ABSTRACT

Doreen Heng Liu: Re-Production of Space. NODE’s current works on renovation

Today, with the world experiencing diverse and profound changes as well as an accelerated process of urbanization, crises such as available land use-up, energy shortage, climate change, population explosion and sustainable development have become common concerns. Though China may have grasped the last opportunity of accelerated urbanization, it is now confronting a development bottleneck and the dilemma of whether to continue such acceleration or let it slow down. Should we repeat the paradigm of western development, or take a different path, creating an unprecedented and innovative urban paradigm? In this context, as urban architects working in South China, NODE argues for critical participation in the spirit of experiment.

NODE’s philosophy of making departs from key architectural issues—site and programme etc.—and ventures into the complexities of today’s urbanism and planning, tradition and culture in Chinese cities. Here, we consider a series of recent renovation projects as representing the different alternatives of urbanism in remaking China. With such alternatives, our ultimate goal, through the lens of design, is to explore the infinite possibilities and diversities for the cities we live in now and the future, especially in China.