KEY ACTORS

Through SS100, the architects connected with a local design institute, or LDI, in Wuxi. In general the communication went through SS100, who also handled all the communication with the Wuxi City Planning Bureau. All Western design firms are obliged to collaborate with an LDI, and the ultimate responsibility for the project lies with the LDI. Since the LDI makes the detailed construction drawings, a large part of the construction process is actually beyond SHL’s realm of influence. SHL oversees the construction drawings, but they cannot control the project to its end. Here SHL has to trust their local collaboration partners.

Even if they trust their local partners, however, it is difficult for SHL to pursue environmental sustainability while working for a private developer within the residential sector. The SHL architects wanted a more close collaboration with SS100, better communication and a more transparent process. As seen in the Wuxi project, this turned out to be difficult to achieve. When private developers are involved, the process is often influenced by various external factors and has little transparency. Although some private developers are very concerned about quality and do value sustainability, real estate development for most private developers is quick money. The projects are market dependent, and thinking about short-term profit dominates. To realize sustainability ambitions, SHL would need to seek another type of client and collaboration partner, preferably from the public sector, where the projects are not market driven to the same extent.¹⁰ If the future home owners were to ask for sustainability, and if the implementation mechanisms became more rigorous, then private developers would be forced to act more responsibly. Current tendencies

do point towards more stringent environmental legislation and stricter requirements on implementation. This in turn means higher demands on the ability of the design firms to deliver environmentally conscious solutions. The clients are interested in what is being done abroad, says the SHL project architect, and they do want to see how sustainability can be achieved. ‘Developers might continue to ask for style, but environmental sustainability has already started to present itself as a competitive factor and is likely to continue to do so.’ (architect 1, SHL, pers. comm.).

INSTITUTIONAL SETTING

SHL operates on the project level and is not involved in the planning process. The SHL team gains access to information mainly through SS100, and the information made available to them is coloured by the interests of this client. SS100 focuses on the building plot and provides only scant information on the urban development situation and the surrounding area within which the Tian Ti Town development sits. The SHL architects asked about the plans for the surrounding plots, but the client did not provide them with the information. Thus SHL worked with a cut-out piece of land and had difficulty obtaining other information on the local context and conditions. The development situation of the adjacent plots was uncertain when they began, and the reliability of the information the SHL team received was also sometimes questionable.

Less complex tasks, for smaller areas such as the Tian Yi Town development, are given to the market. Tracts of land—the superblocks—are filled in by private developers in an uncoordinated fashion; the land for the real estate is not planned in a whole system. The development is fragmented.

In addition, private developers favour high-end housing since it gives them the most profit; Tian Yi Town, for example, is built for the middle class. There was no wish from the client side to make connections between the different plots around Tian Yi Town, since the housing areas belong to different price classes. The various plots around Tian Yi Town were developed independently of each other and ad hoc during the process of developing the master plan, building projects started to appear around the site that the practitioners had not been informed about, for instance rows of high rises just south of their site.

The xiaoqu scheme

SHL’s drawings were changed and modified according to local regulation and the client’s preferences. The specific requirements connected to the xiaoqu typology, such as programme, building orientation and floor plan layout, were decisive for the master plan. The SHL plan proposal was modified to match the xiaoqu scheme. The SHL team did not consider

the xiaoqu scheme originally, they imagined an open neighbourhood. It is difficult, however, to open residential areas and mix them with other functions different from the pattern of the xiaoqu. Given the introverted character of the xiaoqu, it becomes important to create connections.

There are many links and exchanges between the residential area and its surrounding setting that the urban design could support and promote.

Here the landscape could play an important role, as the medium through which to connect the xiaoqu to larger landscape systems, to support exchanges and activities, to provide good and safe linkages for bikes and pedestrians to public transport nodes and nearby parks and green recreational areas and create links between the neighbourhoods. If we look at an existing xiaoqu, in its border area various exchanges occur between the xiaoqu and its surrounding setting, activities that provide the xiaoqu with cheap goods and services—small scale businesses, such as retail, fruits and vegetable, and building material vendors, shoe repairs, etc. Urban design solutions can support such local economies. Shops and retail facilities located at the edge of the xiaoqu can create places of contact between moving economies and people living in the xiaoqu and enhance the connections between adjacent neighbourhoods. Entrances and road networks can be placed in a way that supports links between neighbourhoods. The SHL team did not stress particular connections with the surrounding setting—it was not part of the design task and it was not a priority of the client. Consequently, the practitioners worked with a cut-out piece of land and developed their plan proposal without much consideration to connections. The site’s border, drawn by SS100 for the sketch of the initial programme distribution, was reinforced during the development of the project and became very distinct in the master plan.

C: FIRST-HAND IMPRESSIONS

There is a large distance between the SHL’s plan proposal and the site.

There is a lack of situated, local site knowledge. It may be that the situated perspective seems very difficult for the practitioners to obtain, considering the geographical and cultural distance between client and architect, the speed with which the project is developed, the disregard of the existing landscape structures, the preferences of the client and the lack of contact with local people. None of the actors involved investigated existing uses, activities and local economies. There is not much reflection on the involved complexities and challenges. Neither SHL nor SS100 read value into the existing landscape structures. Rather, they saw the land as being waste land, lacking landscape qualities. The SHL team focused on the buildings, the building typologies and the layout of the apartment units. Landscape was seen as the leftover space between the buildings,

and played a marginal role. In the representational material from SHL the site’s surroundings are often left blank. The renderings show the buildings on the site in great detail, while buildings on the surrounding plots are shown as light, transparent volumes, which actually is very misleading in relation to the built reality. Treating landscape as the leftover space is far from a landscape-oriented urbanism approach in which buildings and landscape are considered in tandem and through which latent structures in the landscape are activated.

5.3