EIGHT-GARDEN

Historic District Urban Renovation
Linshen Xie, Dongxu Wu
Finalists in Sunrise Architecture Design Competition




In the context of China's overwhelming urban sprawl, numerous cities spring out with new buildings. The negative effect mainly displays in the chaotic layout of city's center, the formation of urban village, the lack of green space and oasis, the vanishing of the characteristic landscape.
Shunde shares such city pattern as many others. It locates in Guangdong, nearby Hongkong, and used to be the city of waterway transport and hometown of overseas Chinese. However, Huagai street, the once prosperous district in the heart of Shunde, now turned into insipid place. There are several green spaces around the place including Qinghui Garden, a national famous traditional garden, whereas they are not connected or well-organized. Therefore, our aim is to unclog the area and revitalize it.     










Decisions are made to keep the existed architectures and urban pattern to its full capacity, not to disturb the urban metabolism in the context. Since the historical area is the meeting point of new and old buildings, the residents and the tourists, I am trying to make it an active center hub of the site and promote mutual communication among different people.
From Citizen park, Qinghui Garden and Eight-garden to Commercial Arcade street and Huagai Mountain, the sequence provides people with more sightseeing choice and variable experience. Meanwhile the process arouse our rethink about the urban environment where exists buildings of various ages. It ordinarily has the greatest diversity of people and the most complicated architectural environment. Adapting these conflicts for a utopian urban montage is an interesting process of urbanization.









 
During 1600s, many literati and rich people lived in this area and each house has a garden as tradition. Some of these gardens were combined and became nowadays Qing hui Garden. In Qing dynasty, the rich built walls and eight gates to guard against thieves, whence this area is known as Eight-gate. After WWII, once sumptuous Eight-gate began to decay and now becomes ruins. Hence, we retain history spirit and regenerate this area by eight soho gardens, and meanwhile establish connections with its surroundings, changing from Eight-gate to Eight-garden.








The study of building typology is a process of understanding the development of local houses and finding their potential future. After research of the conditions of old houses, we decide to keep some of them to be part of unique landscape in urban context, and create typical group of old house, public workshop, soho building and a traditional garden in middle of them (and some include arcade buildings). Each kind of buildings refers to certain group of people, and this combination serve as a small culture cycle where local artists, visitors and tourists communicate mutually.