AbstractsSociology

The idea of bottom-up urbanism is becoming a topic that is widely discussed and this project can be regarded as an approach to contribute to this discussion by transforming the intangible idea of local initiated spontaneous interventions into tangible design of specific architectural space. The theme of the studio is to deal with the complexity of the site. Within this framework, I developed an architecture project that is consistent from the scale of urban planning to architecture. As for the urban planning, we proposed bottom-up interventions that are mainly initiated by the local people, and by placing urban catalyst at critical location within the neighborhood according to its characteristic, these urban activator will try to provide opportunities to ease the problems faced by the community and at the same time create identity and positive image for the neighborhood. As for the architecture, I created a catalyst center for South Chicago, which is a place where local people can share their ideas, access to municipal information on vacant lands and buildings, seek assistance from local task forces, architects and institutions, advocate funding from private foundation for bottom-up interventions, upgrade the neighborhood by reusing local waste, involve local people in the process of building and share the power between developers and locals to achieve a better design that fits the demand of the neighborhood.