05
At the Qinmo Village project
a school basketball court
and playground double as
community space.I
t is ex pected t hat by 2050 more t ha n
75 percent of the world’s population will
live in urban areas.^ As one of the most
urbanized countries in the world, Australia
has already surpassed this percentage.^1
Like much of the Western world, Australia’s
urbanization was firmly established by the
early twentieth century, whereas urban
growth in the current century is forecast
predominantly for Asian and African
countries. This transformation from rural to
urban is particularly acute in China, where
in 1980 it wa s repor ted t hat over 80 percent
of Chinese people still lived in rural villages.
The Chinese government is currently
seeking to “urbanize half of its rural
population by 2030 – a staggering 350
million citizens.”^2
Understanding and responding to the effect
of the Chinese government’s agenda on
village communities forms the focus of the
design and research collaborative Rural
Urban Framework. A collaboration between
architects John Lin and Joshua Bolchover,
Rural Urban Framework is a non-profit
research lab that is hosted within the
University of Hong Kong, where Lin and
Bolchover work as associate professors.
The basis for their practice emerged in 2006
during an eight-hour drive from Hong Kong
to visit a project site in a village in the
Guangdong province. Travelling through
the rapidly transforming rural landscape
highlighted China as a laboratory to
interrogate processes of change. Rural
Urban Framework works with government
organizations, charities and rural
communities and its projects, which
include schools, hospitals, public spaces,
connections, reading rooms and
community gardens, are conceived
to contribute positively to social, economic
and spatial transformations.What makes Lin and Bolchover’s
community-driven approaches particularly
distinctive is their commitment to
contemporary design. Their responses
move beyond generic construction
approaches to produce engaging design
outcomes based on an innovative use of
materials and new programmatic and
organizational relationships. Working
with low budgets and minimal access to
technology, they seek opportunity in the
smallest design decisions; for instance,
tweaking the use of basic functional
materials such as concrete for a new effect.Many of their projects have focused on
re-establishing vital connections for
communities through infrastructure.
The TaiPing Bridge project located in
the Guizhou province involved the
reconstruction and resurfacing of a
three-hundred-year-old bridge through
the merging of traditional masonry
construction and more contemporary
precast concrete techniques. This
renovation also included the re-envisaging
of the bridge as a public meeting spacethrough the insertion of planting and
seating. In contrast, their design for a new
bridge in Shaanxi province offers an
unapologetic contemporary insertion into
the rural countryside. Designed to
reconnect an existing walnut orchard to the
village, Lingzidi Bridge was conceived as a
“singular loop” that connects across the
river while also offering access to the river.
Similar to the TaiPing Bridge, this structure
operates as a social community space and
incorporates shaded areas and seating. In
an important design detail, black pigment
was added to the concrete to create a finish
t hat is dist inct from t he adjacent g rey
highway viaduct. This simple adjustment
to the use of ubiquitous concrete, combined
with an understanding of light and form,
has resulted in a simple but striking
insertion into the landscape.The Qinmo Village project in Guangdong
province offers a clear demonstration of
how the construction of a new school,
combined with the realignment of existing
social and physical resources, can
encourage self-sustainability. The village
was chosen by the Green Hope Foundation
(an international youth organization that
encourages children’s rights,
environmental protection and sustainable
development) as the site for a new primary
school w it h a focus on env ironmenta l
education. Like many villages in China,
the more able workers had left to work in
larger urban centres, reducing the local05LANDSCAPE ISSUE 157 042 — 043PRACTISING IN ASIA