Re-drawing the Pearl River Delta
THE URBAN PALIMPSEST
LOCATION
Shenzhen
YEAR
2022 - 2023
PROGRAM
Collage & Exhibition & Forum
AWARD
Young Talent Award
COLLABORATOR
Xin Li
Exhibited in Urban Cosmologies: 9th Shenzhen-Hong Kong City Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture
Over
the last four decades, the Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region (PRD) has been
growing relatively freely at the backdrop of the market economy, and the rapid
urbanization has entitled people to enjoy a better life. Yet the urban space in
the PRD has been characterised by densification and homogenization due to the
ever-growing population. The sociality of the urban space has been reduced.
In the PRD, the ground surface itself is no longer the product of natural geological processes, but is produced by humans in ever-powerful ways. As explained by Henri Lefebvre, "Space is a social product". It is produced with intentions and purposes; urban space shapes the infrastructure of social life, and formulates spatial disciplines of its urban users.
The design is an experiment on urban space and social order, consisting of five themes: signs, trading, order, settlements, and boundaries, corresponding to the CBD, factories, modern housing, urban villages, and infrastructure in the PRD respectively. The work re-writes the urban order of the PRD through the hands of "Leviathan" , presenting an "over-determination" of the urban forms and functions. It explores the consequences of the mechanized rewriting of the built environment as the "material" in shaping and defining the social order. Thus, how to “dialogue” with the cities’ past, and for an urban culture to take root, to foster, to absorb chance and change - These are the pressing questions which urban design must address in the Urban Age.
In the PRD, the ground surface itself is no longer the product of natural geological processes, but is produced by humans in ever-powerful ways. As explained by Henri Lefebvre, "Space is a social product". It is produced with intentions and purposes; urban space shapes the infrastructure of social life, and formulates spatial disciplines of its urban users.
The design is an experiment on urban space and social order, consisting of five themes: signs, trading, order, settlements, and boundaries, corresponding to the CBD, factories, modern housing, urban villages, and infrastructure in the PRD respectively. The work re-writes the urban order of the PRD through the hands of "Leviathan" , presenting an "over-determination" of the urban forms and functions. It explores the consequences of the mechanized rewriting of the built environment as the "material" in shaping and defining the social order. Thus, how to “dialogue” with the cities’ past, and for an urban culture to take root, to foster, to absorb chance and change - These are the pressing questions which urban design must address in the Urban Age.
I
[TRADING CITIES - MANUFACTURE]
“The World Factory”
“My wife and I had a fight. The routines of daily work left me a headache; the debts, the suspended soot made me breathless. I’ve decided to go to another city to get a new job. I was imagining that every time I opened my window, I’d see new streets and new views. But in recent years, I've been wandering around the city, and I didn't see any new streets. I just watched the mandrel of countless gears clenching at predetermined speeds, repeating the same track thousands of times by millions of hands in shifts. People played the same scenes over and over again, only the actors were changed constantly; they repeated the same complaint, simply changed the accent; they opened different mouths, and yawned the same way.”
“ There are two types of people: those who tighten up the screws and nuts, and those who develop new technologies.”
“It’s not even downtown. Many convenience stores here open 24/7.”
“Dude,
what do you do? Why are you working so late?”
“Internet.”
“IT?”
“Yeah.”
“You work late a lot?”
“I do IT operations, to be specific.”
“Are you launching a new product?”
“Not really, I need to put in a lot of late nights.”
“Till 1 a.m.? Seriously?”
“Mostly till 9 or 10 p.m.. I was a little bit late today, stuck at work.”
“Internet.”
“IT?”
“Yeah.”
“You work late a lot?”
“I do IT operations, to be specific.”
“Are you launching a new product?”
“Not really, I need to put in a lot of late nights.”
“Till 1 a.m.? Seriously?”
“Mostly till 9 or 10 p.m.. I was a little bit late today, stuck at work.”
“It’s now 3 a.m.. Taxis are still here. The three most common jobs in the early hours of the morning in the Science Park: food delivery, chauffeuring, and taxis.”
II
[CITIES & ORDERS - GATED COMMUNITIES]
“The Fall of Public Man”
“In modern-day living, privacy is becoming more important. […] As we progress, it’s logical that we ask for greater sense of individual privacy and freedom.” (Female, 40 years old)
“In the old neighbourhoods, the elderly women would just sit along the lanes and alleyways to observe and gossip about everything that goes on in the neighbourhood. […] If they want, they can know about your whole life. This is one thing that I hated most.” (Male, 29 years old)
“This community should be gated and dogs should be forbidden to enter. […] If so, it would be more organised and safer.” (Female, 55 years old)
“In the past, the children played in the yard, or ran out into the hutong, (if one kid) shouted, all the children from other families came out and ran out to play together. […] Here (when I) open the door, it is the corridor, no one was there. Who wants to go out and play?” (Male, 52 years old)
“After moving upstairs, he (my husband) doesn’t even leave the house. When he was in the courtyard house, it was convenient for him to walk around. […] Some elderly people are even more reluctant to go outside. You can't walk out directly except living on the ground floor. […] (We) Just watch television or (doing) something at home.” (Female, 36 years old)
“Hygiene is very important. […] There used to be a mess on the windows on my west wall (in the courtyard house), and the soy sauce bottles and everything were all there in a mess. (I’m) happy now with the clean environment in the high-rise.” (Female, 45 years old)
III
[CITIES & SIGN - CBD]
“Verticality and Modernity”
“We must build higher and higher to stand out in the crowded environment. The iconic skyscrapers of our modern metropolis are what define the city's existence on the world stage. ”
“From the office window, our gaze may wander down, but our aspirations are upward. The height of the building is a concrete metaphor of the company turnover. Mirroring the bitter struggle to the top, the skyscrapers themselves often compete with each other in their bid for the sky.”
“All our tall buildings are content to compete with each other vertically so that we don't fall behind in the global competition between cities.”
“From the grey farmland to the rise of the tall buildings, every inch of growth is a symbol of the vigorous development of the city.”
“The tall building probes our collective psyche as it probes the sky. They are powerful icons of the powerful cities on earth.”
“They romanticise power and the intensity of the twentieth-century metropolis. They are literal embodiments of the promise of modernity, technology and ‘progress’.”
IV
[CITIES & SETTLEMENTS - URBAN VILLAGES]
“Squeezed Informality”
“I spent most of my childhood living in a two-storey building. A small pit, a low grey wall, an osmanthus tree, a ladder, a cluster of roses, a meadow, a white cloud, and a long, irregular blue sky.”
“A year later, I saw some people slowly passing by on their rusty bikes.”
“Two more years passed, and there were a few more faces, sitting side by side.”
“The osmanthus trees and rosebushes were gone. Hundreds of scaffolders were erected in the distance on the ground, reaching up the clouds.”
“They were a long way from us. Those inhabitants seldom visited us. The huge boxes set up by the scaffolders seemed to contain all they needed. The boxes were temporary, and when the time was up, they were removed, transported, and transplanted to another place.”
“Their area gradually squeezed towards us, and the edges between us thinned out a bit to make way for the newer urban areas. I rarely went to their place, where there were twelve people in each room, and I always had to squeezed between their knees and elbows - fortunately, they are all polite people.”
“There is meat at 12 RMB, clothes at 25 RMB, shoes at 30 RMB, pancakes at 6 RMB, and fried noodles at 10 RMB. I ordered a cold rice noodle for 8 RMB.”
"Recycling, TVs, laptops!"
V
[CITIES & BOUNDARIES - INFRASTRUCTURE]
“Time? Space?”
8.00 a.m. Shenzhen
“Every day I get up, I open a new toothpaste, replace the old toothbrush, put on the latest glasses, and start enjoying my fresh breakfast. Here, the cleaning staff are as tolerant as angels, cleaning up the toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes I left downstairs yesterday, reverently and silently. “
9.16 a.m. Shenzhen
“While driving on the overpass, I looked through the low guardrail and the long, slender light poles, and saw cars speeding under the bridge, and workers in orange hats. After dinner, I'm going to visit my parents in Guangzhou. It only takes 36 minutes from here to Guangzhou.”
12.43 p.m. Guangzhou
“I stepped into the high-speed train and sat down near the window. I looked through the window as the golden and green farmland quickly receded. I was not happy because I felt that the city had lost its smell, and that I was living in a constant bubble of smog. It doesn’t matter anymore what I drink or eat. In fact, I no longer need to use my senses. “
22.43 p.m. Shenzhen
“When I returned to Guangzhou, I walked across the overpass without touching the ground surface. By the neat light, I saw the excavated surface and the pipes that had just been buried on my left, and the bridge under construction on my right. In the 24-hour KFC, there was a man in a white coat, and a young man with his grey motorcycle at the door, preparing to deliver food.”
“I believe those who work in Shanghai and sleep in Suzhou, those who had breakfast in Tianjin and went to The China World Trade Centre in Beijing for a meeting, those who fly across cities in three hours, will have none of the trepidation and excitement of traveling to another city in those days. The city's boundaries continue to expand, and the rollers are ready to take their cleaners further afield.”