How is hutong a metaphor for china

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By Material. Acrylic Print. Aluminium Print. We are currently in Beta version and updating this search on a regular basis. Text description provided by the architects. Spaces, in urban, may be formed overnight, but the soul of the city must not be shaped if it is not deposited, immersed, and chafed for a long period of time. Origin Located on the south side of the Forbidden City in Beijing , the Qianmen District has witnessed the rise and fall of the city for centuries.

Qingyun Hutong No. South courtyard, facing the theater stage of the Pingyao Pigment Hall across the alley, once sheltered Mei Lanfang, a Peking Opera master a hundred years ago.

He used to train his voice in the courtyard brewing his unique artistic style. Once being the Guandi Gao Temple, there were abundance of well-structured halls following strict order during the heyday of religion in the Middle Courtyard, and the Hutong streets nearby were all named after it. The North Courtyard was occupied decades ago by an electron tube factory, so called "modern industry", with steel-framed and red-brick-wall.

However, these old buildings and memories are gradually vanishing. That causes the rapid disappearing of urban texture and cultural memory. And now in the large courtyards, except for a dilapidated house remaining in the South Courtyard, two wing rooms in Guandi Gao Temple, as well as the roof-collapsed run-down factory, the rest have crumbled into dust and disappeared in a pile of rubble.

The restoration project aims to restore the city's cultural context, preserve cultural memory and revitalize city and communities through appropriate intervention.

Tiny Hutongs and Successive courtyards The architect first carried out in-depth archaeological research and analysis of the process of land change. The remaining buildings are protected, the damaged part of the buildings are selected carefully for rebuilding to develop a courtyard group, so that the defective space texture of city can be recognized again.

At the same time, a series of "Tiny Hutongs" are introduced into the courtyard by the specially reserved gaps, which are the inward extension of the outer city streets and drive the continuous flow of the inner and outer spaces of the whole courtyard group. Memory Carrier Architecture is not only an inorganic substance, but also a living history.

During the redevelopment, the historical diversity of real remains has been affirmed and respected, and the conflicts between the damaged and intact, the red brick and gray brick, the factory building and courtyard are all-inclusive and even strengthened. He smiles. OK, when does the pub open? He smiles again. We walk on, hungry and thirsty, as CCTV cameras, mounted on both sides of every street, follow us - a sudden reminder of England. I walk into what is meant to be, I think, a Belgravia-style townhouse.

Inside, all is bleak concrete and exposed plumbing, with a narrow stair leading up to cramped, low-ceilinged flats. Classical proportions are clearly not the order of the day. Through low-set windows, I peer out at a townscape dotted with cartoon-like versions of red s telephone kiosks and what looks to be a Scottish baronial-style provincial bank.

It turns out to be more flats. Quite where the Thames slips into this town planning equation escapes me, although there is a canal, if not a river, by the empty pub, complete with frustrating dead-end walkways - a metaphor of sorts, perhaps, for this utterly un-English new town.

Shanghai was an intensely cosmopolitan city before the communist era. Today, in the age of officially controlled ultra-capitalism, it is no stranger to fey and fanciful English-style architecture. A second walk along Foochow Road, just behind the Bund the city's famous Edwardian baroque and art deco riverfront promenade lies the Macgregor House. Dating from , this mock tudor or "joke oak" cottage was once HQ to Caldbeck Macgregor, purveyors of fine wines and spirits.

It survives as a teasing riposte to the 21st-century architectural bombast of the high-rise Pudong district, across the Huangpu river. In Shanghai's Hongqiao district, you can find Victor Sassoon's house Eve, a grand mock tudor pile dating from ; and I have also been to Holly Heath, an endangered "joke oak" suburb that might as well be in Surrey. Thames Town, though, is a joke of a different nature.

Commissioned as part of a new town programme initiated by Huang Ju, former secretary of the Shanghai communist party, it was designed by the international engineering practice WS Atkins, along with eight other themed foreign towns on the fringe of Shanghai. There was even a Chinese Town. Somewhere not far over the horizon, though, a new school of Chinese architecture is emerging - one that is seeking to connect genuine traditions with the needs and desires of the future.

Details: From the high-rise to the hutong. Just a few years ago, Chinese architects would have worked for the state. Now a whole new generation are striking out for themselves. What are they building? Jonathan Glancey reports Audio slideshow: China's most exciting buildings.