Reconnecting a city’s forgotten identity: The revival of a lost cultural identity through a mixed-use museum project
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Other Title
Authors
Zhuang, Euan
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Degree
Master of Architecture (Professional)
Grantor
Unitec, Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology
Date
2022-10
Supervisors
Su, Bin
Francis, Kerry
Francis, Kerry
Type
Masters Thesis
Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)
Keyword
Guangzhou (China)
China
museum architecture
community development
cultural identity
museums
mixed-use development
China
museum architecture
community development
cultural identity
museums
mixed-use development
ANZSRC Field of Research Code (2020)
Citation
Zhuang, E. (2022). Reconnecting a city’s forgotten identity: The revival of a lost cultural identity through a mixed-use museum project
(Unpublished document submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture (Professional)). Unitec, Te Pūkenga - New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology https://hdl.handle.net/10652/6084
Abstract
RESEARCH QUESTION
How can a community-scale museum facility be used to re-establish Guangzhou’s diminishing cultural identity?
ABSTRACT
The culture and identity of a city has always been directly connected to the people who dwell within, where their creations reflect their learnings and experience throughout history into a singular object. When the old gets replaced with new generations, all that is left to remain and reference the past is through the leftover objects holding the history of their ancestors. In an architectural sense, the historic structures of a specific context display all the memory and knowledge of the past in a physical manner. It offers perspectives into the lives of the city’s prior generations who built structures reflective of their culture and identity at a specific time period, creating a series of windows into the past through each historic site. However, the implication of the loss of a historic site, whether deliberately or otherwise, results in a sever of the link in the cultural identity between current and past generations. A complete loss of historic sites would lead to an eventual disconnect of the city’s occupants from the founding identity forged from their own ancestors and history.
The economic growth sprouted from China’s market reforms during the 1980’s saw the nation undergo an era of urban development further spurred by the rapid increase in population size occurring at the same time. The introduction of new modern building materials and technologies allowed for unprecedented urbanisation required to meet the demands of China’s various cities, making the permanent switch of the Chinese original village-like landscape for one of dense high-rise and residential complexes, with architects racing to utilise the newest technologies unbound by traditional construction. During this era of great development, we can observe a deliberate destruction of historic sites to make space for modern solutions which often failed to integrate or acknowledge the inherent cultural values held within the demolished structures.
The excitement of the modern age eventually faded off to reveal the resulting amalgamation of ‘modern’ projects, unreflective of each location’s identity causing the visual composition of China’s cities to melt into an indistinguishable urban sprawl. This effect was noticed by many contemporary Chinese architects who attempted to rectify the identity crisis through locally inspired projects, often recreating the cultural link through communal inclusion and motifs indicative of a given context’s history; thus reflecting the true nature of the city and its people.
This project looks into the city of Guangzhou, which experienced the rapid urbanisation occurring throughout China which resulted in much of the city’s historic towns demolished for a layer of ‘modern’ construction. Guangzhou’s unique identity as a significant port trading city - the initial contact point between Western foreign powers to China- was lost for uninspired urban developments. Where the condensed nature of the modern city has introduced the importance of open communal spaces, this project aims to implement a museum facility into an existing public space while incorporating and improving the values of the chosen site. The resulting project serves a multi-purpose function of integrating local communities to the new project structures while using lessons learnt by prior projects from various architects and literature as a foundation towards a culturally responsive design, incorporating aspects of climate specific design. The goal will be to provide an example of cultural identity revival through community-supportive design.
Site: Yuexiu Park, Guangzhou, China
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