No taller than 500M, no plagiarism: China signals 'new era' for architecture

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by CNN

No taller than 500M, no plagiarism: China signals 'new era' for architecture

Published 6th June 2020
Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

An end to "copycat" buildings and a ban on skyscrapers taller than 500 meters (1,640 feet) are among the Chinese government's new guidelines for architects, property developers and urban planners.

Outlining what it calls a "new era" for China's cities, a circular issued by the country's housing ministry and the National Development and Reform Commission earlier this year also proposes other sweeping measures to ensure buildings "embody the spirit" of their surroundings and "highlight Chinese characteristics."

With height restrictions already being implemented in places like Beijing, and a 2016 government directive calling for the end to "oversized, xenocentric, weird" buildings, the guidelines appear to formalize changes that were already underway...

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ch...hnk/index.html

[The North One]

I guess they got tired of building monolithic tacky shit, can't say I blame them.

[mrnyc]

the big bosses for life over there will tell you what you can and can't build, they just wont tell you when they misplace a corona.

[dubu]

you dont need the tallest skyscrapers, if everyone was evenly spread across the world, cities would be less weird and more balanced. i like some of china's weird buildings, but too many people live there. maybe they plan on moving into space, china would be the first to do it probably.

[Stratosphere]

• Video Link

[Stratosphere]

The days of the Chinese mega skyscraper appear to be over

Dec 21, 2020
by Mandy Zuo

China is home to 44 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings, including the 128-story Shanghai Tower, the second tallest in the world at 2,073 ft.

But China is also home to one of the tallest unfinished towers anywhere, the Goldin Finance 117 – otherwise known as the China 117 – in Tianjin, a major port city a couple of hours away from Beijing.  

When it broke ground 12 years ago, the hope was that the mega skyscraper eclipse the Shanghai Tower as the tallest building outside of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

But financial difficulties saw construction grind to a halt in 2015 and the construction on the mega tower has been delayed repeatedly and remains suspended today, according to the local government responsible for the area, Binhai New Area.

“The original developer went bankrupt and no one has taken over the project yet,” a staff member told Inkstone.

But regardless of the fate of China 117, these megastructures may be the last of a dying breed. 

In an April 2020 directive, the central government in Beijing asked local governments to slow down when building skyscrapers because of environmental worries and concerns about how giant structures impact urban planning. 

China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development prohibited the development of high-rises over 500 meters (1,640 ft) while demanding strict control of the construction of buildings over 250 meters (820 ft) tall.

It also asked local governments to seriously consider the need for new buildings of over 100 meters (328 ft).

Many local governments have already responded to the order, issuing detailed regulations to address them.

In November, officials in China’s most northern province of Heilongjiang announced that stadiums, museums and theaters with a size of around 323,000 sq ft would be strictly regulated. 

In Yunnan province, officials would be penalized for any project that received significant public criticism for being overly expensive or unnecessary.

The regulations also curtailed plans for mega skyscrapers across China.

The developer of the Suzhou Zhongnan Centre in Suzhou, a city about 90 minutes inland from Shanghai, announced earlier this year, that it would lower the building’s planned height by about 500 ft.

A new landmark tower in the Luohu district of the southern megacity Shenzhen was set to rival the world’s tallest building the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai with a height of over 2,700 ft, but it will now be completed at around 1,640 ft tall...

https://amp-inkstonenews-com.cdn.amp...om&amp_tf=From %251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inkstonenews.com%2Fsociety%2Fdays-chinese-mega-skyscraper-appear-be-over%2Farticle%2F3114834

[memph]

I wonder if this means the remaining high density urban villages in Pearl River Delta (esp Shenzhen) are less likely to be destroyed for redevelopment.

[muppet]

Shenzhen is the only city in China that is instigating a protection for its urban villages -though this was agreed well before the new law. The rest across the country are being blitzed in what's been measured as the greatest urban demolition ever seen.

(Urban villages btw are semi-legal midrises that sprung up in the 1990s, but encapsulate Chinese streetlife).

[memph]

Originally Posted by muppet

Shenzhen is the only city in China that is instigating a protection for its urban villages -though this was agreed well before the new law. The rest across the country are being blitzed in what's been measured as the greatest urban demolition ever seen.

(Urban villages btw are semi-legal midrises that sprung up in the 1990s, but encapsulate Chinese streetlife).

I didn't know about the new protection measures. The main reason I brought up Shenzhen is that it's urban villages are particularly dense, in the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants per square mile (like 500k ppsm on average?).

From an outside view that might seem hard to believe but the buildings are very tightly packed, much more than would be typical in North America, and only separated by laneways that are 15ft wide at most, often only 5-10ft. The land is also overwhelming residential, not much institutional uses, factories or parks (those are mostly outside of the urban villages I think?). And the buildings get pretty tall, up to 10 storeys or so (typically 6-8).

Usually to make a profit you need to increase FSI about 3 fold. However once you go skyscraper mode, you're not really going to be able to have your towers glued together without any spacing between them, you need to increase the spacing to allow light to reach down to the lower floors. Shenzhen towers are usually not as tightly packed as in Hong Kong, so the ground floor coverage might be 1/4 of what it is for urban villages. That means they'd have to be 4x3 = 12x taller than the 7 storey buildings already in place, or 84 stories tall... I suppose if the developers can sell the units at a higher price per sf in the towers thanks to the better views or less packed nature of those redevelopments, they don't have to be that tall. But I think you basically need to go 50+ storeys tall for redevelopment to be viable (that's assuming you have to get the land at market price... which maybe developers get below market price due to government intervention?).

[muppet]

Yep, basically local councils now instate the law that x amount of people have to live in y vicinity of z amount of green space, with those parks graded as to how interactive and used they are (as opposed to say, grass verges by a motorway or an unclimbable hill).



https://image5.sixthtone.com


This has heralded the destruction of the 'informal housing', aka as handshake houses as that's how close they are together that people from separate blocks can reach over.

Shenzhen is rehabilitating these areas as it's the closest to an 'old city' that the 30 year old metropolis can get (other than ancient swallowed up villages in its peripheries, or rebuilt Ye Olde China Hand districts). It's making them more livable while keeping the famous streetlife, markets and pedestrian footfall.

There's Dafen, which became the world's sweatshop for art and painting reproductions/ commissions during the noughties, and the city's no 1 attraction


https://cdn.theculturetrip.com, https://retaildesignblog.net



www.stitchingworlds.net





Other urban villages (slowly getting rehabilitation)



www.on-curating.org, www.thatsmags.com

www.indeawards.com



www.cobosocial.com

www.world-architects.com











One firm's treatment of the exterior on the right (not a new building):



It's not just cities trying to keep housing affordable, but the protection of street culture (and the traditional urban way of life). Sadly the rest of China has / is bulldozing this:

[memph]

Yeah one of the cool things about the Shenzhen urban villages is that they're an example of a high density very urban and very pedestrian friendly built form, similar to the pedestrianized European city centers. However, the difference is that the vast majority of the buildings were built in the 90s and 00s, during Shenzhen's big growth boom, which makes it a rather rare example of that built form from such modern times.

It seems a lot of the streets are pedestrian only, and even the ones that allow cars are essentially woonerfs where the very narrow nature of the street and crowding by pedestrians, shops, etc forces any cars to proceed slowly and carefully.

Although other such traditional urbanism do exist, they're generally more lowrise (ex in Indonesia or Japan). The other example would be Dhaka, where most of the city is essentially a midrise pedestrian only/pedestrian priority zone due to the streets being too narrow for cars. I would say that Dhaka is a bit less dense and less tidy compared to Shenzhen's urban villages though, and the narrow streets are more over-run by rick-shaws and the buildings don't relate to the street as well (Dhaka has more walls along the street).

[IMBY]

Originally Posted by Stratosphere

• Video Link

I fail to see how any of these buildings are complimentary to any skyline. I think it's OK to have just one of these iconic towers in a city, but not a collection of them like Dubai.