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2017, Proceedings of AESOP - Association of European Planning Schools Annual Congress 2017, Lisbon - Portugal [ISBN: 978-989-99801-3-6; pp. 3262-3270] , 11-14 July
The paper attempts to outline the urban visions and architectural ideas and vocabulary behind the formation of the large urban conglomeration in Japan, South Korea and China, and how the seeds of Western planning theories and architectural design practice have helped shaping and building the contemporary cites along the vast regions of Asia Pacific Region, and frame a local language in envisioning the city of the future. Reflecting on the contributions from East Asia to the discourse of planning and design a city for the future as promoted by single actors, larger cultural movements and national elites fostering economic ambitions and political agendas of autocratic forces (e.g. from the experimental cities by the Metabolists in Japan, to the more “pragmatic” urban development projects fostered by local and national governments in South Korea and China), the paper tries to explain the key socio-economic factors and engines which have dramatically and radically transformed the skylines of the most dynamic and growing influential area of the world at the dawn of 21st century; it also aims at describe the origins of the various forms and elements of the modern built environments which have been shaped and molded by these same forces, and how/whether these urban forms embodies a true genuine East Asian vision of the city of the future, and what is the current trend in terms of new urban forms and architectural design research at the beginning of 21st century.
Proceedings of ARCHTHEO’16; ISBN: 978-605-9207-51-5; pp. 361-369
Urban Housing for the Masses in East Asia: Structuring the Contemporary Cities in Japan, China and South KoreaAsia Pacific cities are constantly transforming and redesigning their urban environment to adapt to the great challenges of a global economy in 21st century, effortless are trying to balance their ancient history with the needs of a modern society driven by a spectacular economic growth. Whilst the Japanese archipelago has been virtually transformed into a super-conurbation called Megalopolis of Tokaido originated in the 1960s, an extensive and hyper-connected territory of high-density residential urban tissues and heterogeneous industrial zones developed in a sort of continuous and decentralized multi-polar urban entity, South Korea population live mostly in a sort of “Republic of Apartments”, whose modern smart cities are formed mostly by clusters of dense residential compounds. More recently China has planned and operated on a much larger scale the construction of new towns and many vast and dense new residential and business districts in the suburban areas around the major cities, in order to promote a modern urban lifestyle by supporting a gigantic industrial development and fuel an unprecedented economic growth and epochal process of urbanization. This paper intends to present an outline of the processes and forces which led to the development of current mass-residential models in Japan, China and South Korea in order to provide their growing middle class with adequate and modern housing. In doing so it looks at which urban forms, typologies, and design solutions have been implemented to satisfy this demand, underlining similar and different conditions, and the general outcomes related to each specific process of urbanization.
EAAC 2012 - East Asian Architectural Culture International Conference, “Convergence in Divergence - Contemporary Challenges in East Asian Architectural Studies”, CUHK - The Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Architecture, Hong Kong - China, 10-12 December
From “Hanoak” to “A-pa-tu”. Korean Urbanism in the XXth Century2012 •
This paper focuses on the striking contrast between the memory of the traditional architectural and urban elements of Korea and the characters of the contemporary urban landscape which is essentially composed by new high density collective housing complexes integrated with new urban facilities and well maintained green public spaces. It briefly addresses some important issues related with the development of contemporary Korean urbanism, such as the influence of political decision and other economic factors over social aspects of the planning process, the relation between the plans of recent new towns aimed at the creation of a network of modern, technologically advanced and efficient multi-functional urban clusters, designed and built to foster the formation of a larger super-urban structure in the country to better compete in the global economy and stimulate the national economy, and the consolidation of the Korean middle class.
A conference presentation at: The 18th International Planning History Society Conference (IPHS 2018 Yokohama) /// In my paper, I propose to write an inter-Asian global urban history through the following case study: a comparative analysis of two guidelines of urban design in Hong Kong and Seoul. By closely reading those two guidelines, based on the 2017 versions, I aim to illustrate how each city government draws a concept of the global through institutional urban design. While the case of Hong Kong considers a laissez-faire system to be a crucial impetus in generating the theories of urban design, which seems not unrelated to the country’s global history that emerged out of a “barren rock,” the one of Seoul relies on a set of binaries that consist of problematizations of urban realities and suggestions for their improvements through which to bring forth a purified, pre-global urban aesthetics. Although the framework of an establishment of rules and their practical implementations is a shared approach applied to both cases, I argue that each of the city government theorizes the global in quite different manners; the former proposes a loose, centrifugal system of generating the concept of the global as an open system, while the latter takes urban design as an opportunity to pursue a centripetal globalization not fully subordinated by the forces coming from the ‘imagined’ outside.
This book aims to illustrate both the opportunities and challenges that present themselves in contemporary Asian New Town planning. In doing so, Rising in the East presents a relatively immediate account of the current urbanization processes that are transforming the Asian continent. As a key part of this development, New Towns have their own sometimes tragic, sometimes spectacular stories to tell. Their histories reveal the drama behind the mundane rows of cookie-cutter housing blocks. While globalization continues to blur regional differences, it becomes imperative to ask: what can we learn from these new New Towns?
IJET - International Journal of Engineering and Technology, IACSIT Press - Singapore, Vol.6, No. 5, October
Changing Architectures and Evolving Urbanism in Modern Japanese Urban Environment2014 •
The paper introduces some broad considerations on the relation between the process of urban growth and architectural development in modern Japan, which unfolded since the middle of the 20th century and heavily relied on new architectural ideas and models, and the progress of building technologies and infrastructure development staged during the year of rapid economic growth (1950s-1960s). It investigates how the urban environment which resulted was shaped according to the social, historical and cultural context of the country at the time, and was linked to some fundamental ideas derived from Western urban and architectural theories. The fragmentation of the Japanese cites, which entered modernity earlier than other East Asian countries and witnessed first-hand the phase of surge and criticism of Modernism, have been influenced by the formation of a large extension of interconnected conurbations forming an intricate and dense urban structure, the so-called Tokaido Megalopolis, a continuous and integrated urban corridor stretching from Tokyo region to Fukuoka city.
The contemporary South Korean landscape is characterised by a massive display of modern apartment buildings. They are omnipresent in their monotonous manifestation and represent the dream of the Korean population. Serial mass housing is a typology that has had a great diffusion all over the world, but how has modern housing developed in South Korea? To this end, what are the resulting local adaptations? This paper retraces these key evolutional aspects. Methodologically, it draws on a scholarly literature review as well as on-site photographic surveys, analysing both the urban and architectural transformation from the early modernisation period to the present condition of contemporary housing. An historical background introduces Korean traditional urban houses, to be used as a context to describe the contemporary modern city that has developed since the 1960s. The main emphasis is then placed on the urbanisation process that fully matured during the 1980s together with a focus on the mass housing typology as the main pivot in the urban transformation. Finally, the paper will draw a parallel between modern Western theories and Korean applications.
Positions-east Asia Cultures Critique
Seoul and Singapore as "New Asian Cities": Literature, Urban Transformation, and the Concentricity of Power2011 •
The self-organizing city in Vietnam : processes of change and transformation in housing in Hanoi
The self-organizing city in Vietnam : processes of change and transformation in housing in Hanoi2007 •
2015 •
Roberto Bottazzi, Theodoros Dounas, Jillian Walliss, Thomas Coomans, Andrzej Piotrowski, Pawda Tjoa, Pu Miao, Penny R lewis, Peter Magyar, Mary G Padua, PhD, ASLA, CLARB, RLA, Ali Cheshmehzangi, Peter Magyar, Francesca Serri, Jianyu Chen
FOREWORD These proceedings document the work of a wide range of researchers, academics and experts from across the world, each presenting at the Masterplanning the Future international conference held in China on October 18th and 19th 2012. These proceedings of the conference outline a variety of intellectual explorations relating to historical and contemporary situations, discussions and case studies, in China and around the world. As a body of work, and as a contribution to open enquiry, this is less an examination of how direct "conclusions" or "lessons" can be learned from different historical periods and social circumstances, but hopefully helpfully, the exchange of ideas and experiences facilitated by the Masterplanning the Future conference may help to stimulate a better understanding of architecture, contemporary and traditional urbanism; fostering critical awareness and challenging perceptions. Within a rapidly urbanizing world, the contributors look variously at whether advocacy for, criticism of, or rejection of modern design – as well as Modernist idealism - can go some way to help us understand the global urban condition. Let’s take the West, Africa and China as historico-cultural points on the compass. The West: In early 20th century Europe, modernist Charles Jencks considers talk of a zeitgeist to be pernicious the appeal of Modernism was that it caught the zeitgeist of a social liberationist tendency. It divided opinion then, and continues to do so today. Post- and academic Westfall suggests that the impact of Modernist historicism to be tyrannous . But whether in agreement or otherwise, Modernism operated within an era of social transformation: it was widely noted that it reflected an experimental age, in which . In the course of the early years of the new century, risk-taking avant-gardism in the West seems to have been replaced - for better or worse - by risk-aversion. Does this current attitude reflect a maturation from the age of innocence shown by early Modernists contemporary 2011) the self-assurance to try and to fail (Westfall: ; or is it a sign of a loss of nerve in the  period. Africa: As it usurps Asia as the most rapidly urbanising region in the world, many commentators, such as Mike Davis, use the African continent as a cypher for their disillusion with the modern world. The vision of the African city as innocent and about to be ravaged by modernity, recalls the view of Oswald Spengler who linked the decline of Western civilization with the rise of the new. In contemporary critiques, modernism in Africa reflects a cultural colonialism rather than a progressive developmental model (Avermate et al: 2010), with opponents advocating against direct planned improvements in living standards; Koolhaas, for example, celebrates his observation that ” (Koolhaas: 2002). Many in Africa are striving for a new way modernity, but is there just cause to kick against the Eurocentric model of development just because of its colonial past? (Araeen: 2003) When writers problematize "when modernism... transplanted to Africa, being not endogenous, it grafted poorly to existing life structures" (Agwuele: 2012), there is an implicit reverence for the economic and developmental gap. Modern life did not transplant into the relative poverty of Africa, they say, because Africa wasn't sufficiently developed to accept it. So how are we - or they - to square this underdevelopment circle? China: Continuity and change have long been the hallmarks of Chinese development throughout the centuries. As such, a synergy between contemporary and traditional needs is conjured up in the abstract notion of "Modernity with Chinese characteristics" (Esherick: 2000). Conversely, the Masterplanning the Future keynote speaker, Professor Wang Yun, director of Atelier Fronti bemoans Modernism's “erasure” from China’s collective memory. Is there really a harmonious way to balance the needs and desires of the past and the future? Or does China’s current epoch exemplify the somewhat antagonistic rise of progress, sometimes codified as social modernity. These abovementioned vignettes are simply placed here as illustrative models, however, the contributions within these proceedings are much more detailed, specific - and engaging - and are chosen as papers that will stimulate contention, discussion and argument. (Jencks: 2002) designers had “in Lagos there is no choice, but there are countless ways to articulate the condition of no choice 4 We believe that these proceedings, initiated by Masterplanning the Future's "Modernism: East, West & Across The World" conference, are an excellent opportunity to take a lead in a debate that will change the way that architecture and urbanism is understood and discussed in China... and further afield. As the conference convenor, I, together with co-organiser, Theodoros Dounas, are delighted to have published these works which I hope will get the fullest credit and critique. As presenters and contributors to the academic conference, I believe that you have opened a window on the modern condition. Austin Williams XJTLU
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Private Investors in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and the Reconfiguration of the City Center in Relation to the Periphery since the 1990s