WATER SQUARES: SPONGE CITIES ALONG THE MAOZHOU RIVER

Project: WATER SQUARES: SPONGE CITIES along the MAOZHOU RIVER
Class: Workshop, California College of the Arts, Architecture Division
Date: Spring 2016
Instructors: Pnina Avidar (Tilburg), Jungin Kim (Soongsil), Antje Steinmuller (CCA)

This five-day workshop takes on the intersection of water system management and regeneration with the development of new public space typologies. Water squares is a project that will capture different systems, relations and social potentials that are concealed in hybridizing rainwater storage, water purification and public space along the Maozhou river. It will address the imaginative potential in specific local conditions by relating local programmatic opportunities to an experience of the water system. The workshop capitalizes on the cross-continental and cross-cultural knowledge of three schools coming together from three different continents. Through the lens of globally shared urban water management issues and their integration in public life and perception, the workshop takes on a set of broader tensions:

– the impact of local parameters on public space.
– global parameters that influence public space (e.g. water conservation, catchment, and reuse).
– the potential (positive and negative) role of confluences and cross-pollination across cultures as a consequence of globalization.

The 2015/16 UABB program of Aformal Academy RE:Learning The City is a free-flowing information exchange platform that engages exhibitors, educators, foreign and local students, local craftsmen and researchers, in-town guests, and the public at large. Aformal Academy RE:Learning The City is a key component of UABB School, a significant education platform of the biennale that takes place at the former Dacheng Flour Factory in Shekou, Shenzhen from 4 December 2015 to 28 February 2016. Aformal Academy RE:Learning the City is curated by Jason Hilgefort and Merve Bedir, partners of Rotterdam/Istanbul/Shenzhen based Land+Civilization Compositions,in collaboration with Ljubo Georgiev and Hristo Stankushev.

Collaborators: Liu Lei, Shenzhen Design Center
A collaboration between Tilburg University, Netherlands, Soongsil University, Seoul, and
California College of the Arts, USA