Rural Urban Framework


Book Description

While most attention is given to the booming mega-cities in China and the associated problems of over-population, the rural areas in China are being largely ignored. Yet, a sustainable development of the rural areas is precisely that, which will be decisive for China’s future. Through its rapid development into an industrial country, China now needs to tackle far-reaching problems such as increasing population, growing income gap between the poor and the rich, rural exodus, decreased agricultural production, and environmental pollution. Rural Urban Framework is a work group at the University of Hong Kong that not only researches the far-reaching changes of the last thirty years in China’s rural areas, but has also realized concrete projects aimed at improving supply and infrastructure on site. In this publication, the authors present for the first time the results of their research as well as their built projects in the Chinese backlands, and question whether China’s only future model lies in cities.




The Things Around Us


Book Description

"The architectural offices 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework operate at the seams of urbanization, with projects situated in transitional settlements in Ulaanbaatar, in the new vernacular of rural China, in the transforming centres of Western European cities and in Albania's shifting public spaces. Comparing their research and design processes, The Things Around Us questions the extents and certainties of architecture against backdrops of unstable planetary urbanization, insecure economies and ecologies, and indeterminate notions of citizenship."--Page 4 de la couverture







Designing the Rural


Book Description

The rural is not what it used to be. No longer simply a site for agricultural production for the city, the relationship between the rural and urban has become much more complex. Established categories such as rural /urban and village/city no longer hold true. Rural and urban conditions have become increasingly blurred, so how can we identify and distinguish their specific characteristics? Where is the rural, and what role does it play in an urbanised world? In developing countries the countryside is a volatile and contradictory landscape: legally designated rural areas look like dense slums; factories intersect fields and farmers no longer farm. In contrast, in developed regions, the rural has become a highly controlled landscape of production and consumption: industrialised agriculture coexists with leisure landscapes for tourism, retirement and recreation. This issue of AD investigates how architects and researchers are critically engaging with the rural as an experimental field of exploration. Contributors: Neil Brenner, Christiane Lange, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Sandra Parvu, Cole Roskam, Grahame Shane, Deane Simpson, and Milica Topalovic and Bas Princen Architects: Anders Abraham, Joshua Bolchover and John Lin (Rural Urban Framework), Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene (Piovenefabi), Rainer Hehl, Stephan Petermann (OMA), Huang Sheng Yuan (FieldOffice), and Sandeep Virmani (Hunnarshala)




Rural-Urban Dynamics


Book Description

This book adopts a fresh approach to the issue of rural-urban dynamics through a study of the changing nature of livelihoods, mobility and markets in ten study sites across four countries of Africa and Asia.




Critical Care


Book Description

How architecture and urbanism can help to care for and repair a broken planet: essays and illustrated case studies. Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. Rooted in a radical care perspective that always starts from the given, in the midst of things, this edited collection of essays and illustrated case studies documents ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors. Focusing on the three crisis areas of economy, ecology, and labor, the book describes projects including village reconstruction in China; irrigation in Spain; community land trust in Puerto Rico; revitalization of modernist public housing in France; new alliances in informal settlements in Nairobi; and the redevelopment of traditional building methods in flood areas in Pakistan. Essays consider such topics as ethical architecture, land policy, creative ecologies, diverse economies, caring communities, and the exploitation of labor. Taken together, these case studies and essays provide evidence that architecture and urbanism have the capacity to make the planet livable, again. Essays by Mauro Baracco, Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Jane Da Mosto, Angelika Fitz, Hélène Frichot, Katherine Gibson, Mauro Gil-Fournier Esquerra, Valeria Graziano, Gabu Heindl, Elke Krasny, Lisa Law, Ligia Nobre, Meike Schalk, Linda Tegg, Ana Carolina Tonetti, Kim Trogal, Joan C. Tronto, Theresa Williamson, Louise Wright Case studies aaa atelier d'architecture autogérée, Ayuntamiento BCN, Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury/Urbana, Cíclica [Space.Community.Ecology] + CAVAA arquitectes, Care+Repair Tandems Vienna (including Gabu Heindl, Zissis Kotionis + Phoebe Giannisi, rotor, Meike Schalk + Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Cristian Stefanescu, Rosario Talevi and many others), Colectivo 720, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, EAHR Emergency Architecture & Human Rights, Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña CLT, Anna Heringer, Anupama Kundoo, KDI Kounkuey Design Initiative, Lacaton & Vassal, Yasmeen Lari, muf architecture/art, Paulo Mendes da Rocha + MMBB, RUF Rural Urban Framework, Studio Vlay Streeruwitz, De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Xu Tiantian/DnA_Design and Architecture, ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin Copublished with Architekturzentrum Wien




Wealth Creation


Book Description

A new approach to rural development is emerging. Instead of being about attracting companies that might create jobs over which communities have no control, the emerging paradigm is about connecting the unique underutilized assets of place with market opportunity to grow assets that are owned and controlled by and for the benefit of low-wealth people and places. But asset development is about more than bricks and mortar or narrowly defined financial assets. There are many kinds of assets that communities require to thrive – such as social capital, natural capital, political capital, and intellectual capital. The emerging new approach to rural development is, then about broadening the definition of "wealth," engaging underutilized assets, and a key third element: harnessing the power of the market – rather than relying solely on philanthropy and government. Wealth Creation provides a conceptual guide with practical examples for policymakers, practitioners of economic and community development, community organizers, environmentalists, funders, investors, and corporations seeking a values-based framework for identifying self-interests across sectors that can lead to opportunities to transform existing systems for the collective good.




Designing the Rural


Book Description

The rural is not what it used to be. No longer simply a site for agricultural production for the city, the relationship between the rural and urban has become much more complex. Established categories such as rural /urban and village/city no longer hold true. Rural and urban conditions have become increasingly blurred, so how can we identify and distinguish their specific characteristics? Where is the rural, and what role does it play in an urbanised world? In developing countries the countryside is a volatile and contradictory landscape: legally designated rural areas look like dense slums; factories intersect fields and farmers no longer farm. In contrast, in developed regions, the rural has become a highly controlled landscape of production and consumption: industrialised agriculture coexists with leisure landscapes for tourism, retirement and recreation. This issue of AD investigates how architects and researchers are critically engaging with the rural as an experimental field of exploration. Contributors: Neil Brenner, Christiane Lange, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Sandra Parvu, Cole Roskam, Grahame Shane, Deane Simpson, and Milica Topalovic and Bas Princen Architects: Anders Abraham, Joshua Bolchover and John Lin (Rural Urban Framework), Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene (Piovenefabi), Rainer Hehl, Stephan Petermann (OMA), Huang Sheng Yuan (FieldOffice), and Sandeep Virmani (Hunnarshala)




Design for Good


Book Description

The book reveals a new understanding of the ways that design shapes our lives and gives professionals and interested citizens the tools to seek out and demand designs that dignify.




What We Talk about When We Talk about Architecture


Book Description

What We Talk About When We Talk About Architecture documents a series of conversations with some of contemporary architecture's most accomplished thinkers and practitioners. The conversations took place in 2018 and 2019 at the Melbourne School of Design (MSD), The University of Melbourne, with the hope of complementing lectures by visitors to the school. Where lectures gave insight into projects, these conversations dive deeper into the ideas and processes behind the buildings - the players, places, forces, cultural imperatives and ideologies that buttress every work of architecture, but that are often obscured by the glamour of the finished output. A set of essays commissioned from writers both inside and outside the discipline of architecture offer fresh insights into the themes uncovered, rounding out this thought-provoking book.