This Design Research Studio looks at the possibilities of rethinking abandoned rural Chinese villages and capitalizing on a disappearing rural culture. After the catastrophic effects on urban heritage, modernization is now in the process of decimating most of China’s rural villages. By designing “real” projects for the abandoned village of Hexin Wu (何新屋), located in Guangdong Province, China, our ambition is to present an alternative way to re-think the issue. To challenge conventional preservation paradigms, instigated by a national rural heritage policy focused on introducing tourism as a rural solution. In short, we aim to make these abandoned villages operational again.

By conceiving the village as an ecosystem, students will design a series of “real” prototypes with associated implementation strategies. “Real” in this context relates to showing sensibility and practicality to deliver a series of proposals that can be achieved (financially) and implemented (buildable) by the community. In this context, Hexin Wu village represents an example of a Chinese village, rich in heritage, not deemed worthy of preservation. An abundant number of villages of this kind exist, all of which are confronted with a dark reality: i.e. face certain extinction or lose their soul by giving way to the practice of “Disneyfication”, a form of architectural conservation that mutates villages into an architectural taxidermy museum.

The studio is organized around a series of discussions, an exploration of thoughts via spatial proposals. The design process will be done through models, vis-à-vis understanding design through threedimensional exploration. Drawings will be removed from the design process and only introduced in the last phase of the project, conceived as a survey of the designed space. Students will work in teams of three, conjuring a strategic scheme from which an individual project will develop. Finally, by working in a real village, which requires tangible solutions the aim of the studio is to rekindle a connection between the Design Studio (within architecture education) and social responsibility. Architecture improves people’s lives; student’s projects should not be confined to a remote hard disk or worse a landfill site but should be pushed into the real world to make an impact on society.

︎︎︎ Studio Brief


Studio Instructor
Prof. Peter W. Ferretto