WOODSTOCK 2036

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WOODSTOCK 2036

Urban Village Rehabilitation Research

Designed in May，2018

PREFACE

Willi Münzenberg walked across the tropic of cancer, his pain and ecstasy is on fire.
While the human body keeps growing, and yet one's mind and soul keep dying.
By the smell of grapes, It's going to rain......

Willi Münzenberg let it rain without reason.

All the indulgent desire had been unbuttoned.

Our wisdom can only control all the animals but not humans.

They all become Dolphins.

Willi Münzenberg had come and gone with the red afterglow.

In the long hot summer day, he shouts his name:

We won! We won!

The glory belongs to us and no one!

(Quote from 3 tracks of the album SUMMER/FEVER of Sodagreen, 2009)

The selected plot is an urban village, FengGuang Village, located in the downtown of Wuhan, which on the east side of the university campus that next to the East Lake Scenic Area. In the early days, when the university campus was located on the suburb of the city, a row of houses was built around the lake area. This group of buildings has gradually developed into residential dwellings along the Luojia Mountain inside the campus. These buildings are not adequate organised in the plan or height added which are, instead of, in a state of free growth. Eventually, they presented a staggered typology, especially in the direction of the scenic area. Due to its unique variety of elevation styles and stacked forms, this urban village is known as the Rio favela in Wuhan. However, there are many informal settlements and unfavourable facilities that affect daily life within this community.

The significance of this community design is not to completely rebuild an extraordinarily organised and modern apartment, but also not to completely restore a community that is identical in form to its original way. The result is a compromise between the two methods, an approach that reorganises the area and traces the original organisational style in form. The tracing is not a restoration of architectural style or skin treatment but a more profound restoration of the essence of architecture.

The four primary functions of the city are dwelling, recreation (use of leisure time), transportation and work (Corbusier, L. and Eardley, A., 1973) [1]. The classification functions make cities in a high-intensive developed statement have homogenised urban problems, all of which cause cities to lose their characteristics. Thus, people's lives in the city are divided into two parts: work and recreation. Work becomes working all the time because of the Internet. Recreation is controlled by consumerism (Postman, N., 2006) [2] and loses its original purpose. All of these are the manifestation of alienation (Mészáros, I., 2006) [3]. As a result, the use of this community reconstruction is to explore the possibility of narrowing the negative spatial influences as well as satisfy the needs of infrastructure.

The spatial space of this community is developed organically including the facilities, construction, layout and etc. When people enter the community, there are many experiences isolated from other parts of the city. For instance, there are many cul-de-sacs in the unorganised roads, which leads to the situation that needs to be turned back. In the period when navigation systems and map usage

are not widespread, the original relationship between city and people's participation and experience is like this. As a similar type of mental map (Kevin, L., 1960) [4]. Although not organised in the community, it still forms identical sorts stores in the same area.

The data were collected at various locations in the urban village at different times. The histogram is formed according to the position and amount of the data. The lower the population activity is, the higher the data column is, and vice versa. The ground floor contour of the building is based on the cross-section of the column generated by the data. Depending on the data volume, several high-rise

residences and an office building are laid out among group buildings. Finally, several roads and open space emerged.

Since corridors and lobbies are connecting different buildings on different floors, each building has a different number of core tubes to satisfy the use of the entire area, so that the whole area is spatially divided into several parts. In addition to the ground floor needs to supply commercial needs, other areas can be distributed according to different applicable populations, interspersed with the presentation of symbiosis.

The ground floor uses a system of customised modules. These spaces of different sizes can be used for business, exhibitions, communication and presentations. Starting from the first floor, there are several rooms with different layouts to satisfy the needs of privacy, sunlight and etc. Under the staggering of different places, one or more public areas is appeared in each layer with varying degrees of openness and privacy to satisfy the shared space.

In the previous stage of construction, only the vertical core tube and floor slabs and peripheral arcades were built leaving each large space for each layer for layout. The data which is collected by the crowd activity on the vast expanse of each floor is arranged to generating each layer plan in the same way as the site plan. Because of the inner and outer arcades, this is, together with the lobby formed by the more active crowds, a transition to the private space.

ALIENATION: The Lifeless Residence and The Meaning of Leisure

The general industrialised housing economy has led to a deteriorating residential design which has forced all commercial housing to be classified as several rooms. Besides, the pricing depends on the area scale and the number of the rooms while ignoring the design of the rest aspects. From the solidification of the private function, even the life of the entire city is solidified together leading to a sort of contemporary alienation.

The separation of elements of daily life (work, family, and “private” life, leisure activities) means alienation, and at the same time, the separation of elements of daily life means a kind of differentiation – a fruitful contradiction. Our civilisation has created technologies that have "out of technology" meaning and characteristics, and they produce "leisure machines" (radio, television, etc.).

The labourer is also eager to get rid of his work and get a substitution. He/ she thinks that leisure is entertainment or amusement, so he looks for this substitute in his leisure time. In this way, relaxation is expressed as non-everyday life in everyday life. Therefore, we work and earn our leisure time with work. Leisure has only one meaning: leaving the job. Such a vicious circle.[5]

CELEBRATION: The Symbiosis and The Meaning of Festival

The creation of a community is not the end of the building layout and the surrounding environment, but the role of human behaviour within is crucial. When a group of people with the same way of lifestyle joins into the community, they will introduce new residents or influence the surrounding residents in the way to change their living habits or be changed forming a dynamic interaction, which can be called a real community - The Symbiosis. But hierarchy issue is a severe obstacle.

Lefebvre believes that festivals and revolutions are vital to daily life. Celebrations can enhance national identity, belonging and cohesion, satisfy people's spiritual needs and promote interpersonal harmony (through blessings, gifts, etc.), coordinate the relationship between people and the nature (following the rhythm of nature). The change in everyday life is much slower than that of the national structure. In celebration and parades, in the urban experience with the carnival atmosphere, in the game of body, language, time and space, people’s real needs and desires have been liberated, and overall transformation of society has been achieved. He even regarded the student movement of the May 1968 events in France as a way to subvert everyday life.[6]

FAITH: Woodstock and the Brigade International

Woodstock has the eternal theme: peace, anti-war, fraternity and equality. The art festival against business is the best way to criticise everyday life and consumerism. The International Brigades were paramilitary units set up by the Communist International during the Spanish Civil War. The brigades members also include a group of poets, artists, doctors and journalists such as Camus, Neruda, Hemingway, Orwell, Picasso and so on.