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Mulan Primary School was
extended by Rural Urban
Framework to provide a new
toilet block, playground and
a building for additional
classrooms. Mirrored ceramic
tiles cover the toilet block and
parts of the playground steps.population to the elderly and young.
However, unlike many villages, the
surrounding agricultural land had not
been damaged by chemical fertilizers,
and this knowledge formed the basis for
a long-term plan to rebuild the village
with a focus on education and reformed
agricultural practice.
Working with numerous stakeholders over
a six-year period, Rural Urban Framework
designed a new school building (featuring
colourful concrete bricks painted by the
community) and a basketball court and
playground that double as community
space. Importantly, the now-vacant old
school building wa s reposit ioned a s a
demonstration eco-household featuring
new agricultural techniques. These include
a self-composting pig and chicken barn,
which generates manure for the plant-
testing plots, a green house for seedlings
and, most recently, a farm that experiments
with more profitable chicken breeds. The
old school building has multiple functions:
storage for the village’s elaborate lion
festival costumes, an informal community
centre, a dormitory for the local teachers
who tend to the eco-garden in exchange for
board, and a venue for a charity-run camp
for high-achieving students.
Rural Urban Framework’s desire to equip
communities to adapt to future change
underpins the Qinmo Village and
community centre redevelopment.
Understanding how their projects are
positioned within the cycle of knowledge
development, generational change and
economic shifts is central to their success.
To date, they have worked with more than
eighteen rural villages in China. However,
Lin and Bolchover do not consider their
methods as repeatable solutions, but
instead as experiments that interrogate the
particular complex economic and social
forces at play in these villages.Rural Urban Framework’s approach offers
a refreshing departure from community-
building project s t hat tend to unfold in t wo
ways: either with an architectural focus on
housing and the pervasive community
centre, or a more landscape-driven scheme
t hat t rades a st rong desig n et hos for
community involvement. Instead, Lin and
Bolchover demonstrate the possibility of
developing a contemporary design
language with the simplest construction
materials while still addressing larger
questions of economic, social and
environmental resilience.John Lin is speaking at the Landscape
Australia Conference on 5 May 2018 in
Sydney.END NOTES- “An Urban World” graphic, UNICEF website, unicef.
org/sowc2012/urbanmap (accessed 30 October 2017). - “Rural Urban Framework: Transforming the Chinese
Countryside,” Rural Urban Framework website,
rufwork.org/index.php?/publication/rural-urban-
framework/ (accessed 30 October 2017).
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