[1]

Chang’an Avenue runs along the modern axis of the city and intersects with the historic north-south axis at the heart of Beijing. The experience of going through Chang’an Avenue is like passing a series of displayed architectural objects along two sides of the 16-lane way. These monumental buildings were built over a 30-year span, and all aspired to stand for the rapid modernization.

Therefore, these buildings materialized the historic transformations since 1949. In many ways, they stand for the memories of Beijing as a place of living despite of its political status. Chang’an Avenue is a museum for the entire city.

[2]

The singular usage of the street, the marginalized public space, and the scale of the buildings altogether create a monologue and diminish the significance of publicity. Those rich stories of the city are bifurcated by the asphalt road, fragmented and undervalued. The street is a device of forbidding.

[3]

In The Generic City, Rem Koolhaas criticized that “sharing the past” is failing to create new identities. The present street only permits a shared past through monuments rather than creating public lives that generate the communal identity for Beijing. New identities demand liberating the street to insert diverse public engagements. 

[4]

Since 1950s, there is a 45-meter height limit in central Beijing to maintain the old city skyline, yet the concept of a skyline is challenged when a single building is conceived at the scale of a city infrastructure to serve entirely for the public instead of any corporate ambition. To replace the old street, the new architecture invokes the typology of a groundscraper.

[5]

Chinese Screen was a spatial and decorative artifact whose prototypical function is a porous and soft spatial divisor that sometimes creates focal points yet sometimes becomes the background. Infused with architectural qualities from a Chinese screen, the groundscraper becomes a background for the city and pulls people into a rigorous public realm unprecedented in the old city.

[6]

As a response to aforementioned issues with publicity, identity, typology, and cultural motif, a 6,525-meter-long city park standing on nearly 30 cores acts as a self-sustained structure to suspend public sports facilities and circulatory components. It pulls people from both sides of the street as well as vehicles Views are directed outwards. The entire building becomes a series of frames for the city and the people. The entire city becomes an artifact for enlightenment.