinamarca-Bélgica), MAD (China), Mass Studies (Corea), Rojkind Arquitectos (México), Serie (Reino Unido-India) y Sou Fujimoto Architects (Japon). Esta experiencia de trabajo en colaboración esta planteada como una alternativa en la que los estudios son libres para diseñar su propia experiencia urbana de forma independiente, armonizados por la naturaleza.
“La ciudad ya no está determinado por la lógica de los restos de la revolución industrial (velocidad, la utilidad, la eficiencia), sino que sigue las reglas de la naturaleza. Este experimento urbano no está pensado como una realidad urbana idealizada, sino como un intento de impulsar estas tendencias en sus formas más puras, con todos los beneficios y problemas que esto conlleva”. MAD
INFORMACION DE LOS ARQUITECTOS
DESIGN HIGH-DENSITY URBAN NATURE IN CHINA
In 2008, MAD organized and invited 11 young international architects to carry out an urban experiment: to design the Huaxi city centre of Guiyang, in South Western China. The architects invited by MAD included: Atelier Manferdini (USA), BIG (DENMARK), Dieguez Fridman (ARGENTINA), EMERGENT/Tom Wiscombe (USA), HouLiang Architecture (CHINA), JDS (DENMARK/BELGIUM), MAD (CHINA), Mass Studies (KOREA), Rojkind Arquitectos (MEXICO), Serie (UK/INDIA), Sou Fujimoto Architects (JAPAN). The masterplan was developed by Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning and Design Institute, Studio 6, together with MAD.
In the past 15 years, around 10 billion sqm of built space has been created in the urban areas of China. In 20 years time, another 200 to 400 new cities will be built. Until now, the results of this overwhelming urbanization have been defined by high-density, high-speed and low-quality duplication: the urban space is meaningless, crowded and soulless. Below: Atelier Manferdini
Are we going to continue copying the skyline of Western cities created over a hundred years of industrial civilisation? Will Manhattan and Chicago continue to be our model city, even after 15 years of urban construction in China? Is there an alternative future for our cities that lies in the current social condition, where new technologies leave the machine age behind, and where the city increasingly invades the natural space? Based on an Eastern understanding of nature, this joint urban experiment aims to explore whether we can use new technologies and global ideas to reconnect the natural and man-made world.
The site of Huaxi is famous for its dramatic and beautiful landscape, as well as a diverse mix of minority cultural inhabitants during its history. Its future is defined by the local government’s urban planning as a new urban centre for finance, cultural activities and tourism. MAD brought the young architects together here in the summer of 2008, for a 3-day workshop to create an experimental urban vision for Huaxi. Below: BIG
Each architect provided a unique design for a single part of the masterplan, based on their own understanding and interpretation of the local natural and cultural elements. The result is a series of organic individual buildings, growing from the natural environment, and working together to produce a compound of diverse urban activities. In this high density urban environment, the limits of urbanization are controlled and set by nature; the buildings take on the dynamic topography of the site, touching the landscape in a more interactive way.
Generic verticality is replaced by a complex taxonomy of urban activities, defined by a multiplicity of connections, detours and short cuts. The natural and the artificial are fused together, revealing an image of a future architecture. The ecological method here is not just focused on saving energy; rather, the goal is to create a new, balanced urban atmosphere which can evoke the feeling of exploring the natural environment. The city is no longer determined by the leftover logic of the industrial revolution (speed, profit, efficiency) but instead follows the ‘fragile rules’ of nature.
This collaborative experiment thus provides an alternative, responsive model for the development of the urban centre: a man-made symbiosis, in harmony with nature, in which people are free to develop their own independent urban experience.
China has become the global laboratory for urbanization, where the logical endpoint of current architectural trends can be seen, and the effects of leaving private developers to create cities can be most keenly felt. This urban experiment is not intended as an idealized urban reality, but as an attempt to push these trends to their purest forms, with all of the benefits and problems that this brings. MAD is aware of, and actively encouraging, the failings and successes of this project.
Imagenes: MAD
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Publicado en TECNNE ©Marcelo Gardinetti
Portal de Arquitectura, Urbanismo, Arte y Diseño
Julio de 2012.