Troposphere
Countryside Villages Reimagined Yang Liu Qing, Tianjin, China
Design Competition Fall 2020
Chinese countryside villages have long struggled in finding their position among all the mega-cities in the modern era. The constant loss of its occupants and inability to bring people to the countryside has caused the decline of places like YangLiuQing as the center of cultural significance. The juxtaposition between young people moving away in looking for opportunities and a modern lifestyle in the city while city dwellers seek more sustainable and natural living conditions portraits the real dilemma of YangLiuQing.
With the recognition of this problem, we intend to explore the middle ground where the beauty of the countryside works in harmony with the convenience of city life. Bringing back the family-center social formation of traditional Chinese architecture typology, the design language uses concentric circles to form circulation around the city which, from start to end, links each residential area to enhance the notion of the family while encouraging interaction with neighbors. This applies to both the housing typology as well as the loops as the major form of pedestrian circulation.
At the center of the site sits both the culture center and train station. Both of them are symbols of communication and evolvement that compliments each other. Transportation center brings people away and from all over the city, country, and world to our site from where communication and fusion of different cultures will happen.
The office is the missing piece that completes the puzzle of the city. Linking both the city center and residential zones, the spread-out office area allows maximum efficiency to happen where no daily commute is necessary as they are located just below the home of each resident.
Team members: Xiaotong Ni/ Yuan Pu/ Jiansong Yuan
