A living monument for a rootless city

The Chinese city of Shenzhen has transformed from a small village to a megacity in just three decades due to the nation's economic policies. Despite its economic success, the city struggles with a lack of identity. In this thesis, monumentality is used as an analytical and design tool to address the city's rootlessness. Defining Shenzhen as a city of immigrants, this thesis proposes to build an urban monument for the immigrants. In addition to its symbolic meaning, the monument is an excuse for preserving a preeminent Urban Village in the Shenzhen Central Business District. Urban Village is essentially urban slums that accommodate thousands of low-income migrant workers. It carries much of the immigrants' memories about the city and exhibits a strong life vibrancy. By analyzing the prevailing mode of Urban Renewal in Shenzhen, this thesis focuses on how the new building satisfies the different groups of interest. The design contains a strong Janus-faced nature to respond to different parties' requests and the specific site conditions. As a result, a living monument for thousands of migrant workers is made as the city's true memory.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Weiqian, M. Arch Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mark Jarzombek.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/108913

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/108913