Location: E9 Exhibition Hall, Redtory Art & Design Factory, Tianhe district, Guangzhou, China

Dr. Lina Stergiou, Associate Professor, workshop leader.
Collaborating Professors from GAFA: Kim Saeng Hwa and Jin Tao.

Exhibition of student work, outcome of the research design workshop on Ceramic Works, Urban Morphology, Spatial Dynamics - Shipai Village, China. Eight student teams exhibit eight b/w panels and eight white clay models.

The research and design workshop focused on Shipai village in Guangzhou, where the vast changes that it decisively and unexpectedly underwent from the 1960s onwards were examined in urban, morphological and material terms. Shipai is defined by complex and diverse spatial, morphological and material characteristics, with the ceramic works playing a prevalent role. The workshop analyzed the rich urban micro-scale of Shipai along with the role that the ceramics play in it: such as the relationship between the ceramic tiles and the building mass; its connection with other materials; the textures and materials of the facades; qualities of transparency, semi-transparency and non-transparency; the relation between solid and void; between light and shadow; and the additional to the facade elements such as electrical wires, water pipes, air-condition units or iron frames.  The analysis led to eight spatial/building interventions in Shipai, which translate in abstract forms the qualities of its complex urban fabric. The propositions are comprised by an urban feature-component incl. ceramic works, which is repeated in variations.

The exhibition design follows 4 main principles:

1. To arrive at a unified presentation of all student work: 8 teams exhibit 8 b/w vertical panels (118cm W x 168cm H) incl. a strip on top with project’s representative title and photos (118cm W x 37cm H) - and 8 clay models.

2. To reflect workshop's research design method and subject: the abstraction process of the urban exercise in b/w panels - and the ceramic works research matter, producing 1:20 white clay models of proposals.

3. To express the identity and formal properties of Shipai urban mass and its ceramics, leading to decision for vertical, self-standing clay models, and analysis photos, diagrams on panels.

4. Using recyclable materials, cardboard and white clay.

This research and design workshop was part of an international one organized by the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts GAFA, Guangzhou, and Prof. Chi Ti-Nan, with 75 students along with 17 faculty members from 9 Universities: the Department of Architecture, Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool University, Suzhou; the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, Mumbai; the Department of Architecture, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute SFAI, Chongqing; the Urban & Architectural Institute, National University of Civil Engineering, Hanoi; the Department of Architecture, Shanghai University; the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore; the Architectural Association, London; and the School of Architecture, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology RMIT.