ADS10: Savage Architecture: Building Common Knowledge
Hui Chen
SQUARE DANCE SCHOOL: An Archetype for Public Space in Contemporary China
The Basilica is the quintessential archetype of gathering. Used in Roman times as a space of trade and business encounters, the Basilica was later re-appropriated for the mass religious gatherings of the Christians and later on as an archetype for secular public buildings. The Basilica was also a crucial part of the Forum, a constellation of buildings and ceremonial open spaces that constituted the heart of the public life of the Roman city.
Shenzhen is the paramount example of the dramatic urbanization process of China in the last decades: historical urban villages with their unique urban life and rituals are now immersed in the vast and overwhelming space of top-down large scale urbanisation. Coming to live in a new-born megalopolis like Shenzhen means facing the displacement from the local familiar bonds to the alienating machine of urbanisation: here public space is just space of circulation for people, goods and capital.
Chinese Square Dancing is a self-organised social activity with various dancing styles that requires no dancing techniques to participate but just the willingness of socializing and making friends. As such Square Dancing quickly became one of the most popular collective rituals in contemporary China, a spontaneous response to the increasing sense of alienation and lack of social relationships.
The project recognises the potential of Chinese Square Dancing to become an engine for the re-appropriation of the public space in the Chinese megalopolis. However, the flexible, spontaneous and unskilled nature of the dance poses a crucial challenge to the design: can architecture empower such fragile collective ritual without crystallising it into a normalised institutional form? And what could be a School that teaches no skills?
Drawing on the study of the Basilica and of the Forum, and looking at a variety of Chinese performance spaces, the Square Dance School is a project for the re-appropriation of everyday life. Through a composition of pavilions, porticoes, multi-stories buildings and open structures,
the archetype organises a variety of indoor-outdoor spaces into a unitary whole. As such the square can host small groups of friends as much as massive gatherings for collective celebrations, facilitating the interaction between different social groups and marking their collective time. The tension between the parts and the whole, between the individual and collective desires and needs acquires a form: the archetype stages the savage need of being together.
MA Architecture
ADS10: Savage Architecture - Building Common Knowledge
Tutors : Gianfranco Bombaci, Matteo Costanzo, Francesca Romana Dell'Aglio & Davide Sacconi
Hui Chen is an architectural designer who was academically trained in Italy and professionally trained in China before obtaining MA Architecture at the Royal College of Art. During the five years of practice, she has been working on a wide range of built and competition-winning projects, including large civic/cultural centers, urban planning, renovation, office headquarter and mixed-used complex. She has also participated in exhibition curation and design, such as for Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism & Architecture 2017.
Hui Chen is generally interested in the contemporary reflection of History and Theories of architecture, especially on the topics of typology and form. Her two major MA projects explored two distinctive approaches of her interest: one is driven by form and then translated into architecture with different scales, programs and contexts; the other investigates the notion of ‘archetype’ in the specific context of fast-developing Chinese megalopolis, with the ambition to provide a critical reading of the contemporary public space.
Hui Chen was based in London in the past two years and intends on continuing her architecture journey in Europe in the near future.
Re-appropriation of Daily Life
Context: Urbanisation and the Square Dancing Ritual
Chinese Square Dancing is a self-organised social activity that requires no dancing techniques to participate but just the willingness of socializing and making friends. As such Square Dancing quickly became one of the most popular collective rituals in contemporary China, a spontaneous response to the increasing sense of alienation and lack of social relationships.
The Archetype of Basilica
The project interprets the Basilica as a set of spaces hierarchically organised to allow multiple rituals to happen separately and simultaneously. The collage studies the spatial syntax of the archetype, focusing on the set of thresholds that separate interior and exterior, liberating the potential of vast interiority.
The Parts and The Whole
This method of investigation allows to uncover the deep structure of the form, the relationship between parts and the whole, and to elaborate tools and elements for the project.
Forms Kit
Spatial Arrangement on site
The elements are arranged by a subtly hierarchical spatial structure sitting on top of a homogenous mat. Two very long parallel porticos define a central plaza while other elements, arranged around the central space, define a rich variety of indoor and outdoor in-between spaces.
