Architecture Commons^™

New Beijing | A Renewed Vernacular, Bowen Victor Zhang

Architecture Senior Theses

What does the term "vernacular" means? In an increasingly flay world, this thesis seeks to define the essential elements of the vernacular architecture of Beijing in order to propose a contemporary residential archetype.

In the past century, China has experienced unprecedented economic growth and development. Along with the many influences introduced by cross-cultural interactions, the phenomenon of architectural and social gentrification has begun to affect many of the populations living in urban centers. The same gentrifying forces that have drastically changed Greenwich Village and other New York City neighborhoods has rapidly moved to China and has replaced centruries-old vernacular communities …

New Beijing: Learning From New York, Bowen Zhang

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to address the housing problem generated by the previously mentioned contradicting stimuli to create a new housing typology that is appropriate for a modern Beijing.

Illegal Linkage: Transition Of Beijing Informal Economy, Wanjing Xiao

Architecture Senior Theses

"This project contends that the transitional urban fringes are places where the informal economy grows in the most spontaneous and efficient form. By investigating the transitional urban fringe, one can study its informal urban behavior at local and long-term effects, enabling the social awareness and political force to manifest in an informal linkage leading illegal economy towards legalization, while encouraging a new form of 'formal'"...

"This thesis proposes a statistic informality that is able to resist the clearance from urbanization. The new paradigm will be extracted form existing informality models acting as a field condition to bridge the formality and …