architecture

House for Security Guards, Janitors and Babysitters

Urban village: The rapid development of Shenzhen and other areas has led to massive inuxes of workers from other regions, bringing about the formation of urban villages low-cost housing. Here, inside the city, lie densely-clustered areas with plot ratios of more than 3, formed by homes extended by former peasants. These are home to millions of laborers and employees in the service industry; the high mobility of residents and lack of urban administration in many of these urban villages have led to severe social problems and security concerns.

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In three acts: Urbanus and the Roundhouse Housing Project; Interactions between spatial boundaries and time Dramatis Personae P: Hakka priest, geomancer, day laborer M: Hakka villager, day laborer U: Urbanus architect, partner of Meng Yan, Liu Xiaodu, and Wang Hui. ACT I M: (reciting scripture) If Bodhisattva have the semblance of me, of man, of all life, of the long-lived, then it be not Bodhisattva. So what is the Bodhisattva like then? P: We Hakka blend Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism together Bodhisattvas and Transcendents sitting down together to eat; ancestors and devils offering up sacrifices together. But the Diamond Sutra is definitely required reading. U: When I was little I lived near Ox Street in Beijing that was a real neighborhood. It was most bustling near Tianqiao thats where the people were poorest. They didnt have anywhere to play inside their houses, so they took the fun outside. When I was working in New York, my friends are all in Manhattan, and they dont invite people over either... P: The memorial temple is the clans ancestral temple and a microcosm of the clans fortunes over the years. The upper and lower halls are the main part of the construction: the upper hall enshrines the spirit tablets of the ancestors, the altar, and desks and chairs in cubicles to the left and right of the hall, which are maintained by the descendants. At New Year, we invite opera troupes to perform in the temple, and at the Lantern Festival we light lanterns for the ancestors. U: Wed often arrange to meet up at MoMA after work especially on Fridays, when it was free to get in and wed look at the exhibits and then get dinner somewhere nearby. The richness of city life is related to the wealth of the city: if you dont have enough, then you have to share with others. Its like being dislocated in time: I was reading a book about city life in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties recently, and they had very rich lives too sitting down over a pot of tea in a teahouse and chatting away the mornings. M: The Tomb-Sweeping Festival is a big event for Hakka clans. The day before, we prepare steamed rice buns, chicken, pork, bamboo shoots and other foods, and incense, candles, firecrackers, ghost money and ghost papers. Inside the hall, we arrange seats for the patriarchs and matriarchs of

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our lineage, and we place our offerings on the altar. The head and assistant priests, the incense-bearer, the wine-bearer, the gift-bearer, and the tea-bearer preside. P: Fire! M: At three in the morning, the sound of the cannons would call the men of every family to the temple to worship their ancestors. P: Stay behind Mama and in front of M as you kneel and pray to the patriarchs and matriarchs. U: After youd lined up and prayed according to your generation, youd have the wonderful feeling of being the part of a family line. P: Afterwards, wed file out and circle around the courtyard slowly. U: It was an unconsciously concentric, perfectly symmetrical figure. M: That would make me feel really insignificant. U: Ive had the feeling of being part of a crowd before, too in 1976, after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in nearby Tangshan, people in Beijing moved outside and spent summer and autumn outdoors. The disaster broke down all the divisions between different families we lived in an emergency tent with the old woman from upstairs, sticking together and looking after one another. M: Thats not what its like in roundhouses. P: The Text on the Worthies is popular here all practical philosophy about how to handle matters and comport oneself. U: After the 1976 earthquake, something interesting happened: Beijing filled up. People put all of the public spaces, to work, no matter how big or how small they were, and they built a new, temporary city. The verticality of todays apartment buildings isnt as good as a level city: back in those days, the children could run around through the neighborhood to their hearts content. And there were plenty of temporary disaster tents that people kept

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building up until finally they were permanent structures actually, that was how I first got my start as an architect. P: Back then, all year round, when we were out of food and hadnt a pair of coins to rub together, when we couldnt get credit and couldnt borrow anything, out of all of our relatives, who came to our aid? And now, I got promoted by chance, everybody comes to flatter me. M: How are people supposed to like group living after that? P: You want to leave the roundhouses and leave your hometown? The home makes the man; the man keeps the home; thus do they naturally conform to heaven and earth. If you leave, wherell you conform to? ACT II U: For me, Hakka roundhouses arent just a model copied from clan society theyre the product of a culture of group living and high population density. And I think that low-income demographics need group living. P: And you werent so good with it yourselves, were you? M: --He means, you werent satisfied with the things youve seen so far, right? U: Oh, I dont approve at all of the way courtyards were converted in the heart of Beijing changed into individual pleasure-domes and rented out for ridiculous prices. And of course the owners all have cars, so they enter through the garage, not through the front gate. The streets are dead. The courtyards I like are the knocked-together mixed yards the ones that were converted from courtyards to housing for lots of different families during the Cultural Revolution. Theres a really lively side to life there. During the Qing dynasty it was one family, one household, one courtyard but then, there werent any cars then. Theres something more human

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about life in the hutongs. M: When I first got to the big city, I never dreamed of having my own house. P: Never mind when I first got to the big city even now, ten years have gone by. U: People have made a big fuss over courtyard renovation plans in Beijing lately, but if you ask me the architects are just the running dogs of the real estate developers, putting on a show about how theyre doing this all for the ordinary people. They might as well knock down the courtyards and put up skyscrapers, if they could just do a proper job of preserving a few traditional courtyards. Meanwhile there are reports that the Fujian Roundhouses have been listed as a World Heritage Site. P: Theyre just trying to drum up publicity. Fortunately we dont do that where Im from. M: When we come to the big cities to work, we come with other people from home. When were in trouble, we can at least turn the mirror to each other. U: Weve always focused on working with public spaces. In Chinas development, the conversion of public to private has become a particularly pressing issue, and people are still just trying to learn enough to figure out what to do about it. Anywhere you go, you can see that people fix up their own little spaces nicely. When I was little, everyone would go see open-air movies together; nowadays, even the newspaper notice boards you used to see on the streets everywhere have almost all been torn down. M: The general store near me moves their television out onto the street sometimes so we can all watch football games together. P: Its nice to watch television at home after a long day of work... U: How many people live with you?
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M: Hes got four couples in the one room; Ive got three. We sleep on bunks. So I like going out to the park in the evening. U: You see, people still use public spaces and public facilities, but theres nobody at the top paying attention to that, much less encouraging it. One time we designed a plaza for a local government with nice long, deep benches so people could lie down on them. The government panicked and said itd be better if people couldnt stay in the park. They were worried about people posting notices or meddling with the benches. If you go to Xidan, one of Beijings biggest hotspots, its no different: people come and go all day with nowhere to catch their breath. If you look closer, youll see the lawn bars there have been designed as little triangles so people have nowhere to sit. Different considerations, different conceptions of public spaces. (P silently returns to the task that occupies his days: cleaning and washing dishes) M: This is good for him too. U: I like climbing the stairs in old buildings. I lived on the top floor of a fourstory apartment building when I was in New York a tiny little closet of a place, but it had a window that looked right out onto Manhattan. M: What do we get to see from the windows in the Roundhouse Housing Project? U: Take a look. What do you see? M: The city, way off in the distance. (He pauses, deep in thought.) P: Spacing out by the window again! All we can see from here is the tall buildings in the high-class buildings in back. M: Whats wrong with spacing out? Its my space. P: Its not at all like home was but being able to live in a good building for low rent is fantastic. I dont know what the apartment owners in those other
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URBANUS URBANUS , 1999 URBANUS URBANUS URBANUS Architecture & Design, Inc. Under the leadership of partners Xiaodu Liu, Yan Meng and Hui Wang, URBANUS is a think tank providing strategies for urbanism and architecture in the new millennium. The name of Urbanus derives from the Latin word of urban, and strongly reects the ofces design approach: reading architectural program from the viewpoint of the urban environment in general, and the ever changing urban situations in specic.

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buildings think of us, though. M: Why think about them? You spend whatever chance you get staring at the poster of the starlet youve got on your wall anyway, not out the window. P: Ive never been this close to them. Youve got security guards for them, huh? U: Poor people are too weak: they have to get their strength from others especially people who come to the cities from the countryside to work. These people stay in close communication with one another, as if they needed to be able to refer to one another constantly and stay in close touch for their work, for their dreams. Western utopian low-income housing projects failed for the most part because the architects seemed to think that workers didnt want to live together. M: Ill leave sooner or later, though. Im learning how to drive first for managers here, and then for a big company somewhere. ACT III U: A lot of architecture isnt about architecture anymore. Urban development poses so many questions that sometimes we have to face ridiculous, bizarre questions. M: Nobody asked us what we want. If youre so stressed, why not just go home? P: Cities are the centers of the world I cant leave. U: What were testing with the Roundhouse Housing Project is the concept of roundhouse cities of taking roundhouses into the cities. What format will work best? Weve tested roundhouses with diameters

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ranging from 50 meters to 100 meters, and in the end we settled on 72-meter, six-story units. Weve experimented with interiors as well with cross-paths and the like. The key here is to break through the closed nature of roundhouses. In the end, we selected an E-shaped, stepped spiral construction. P: What Mao said about the countryside surrounding the city isnt true anymore. Lets go look. U: How will roundhouses interface with the city? Right now, the Roundhouse Housing Project is located on the outskirts of the city, near a high-end apartment development, but it would work in the middle of the city as well just like a urban village. When Vanke gave us the topic of urban villages to work from, we did plan it in the downtown, near parks, by lakes and overpasses even spider-webbing through commercial developments, to allow it to develop an even closer relationship with the city. M: I used to live on the outer ring here on the right a bachelor apartment with four or five people living in it. P: I live in the square building on the left: two married couples sharing a two-bedroom apartment, much more private than your new development. But looking up to see a towering, spiraling building with winding corridors stacked on top of one another is even more dizzying than living in a high-rise. U: With the ferocious pace of urban development there a lot of wasted spaces, which you might not see at first, that can still be used. Thats why we adopted a theme of filling in cities. With further development and consolidation of resources, architects have more
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space to work with. M: Turning, turning, turning along the inside ring there arent any colors or signs so you cant tell where it ends. You can get lost here. P: My kid was so happy to come here from the countryside. M: Theres no way youll beat him at hide-and-seek. Close your eyes! U: Imaginary spaces are very important too. I like the old-fashioned artificial forests people used to have in their courtyards its a distillation of the traditional ideal lifestyle: mountains, homes, a courtyard, a spacious study, streams, hills and winding little paths like a miniature landscape. This requires exquisite imagination to create, and with the right background you can see the full beauty of it. Otherwise its just a place to play. M: Hide-and-seek starts in the public spaces of each level. P: From this spot you can go in any direction left? right? I think we should limit the scope of the game we cant do it on different floors of the building. U: When I was in college, I thought about stage design for a long time and boat-making and archaeology. All of these are related to space, in some way. In the end I decided that architects made more of a contribution to society! When I signed up for architecture, other people didnt understand what it was they thought it was about carpentry and construction. P: Sanitation workers have it a lot more comfortable than construction workers. (To M) Your old security guard job was nice, too good and stable. Nowadays you have to run around everywhere. M: Were pretty well-off, both of us. U: There are a lot of different kinds of people in the Roundhouse Housing Projects, just like in an urban village. When you walk past one of the urban villages in Shenzhen in the morning, you can see young professionals in western suits and leather shoes on their way to work. Its not like Beijing, where places are either upper-class or lower-class new apartments are mostly very expensive, so people cant afford to live there when they first get here. P: Ive seen the skyline you were talking about too. I wash the floor-to-ceiling windows in an apartment up above the 20th floor every week, and from there I can see all the way to Guangzhou. M: You could see if you can go higher up work for one of the skyscrapers downtown, move into one of the proper apartment buildings there. P: Thats awfully...utilitarian. The roundhouses are beautiful too, you know. In my home, Ive turned the mirrors to face the sky. (Pause.) U: Yes the different homes in the roundhouses face in different directions, but you can always see the sky. People can work in the Roundhouse Housing Project; they can open internet cafes or places to play poker. In the yard they can play ball or lock up their bikes. They could think about opening some rented rooms inside for friends or relatives to stay in when they visit. The four corners of every floor are a public space with stairs going up directly to them: we designed the empty space in and well see what the residents do with it. M: Buildings can change the way we live. U: Architects cant change society, though. All we can do is provide a shell for it. (The three men each take up a mirror and stand still looking in each one for something different.) July 2008 Guangzhou, Shenzhen

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2006-2007 2007 URBANUS

Vanke -Tu-Lou Program

Project location: Guang Dong Design period: 2006-2007 Architect: URBANUS Architecture & Design, Inc Tulou is a dwelling type unique to the Hakka people. It is a communal residence between the city and the countryside, integrating living, storage, shopping, spiritual, and public entertainment into one single building entity. Traditional units in tulou are evenly laid out along its perimeter, like modern slab-style dormitory buildings, but with greater opportunities for social interaction. Although this type is very much suitable for low-income housing, simply copying the form and style of the tulou would not be a good solution for the design of low-income housing. However, by learning from the tulou, one can help preserve community spirit among low-income families.

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