Fourth year students and professors Carmen Mendoza and Jaime Batlle participated in the “Focusing on Reality: Urban Regeneration of Music Valley, Hongkou district, Shanghai”. workshop between 18 and 28 July this year. The workshop was organised by the Shanghai Bambuspace Design company, along with the Hongkou district municipality in Shanghai.
Over 10 days the UIC Barcelona team worked along with the research group from Urban Micro Space Revival Plan (UBSRP), consisting of Dr Dai Chun, editor of the Time Architecture journal, Dr Yu Ting, Founder of Wutopia Architects and Tong Lingfeng, partner in the Shanghai Bambuspace Design company and leader of the research group “Focusing on Reality” from the Southeast University -SEU (Nanjing, China). The project consists of redesigning the “lost spaces” in Music Valley in Shanghai and the aim behind it is to transform these residual spaces into key areas in the lives of citizens, thus making them feel a sense of belonging to the community.
The group task consists of developing a proposal for urban transformation based on the concepts of “urban acupuncture” and the “civic grid” as catalysts for transformation. On 27 June students from the School of Architecture held a preparatory meeting before the workshop, which was attended by Isabel Pera, Director of International Relations at UIC Barcelona, and Elena Martín Enebral, Professor of Chinese Culture.
At the end of August 2016, the Urban Micro Space Revival Plan (UBSRP) will organise an exhibition entitled "UBSRP-2016 Shanghai and Barcelona Workshop Achievement” in the Shanghai Exhibition Centre to present the results obtained from the workshop. The exhibition will form part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network at the Shanghai Promotion Centre for City of Design (SPCCD).
