Day 4 - Karaoke

ok, we did not started with Karaoke but with designing our multi function street furniture concepts. Splitted up in 3 different groups everyone was busy, sometimes in the wrong direction - the idea always should become more simple, more clear and sharper but having so many people involved in the design process it seems to be normal that everything becomes a bit chaotic in the beginning.

Its also the first time they design something for poor people in need - therefore a fancy design has no value if its not connected to a practical design that will work properly and withstand the abuse within the hutong.

But we still have 2 days to design and engineer theses street objects and the concepts itself are already great, so the design will also follow that paths....the session was ended by Lin Hai he studied in Delft too and runs now an office in Beijing.

While the day was quite usual there was a special evening : Dr. Bucky Labs Birthday - seems to be and ongoing thing that he celebrates this in the company of students somewhere in the world.

Mara and the others from the organizing team rented a karaoke bar and we had a beer, pizza and a wonderful birthday cake ...by the way the students can sing much better than our crazy professor ...

Day 3 - working in groups

3 groups has formed after the elevator pitch. We are now working on a bench, a set of multifunctional boxes and a system that allows to be used in multiple ways - some sort of a puzzle for the streets.

Here are some impressions of our work

Day 3 - elevator pitch

After just a couple of hours we already had our elevator pitch and the students presented their individual ideas. Now we will form groups and will develop the best ideas to be build later in 1:1 scale. 

Day 2 - Beijing Summer School - visiting the Hutongs

This morning we gathered and got a lecture from Xin Zhang who studied our project area the Quinglong Hutong for 2 years. The project manager knows every detail about these area which was back then the home for the people working already for the emperor within the Yuan dynasty around 1300. Since the mid 20th century these traditional courtyard houses with a very clear layout and one storey height houses were often demolished to create space for the booming city. 

For those houses which are located on narrow streets called Huntongs who had not been demolished became a home for the poor. And while en extension to a second floor was first not an option and later also forbidden the courtyard was filled with buildings also, which leads nowadays to a very dense area with very tiny and narrow streets. On the plot of one courtyard house which was home for one family back then houses more than 8 families nowadays. 

The people living in these dense area are very busy to earn money and make a business out of their homes, while the pressure of the government becomes bigger and bigger to buy these houses in order to make place for the future and bigger commercial and residential buildings. 

The contrast in these area could not be bigger, while the main street divided the area into two worlds. In south poverty and houses one storey high and north glass and steel skyscrapers forming a technology and business park. 

In order to help those people in the Hutongs we started to design concepts in form of urban street furnitures that will provide storage space, tables, seats and elements that allow to sell their goods. 

The design phase was ended by a lecture from Xiao Dong who talked about materializing architecture and the experiment in 1:1 scale.

Buckylab Summerschool Beijing - Day 1

Here we go ! Summerschool Beijing - a couple of chinese students who study in Delft made it happen that we are able to run a summerschool in the capital of China.

Hosted in the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture we started with a couple of lectures and an invitational round. In total we have 22 highly motivated students from all over the country and from a wide mixture of disciplines ranging from architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering and even product development. 

Tomorrow we will get a lecture about our project area and we will visit the site. 

Do you know how to make students happy? Hand them out mobile wifi routers!