Artikel Superblock Security
Autor André Schmidt und Joris Fach
In China Lab Guide to Megablock Urbanism
Seite 340-347
Herausgeber Columbia Books on Architecture and the City
Redaktion/Text Jeffrey Johnson, Cressica Brazier, Tat Lam
Copyright Columbia Books on Architecture and the City
Chinese urban life - perhaps more than any other form of metropolitan existence - has cultivated urban space as controlled environments.
The dialectic model of private, controlled, secure space and public, uncontrolled, insecure space typically descriptive of Western urbanity, thus falls short in explaining the hybrid niches and layers in which Chinese life unfolds beyond home. The superblock development, one of the most prominent exponents of the new Chinese city, has also developed a specific kind of controlled common space. The questions that his essay sets out to ask (and answer) is exactly that: Are superblocks heavily controlled structures? Does their “urban space” exercise control by the simple virtue of size? Does the need for security grow with the sheer size of buildings? Does a superblock produce mega-security?
Diffuse Security
The idea of security is deeply embedded in China’s building culture and is materialized on both the large and small scale: the city and the house. The apex of a controlled urban environment in China is unquestionably the Forbidden City. It is the model of a mega-structure marked by surveillance, segregation, and physically manifested layers of privacy and publicity. As such, it is essentially hierarchical. Temples, gates, wings, and routes of movement all adhere to a canon of centralized power that radiates beyond the city walls and in turn produces a pivotal system of ideological security.
Artikel Superblock Security
Autor André Schmidt und Joris Fach
In China Lab Guide to Megablock Urbanism
Seite 340-347
Herausgeber Columbia Books on Architecture and the City
Redaktion/Text Jeffrey Johnson, Cressica Brazier, Tat Lam
Copyright Columbia Books on Architecture and the City
Chinese urban life - perhaps more than any other form of metropolitan existence - has cultivated urban space as controlled environments.
The dialectic model of private, controlled, secure space and public, uncontrolled, insecure space typically descriptive of Western urbanity, thus falls short in explaining the hybrid niches and layers in which Chinese life unfolds beyond home. The superblock development, one of the most prominent exponents of the new Chinese city, has also developed a specific kind of controlled common space. The questions that his essay sets out to ask (and answer) is exactly that: Are superblocks heavily controlled structures? Does their “urban space” exercise control by the simple virtue of size? Does the need for security grow with the sheer size of buildings? Does a superblock produce mega-security?
Diffuse Security
The idea of security is deeply embedded in China’s building culture and is materialized on both the large and small scale: the city and the house. The apex of a controlled urban environment in China is unquestionably the Forbidden City. It is the model of a mega-structure marked by surveillance, segregation, and physically manifested layers of privacy and publicity. As such, it is essentially hierarchical. Temples, gates, wings, and routes of movement all adhere to a canon of centralized power that radiates beyond the city walls and in turn produces a pivotal system of ideological security.