Controllable territory

Abstract

This graduation project aims at creating liveability (in terms of well-functioning control on social relationship and sustainable green in direct home environment) in Xiongan New Town to hosting residents who cannot find a suitable place in Beijing. The great majority of them are young professionals. They are facing the problem that their ideal housing type, which provides quality of affordability (affordable rental housing), assessibility (connectivity to work place through public transportation) and liveable living condition (proper privacy, neither social cage or anonymous community without green) does not exist. Thus this project is in motion to create a more friendly neighbourhood for the young professionals through designing a liveable neighbourhood in terms of control of social interaction, sustainalbe green, affordable rental housing and a seamless public transportation system. Xiongan New Town is a proper location as it provides a larger range of possibilities for this neighbourhood spatially. However, Chinese New Towns are until now built with-out a out relation to their historical and ecological context. This leads to a proposal for an new town that relates to the local ecological and urban context and with references to the history of dwelling in the area. Therefore the objective is to design a infrastructure framework for a New Town and a fully designed liveable neighbourhood as a illustrative example of alternative design approach. Therefore the strategy is composed by two parts. Firstly, based on typology analysis, scenario analysis, case study, mapping, etc., I put forward a series of approaches for Xiongan new town in multiple scales (regional, city, district, neighbourhood) to provide a framework as precondition for a liveable neighbourhood. These approaches aim to achieve a balanced harmony between landscape and city, history and future development as context for neighbourhood design. Secondly, a spatial design focus on the qualities of control on social interaction, historical continuity and sustainable green. Spatial design in neighbourhood scale includes an integral framework and smaller interventions. A blue and green network based on water and topographic condition will be introduced. Accessible network and density hypothesis will be created on top of this landscape layer. Smaller interventions will be embedded into this framework, to show the possibilities of balancing density, creating legible territory, preserving historical continuity, achieving spatial integrality. Specifically, the neighbourhood will be composed of housing types of various density (matching potential density); it will be divided into multiple legible territories of various levels of privacy; historical connection will be provided through preserving parcellation patterns and existing buildings. Houses will be constructed by the method of layer construction to leave space for future development. Green space helps to combine all spatial elements. Finally, the liveable neighbourhood will be a synthesis of all those interventions.