Post-Expo 2010++
University of Hong Kong Faculty of Architecture, Shanghai Study Centre
13–21 August 2010
The fourth consecutive AA Shanghai Summer School was be hosted at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Architecture Shanghai Study Centre. In this intensive nine-day studio-based course, we investigated new computational design approaches in architecture and urbanism, within the context of Shanghai, one of the world’s most rapidly growing, emblematic twenty-first century cities of commerce, industry and culture.
Last year’s subject was the 5.3 km2 site developed for the Shanghai 2010 Expo, and focused on proposals for the site after the sixmonth event. We confronted the limitations of the short-term historical legacy and context of the expo, by engaging in the complexity of urbanism as a life-like, dynamic and evolutionary process. In the first stage of a twophase programme, parametric design systems was introduced in a series of intensive presentation and tutorial sessions, as the basis for investigating information-based associative design concepts and methodologies.
In the second stage of work, these new design and production tools targeted the creation of dynamic architectural scenarios and urban models generated in relation to the Shanghai Expo site, as the test-bed for teambased comprehensive design exercises and propositions. Students applied code-based modelling, simulation and fabrication techniques, towards multiple, variable, sequential, and recursive prototypes for a range of new cultural, commercial and civic facilities, driven by scenarios of future incremental, adaptive growth and change.
Director
Tom Verebes is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. He co-founded the OCEAN network in 1995 and is the Creative Director of OCEAN.CN, a Hong Kong-based design consultancy network. He was co-director of the AA’s Design Research Lab until January 2009; recent publications include DRLTEN.