What are the poetics of habitation when we have to rethink the idea of dwelling in a future of increasingly isolated live/work patterns, smaller households, unaffordable cities, and severe climates? We believe there needs to be a radical reimagining of how dwelling deals with these imminent changes. This is the question we considered this year in DS(3)7, where we use London and Beijing as our test beds to explore a new poetics of habitation which responds to rapid changes in property, labour, demographic and climatic conditions.

In Semester One we began by analysing a pair of exemplary and radically different housing precedents: one from London and the other from Beijing. We sought to understand how capital, patterns of work, social structures and the climate have shaped their urban disposition, tectonic forms, threshold conditions and material language. Through a process of copy, remixing and creation, we reimagined these exemplars as not-yet-finished structures, to which we then applied the 2030 predictions as radically new parameters against which further iteration, adaptation and mutation of these precedents must take place. The result? A pair of prototypical dwelling types evolved from exemplars but ready for the Brave New World.

Semester Two saw the prototypical ideas from Semester One consolidated, expanded and tested at Baitasi, Beijing. This low-rise high-density Hutong neighbourhood of courtyards and poor quality informal structures, is caught between a 12th century Tibetan Buddhist temple and Beijing’s first collective living high-rise social condenser from the 1950s. Working remotely in a different cultural context, and in collaboration with the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing via digital platforms, the students developed an urban scale housing proposal with an innovative programme and novel tectonic approach which readies its Chinese inhabitants for 2030.

Tutors

John Zhang is an architect and academic. He runs Studio JZ, was previously an associate at award-winning practice DSDHA, and holds a PhD from the RCA on the topic of contemporary Chinese architecture.

David Porter is an architect, urbanist and educator. He was a partner of David Porter Neave Brown Architects. He was Professor of Architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing (2012-18) and Head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture (2000-11).

Guest Critics
Professor Che Fei (BIFT), Haoyue Guo (University of Manchester), Jayden Lau (Kengo Kuma), Matt Lindsay (Hampshire County Council Architects), Signe Pelne (IF_DO), Yuen Wah Williams