The final stage of the 2009 BE Lab was the full-quarter Autumn urban design and historic preservation studio carried out on the UW campus and devoted to the detailed development of design ideas for Taoping’s recovery. The following pages describe this work in summary. The full studio report is linked here.
Prof. Dan Abramson, assisted by doctoral student Yue Gong, led the studio. Eleven students enrolled for full credit and one student participated for partial credit through an independent study arrangement. Three of the students had participated in both spring prep seminar and the summer field studio; another three had participated only in the spring prep seminar; and the remaining six were new to the topic.
Based on findings from the summer field survey; and making use of ideas generated in the spring and summer charrettes, the autumn studio proposed a flexible plan for the village’s reconstruction that included both short-term solutions for post-earthquake housing difficulties, as well as long-term solutions for preservation of architectural character, restoration of agricultural self-sufficiency, ecologically sustainable wastewater treatment, and diversification and coordination of different types of tourism in the village and throughout the Zagunao River valley. The solutions serve to illustrate the following arguments, some of which responded to the Taoping Five Points established during the summer field studio, and others of which were new.
The immediate provision of durable post-earthquake housing does not need to compromise a long-term land-saving development approach that continues important traditional building practices. To illustrate this, studio member Carlene Thatcher-Martin proposed a compact new village of individual household lots with small, quickly-buildable core housing units that could be gradually enlarged. Over time, the new village would increasingly take on the integrated characteristics of the old village (Figure 20). Jason Hutto demonstrated how both old and new villages would accommodate a mix of tourists and residents, as some residents remain in the new village while others return to the old, leaving space in each for guestrooms (Figure 21).
|
UW TAOPING DESIGN STUDIO
