Habitat Unit

URBAN TALK
May 24, 2019 | 6.00 pm | Neuer St. Jacobi Friedhof

Anticipating the Urban

The widespread process of urbanisation, its exertion into new territories and its transformation on existing settlements is creating new contexts with unique spatial characteristics; impacting villages, social structures, economies and built form. Rural Urban Framework focuses on sites at the frontline of this process, in the hinterlands and peripheral areas where the effects of urbanisation are beginning to take hold.

The lecture will explore the different drivers and interplay of forces present in two distinct and contrasting geo-political situations. The first explores how China's urbanisation harnesses top down infrastructure building with bottom-up opportunism. Focusing on peripheral sites and third tier town-ships, we will explore the impact of a newly constructed highway that has led to the relocation of villagers; the construction of a new civic centre on an empty site; and a new model for a rural hospital that addresses the gap in provision of social welfare in the countryside. The second situation is the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, which are extensive settlements of felt tents or gers, resulting from migration of rural nomads moving to the city. The project explores how gaps in the current top down planning models for these districts leads to an opportunity for an alternative incremental urban strategy.

Each project is linked as they exemplify a condition that anticipates the urban: they are charged sites and each one will be radically reshaped in the next 5 years. We will describe how our design approaches react to these emerging challenges, creating pilot projects, material prototypes, business plans and urban strategies

Urban Talk Joshua Bolchover Poster

Joshua Bolchover is an Associate Professor at The University of Hong Kong. He set up Rural Urban Framework with John Lin in 2005 with the remit to create a not-for-profit agency as a platform for design research. Their projects have been internationally exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2016, the Design Museum London 2016, and The Chicago Biennale 2015. RUF's work has been awarded the RIBA International Emerging Architect Award 2016, The Curry Stone Design Prize 2015, and The Ralph Erskine Prize 2014. Joshua's publications include Border Ecologies: Hong Kong's Mainland Frontier, Birkhauser, 2016, Designing the Rural: A Global Countryside in Flux, Architectural Design 2016, and Rural Urban Framework: Transforming the Chinese Countryside, Birkhauser 2013.

URBAN TALK
May 24, 2019 | 6 pm

Neuer St. Jacobi Friedhof
Hermannstraße 99-105.
U 8 Hermannstraße oder Leinestraße
12051 Berlin, Neukölln