2. Core attention: Special population and specific residence

“Informal Living”, as the name suggests, highlights two concerns - “residence” and “outside the system”, which always take the city as its background and carrier. Hence, the core of this course is to explore special population and specific residence under the background of fast-growing urbanization.

●Dilemma of modern cities

Dating back to the origin of cities, it corresponds with “spontaneous buildings“: gradually agglomerated by people according to the productive relations. Traditional cities, as carriers of diversified population and activities, generally present the characteristics of ambiguous land properties and promiscuous spatial forms, forming the unique and rich charms. However, if we blindly introduced the “scientific” concept into city construction guided by modernism ideas of urban planning, urban functions would be divided simply, land properties no longer ambiguous and buildings strictly controlled subject to spacing, regression line, height, form and even color. Consequently, spatial form would be cookie-cutter, and we wouldn’t possess the original urban features any longer while we tried to realize the wonderful intention of healthy life. This phenomenon had become overwhelming in the developing process of China’s fast-growing urbanization, which has resulted in the serious consequence of cookie-cutter cities.

Through the course of “Informal Living”, students are expected to straightly face the dilemma of modern cities, and build up active and comprehensive values of architecture and urbanization. To this end, we need to start with renewing our recognition of cities.

●Why choosing residence?

In spite of its diversified social value, the core significance of the phenomenon “spontaneous buildings” is the housing problem. Residence is not only the original intention of human’s constructions but also the basic driving force and ultimate aim of urban development. It should be said that China, as a great nation with 1.3 billion people, has made unremitting efforts in solving the housing problem. From “one person, one bed” in the early days of New China to “one person, one room” after the reform and opening up, Chinese people’s housing status has been improved greatly, especially along with the residential policy reforms and commodity housing development since the 1990s. However, the residential buildings in the early period mainly targeted at quantitative growth, and have started to focus on diversified users in recent years, such as “Tulou collective housing”, “capsule apartment” and others projects specific to special users. These projects coincide with the affordability and needs of young people who have just entered the society. Their enlightenment for the residential architecture development deserves our careful pondering.

In the professional education of architecture in Tsinghua University, residential architecture always serves as an important clue running through different stages from undergraduate to graduate. From “my room” emphasizing the understanding to spatial dimension and scale for freshmen year to “villa” highlighting the training of relationship between buildings and environment for sophomore year, and then to “residential planning and housing design” lecturing the methodologies and specifications of residential district planning for the junior year, what we’re doing is to help students establish a systematic knowledge framework from a different dimension and level. Throughout Tsinghua’s education of residential building for years, what’s been emphasized most is to impart the concept of modern planning and design as well as the methodology of related national regulations and specific application, but in slight shortage of in-depth analysis and research on different users.

“Informal Living”, as an important supplementary linked to Tsinghua’s education of residential architecture, was established on the strength of previous teaching. Following the concept of “human orientation”, this encourages students to explore the real needs of different users for residence and look for targeted architectural solutions.

●What is “outside the system”?

“Outside the system” is inevitably relative to “inside the system”. In the process of China’s urbanization, government dominance “inside the system” plays a vital role. “Inside the system” works well with its advantage in strong execution. Since the reform and opening up, urbanization has developed so fast that many countries can never catch up. However, as the urbanization development is deepened, troubles hidden behind the scene become clear gradually. For instance, the cookie-cutter residential buildings and high housing price have suffocated the dream of low-income groups pursuing a home; the automobile-oriented urban layout increases its dependence on traffic, which makes life a suffering traveling on the way. Similarly, the changes in social structure are also worrisome. Along with demolishment of extant buildings or relocation of inhabitants, the years’ neighborhood relationship breaks up, and this has far-reaching effect on China’s society highlighting “family ties”. In retrospection, the above phenomena are attributed to the long-term and one-way thought of urban land policy and residential development. The land properties are so simply pure that the effective utilization rate of land has been lowered. However, the simplified residential mode obliterates the vivid and abundant personality of cities while rejecting the mixed residence of different stratums.

It’s impossible for modern cities to solve the housing problem in just one way. To take Hong Kong as an example which has enhanced the development of public housing earlier, although the government has energetically planned and constructed public housing typical of welfare oriented housing for years, more than 10% of its people still select “caged house” or “wood house” with extremely harsh conditions, according to the statistics. In addition to price factors, convenience for working and other reasons have become the important contents that users concern highly. Similarly, Singapore has made a success in promoting the construction of welfare housing, but a part of low-income groups prefer to live in Johor Malaysia because of cheaper types of residential building there. Like the ecological balance in the nature, urban population also resemble the social balance. Only if people value and respect the existence of different population and acknowledge the difference of needs, can we truly realize the social ideal in which everyone is equal.

The object of study of “Informal Living” targets the people that haven’t been concerned before or the problems that are hardly solved in residential construction. Students are hoped to shake off their dominant and subjective conventional thinking and expand a new concept of urban development and residential construction.

●Architectural value of “spontaneous buildings”

What is the origin of building? Who is the real creator of a city? Is it an architect? For this question, architects are not confident to answer it “Yes”. Undoubtedly, buildings rooted from spontaneous buildings by the folks, while cities created by the people after all. Along the city development in modern times, architects are playing an increasingly significant role in urban construction, from single construction to overall planning. However, compared with traditional cities developing through long-term natural and historical accumulation, ideal cities were the creation of architects’ pioneering work in the early period, which showed greatness in the beginning but then often suffered from the long but painful process of social construction. Brasilia is just a case in point, so is the construction of those ever bustling satellite towns. The reason behind is that modern cities under the subjective creation of architects lack of something.

However on the contrary, the seemingly confusing “spontaneous buildings” seem to imply a certain kind of natural order - the maximized use of spatial resources, almost perfect cost control, local rules and folk customs under the benefit balance, all of which have formed the hidden rules of their development to a certain extent. Especially on architecture, those buildings imply rich wisdom and smart thinking of folks, which could hardly be obtained from the modern architectural education. In recent years, the question how to regard the architectural value of “spontaneous buildings” has been receiving more and more attention. When a majority of China’s cities are still energetically eradicating “urban villages” and demolishing “shantytowns” in a simple and crude manner, cities in South America, represented by Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Medellin in Colombia, have made diversified exploration in this field. On the premise of respecting the existing environment, those cities have developed a targeted solution solving core problems of “spontaneous buildings”. They have found out a “special” way of effective social improvement and special urban features protection. This is worthy of our reference.

For students who have received the systematic and scientific cultivation of architecture, it is not easy to transform the thinking mode and learn from “spontaneous buildings”. At the beginning of this course every year, new students are confronted with the same question, “Why shall we concern those poor people?” “What value do those rundown urban villages have?”... As to this problem, we think it very understandable after all: the superior learning environment and pure life experience have restricted the vision of students to a certain extent. However, the key way to become an excellent architect is actually to think from a different perspective and shake off the overbearing “idealism”.

In nature, the society is the instructor of “Informal Living”. Although it is a design course and requires a specific architectural solution, we are always clear about its core objective in the whole process of teaching, namely, to help students deeply understand social life and build up the philosophy of serving people.