Fengtai courtyards

Exchange semester project at the central ACADEMY of fine arts in beijing

Assignment: CREATE a project with a self designated program along beijing's line 10 metro line
Teachers: Han Tao, David Porter, He Keren

Beijing is in many ways a city of extremes. Its public spaces are often variations on the super public or the super private. As a pedestrian one might often get the feeling that one is caught between a rock and hard place; the infinity of motor highways and huge plazas on the one hand, and non-public gated communities on the other. This project’s intention has been to take a closer look at the degrees of privacy that exist within a city, and how these can be played upon, like a gradient, to help shape communities and increase the liveability of urban spaces.   

The site of Fengtai, in Beijing’s south-west corner, is intimately linked with worker towns, as it sits between multiple factory districts. It already hosts a full range of worker class housing, from hutongs of the early last century to modern high-rise developments. 

The project visualises a new type of worker town which is focused on smaller, village-sized communities, which are intimately connected through courtyards and shared necessities, in exchange for smaller building volumes. These “villages” are then connected to a grid of public and semi-public pedestrian roads and courtyards, which form the larger community of the city.

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