Chinese Villages Revisited

Today, urbanisation has become a major driver of societal transformation, leading to fundamental economic, political, and environmental changes across places, territories, and scales alike. This is especially evident in China, where rapidly expanding megacities are concentrated along urban corridors, often in areas that, only twenty years ago, were home to traditional rural populations cultivating collectively owned land. The urban design studio broadened its perspective, turning its focus to the multiple sites located beyond urban centres that are gaining importance for rural recreation and consumption within China’s rural revitalisation programme.

The studio collectively visited and explored the partly abandoned Wuyantou Village and its surrounding area in Zhejiang Province, China. Through a joint workshop with students from Tongji University, the studio analysed the complex dynamics of urbanisation processes, including actor networks, local-global challenges, and local transformation potential. Returning to Germany, students developed design proposals for the study area, ranging from architectural interventions, direct actions, and adaptive reuse concepts to strategies for reshaping local economies and broader planning frameworks. These proposals, informed by a new understanding of urbanised (post)rural territories, explored how architects and planners can initiate change processes through strategic interventions and design for community-oriented development on urban and regional scale.