Imagining the Immediate Present: Responsive Approaches to the Investigation of Things

摘要

Conducted in the old town of Nanjing in the summer of 2015, the aim of the Gewu Workshop was to set the future agenda of responsive design research in China, focusing on alternative contexts in which methods, roles and definitions need to be re-examined. As part of a collective design experiment, 10 leading young practitioners from diverse professional backgrounds (architects, architectural historians, theorists, a curator and a journal editor) were invited to carry out research studies on a common site in the Hualugang district. The rationale for the selection was to include as many of the different types of enquiry employed in contemporary Chinese architecture as possible. Instead of proposals for future urban development, however, the workshop focused on a series of exercises to interrogate and imagine the present.