City of fragmented vestiges

1 Thesis statement- WHAT

When a city is an assemblage of incomplete objects, disproportioned streets and un-associated textures, it has evolved into a collage of city fragmentations, mainly caused by the time of crisis. Part of the city grows quickly meanwhile part of it keeps static or even shrink, leaving unresolved spaces and junctions. These are expressions of times and places resulting in peculiar overlay of physical spaces, new connections are needed to link our desires for the city and its realities.

2 Key ideas, Context & Program – WHY

Fragments were unmapped and re-collaged to speculate on scenarios for a city that is in constant construction and deconstruction, being pushed and pulled by forces of economic and political issues.  In order to balance the over grown and the shrunk city fabrics, it is urgent to take the city apart and distil its essence for the recombination of the fragments into new forms.

Study the ruins worldwide (eg. Detroit in Michigan, Yashima in Japan, Varosha in Cyprus) one will understand how the industrial past caused a city to shrink/ be abandoned, and explore ways to re-programme a city defined by shrinkage and absence. I’m particularly interested in looking at chaotic post-infrastructural site context, such as deserted neighbourhood which caused by rapid development of the Olympics; the autonomous property development or city with declined industry. New typology/ intervention of infrastructural linkage will be inserted to identify and transit moments of unresolved spaces and junctions found within the fragmented urban fabrics, to create a formulation of an inner-city based prototype architecture: the micro city.

Detroit in Michigan, U.S.A (decayed due to decline of automobile industry in70s)

Yashima in Japan (decayed due to the collapse of the bubble economy)

Varosha in Cyrus (remained abandoned and uninhabited under the occupation of the Turkish armed forces)

3 Methodological Processes/ Outline of Research/ Design Experiments- How

Through direct observations, sampling forms and patterns of fragmentation occurring across the city’s fabric, from large to small scale, from collective space to individual space, we are able to feel our way around the physical and imagined realities by cutting, casting, turning, welding and baking expressions of our micro-cites.

Remake the city through drawings, collages and models, new structural vocabularies and their associated textural details will become tools to transform a mechanism of infrastructure into a seamless continuation of the city, its past and unknown futures.