MENGQING WU

CREATING A VISION OF MULTICULTURAL COEXISTENCE IN COMMUNITY

Year: 2020

School: The Glasgow School Of Art

Type: Master Degree Graduation Project

Degree Show Website: https://gsapostgradshowcase.net/2020/wordpress/mengqing-wu/

公众号文章: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/EUOsbA4DuxCC55Q-4pCghQ

This research project aims to propose a hypothesis about the community designed for people with different cultural backgrounds. By creating a narrative and exaggerated multicultural community through overall planning, to explore larger aspects from a broader perspective, in order to stimulate a diversity of thought in community identity. The purpose is to provide a new perspective and strategy for the integration of multicultural communities. It’s more like a metaphor of the cultural coexistence. Moreover, this approach can open up discussions about multicultural communities and trigger new questions in areas like interior design theory, and apply to any other cultural communities.

My initial motivation is from the multicultural phenomenon driven by immigration. Although many communities are diverse in their population components, the space of the community still retains the independence of a certain cultural phenomenon, rather than the integration of various cultures. This gives me more expectation about the multicultural community space. Specifically, I chose the multicultural community in Guangzhou as my research background, the target group are mainly the local Cantonese and Nigerian.

In order to make for a more meaningful study of the subject, I started to extract the cultural symbols behind the Chinese and African/Nigerian culture.

The theory I used in this project is about the 'Event Space' proposed by Tschumi. I expect the event spaces can activate the surrounding environment through vitality, and then stimulates the communities with different races, cultures and religions, thus energising and engaging community. In order to identify the specific original activities and people’s daily scene in the community, I drew a series of illustrations about it, and then I’ll predict the possible activities and deconstruct and reshape the new scenes.

ELEMENTS COMPOSITION

For the further design, I made a series of models which deconstruct the cultural symbols, it’s a catalogue of artefacts extracted from Nigerian/African and local Cantonese/Chinese culture, they are recreated as architectural elements of the project.

REDEFINING THE COMMUNITY

I hope to be able to explore larger aspects from a broader perspective, through describing a narrative and exaggerated multicultural community through overall planning, so as to express a vision of cultural coexistence. The community is planned as a whole in the composition form of points, lines and planes, and the long corridor runs through the community, connecting various areas, and creating multi-centre and multi-directional layout. Five event spaces are dispersed in the community in the form of points, therefore to encouraging people's engagement and activate the community.

I would like to design a community that is different from the traditional sense. In this fantasy complex community, there are shops, restaurants, food street, residences, social spaces, performance space, activity space, etc.