Similar to NICE2035, the design harvest that has been regarded as a successful case of rural revitalization is actually a test field for new communities. In 2007, Lou Yongqi launched this innovation and entrepreneurship platform that combines urban and rural resources in Chongming Xianqiao Village, a suburb of Shanghai, named Design Harvest. The harvest is related to the locality of the countryside, and also the expectation that designers will play an integrated role in complex formats.
Open the website of Design Harvest and you will see some keywords such as: rural lifestyle, small and interconnected, innovation and entrepreneurship platform.
Its starting point is to build a low-density economic development engine similar to Silicon Valley for the suburbs of Shanghai. "Shanghai has so many people, but agriculture accounts for less than 1% of GDP, Chongming has natural resources and vast space, and it is close to Shanghai, with such good scientific and technological intellectual resources, it should not only produce melons, fruits and vegetables, but should be a test field for future agricultural forms, and should produce unicorn companies in agricultural technology and design." The misplaced cycle of resources is the original intention of designing a good harvest.
Although after fourteen years of development, Xianqiao Village has been reborn, and the resources of the city have been continuously transferred to this place, including homestays, scientific and technological agriculture, design workshops, and artists' residences. Lou Yongqi still scrutinizes the project cautiously, calling it "not yet a success."
"When more than half of the 'new farmers' who came here to settle down, I thought it was a real change." "Whether in Shanghai or Yunnan, the essence of rural construction should be to let people who yearn for urban lifestyles go to the city, and people who like rural lifestyles can spontaneously invest in the innovation and creation of beautiful villages without burden." The more feasible we provide, the more diverse and idealistic the whole society will be. ”
Behind this concept is also related to Lou Yongqi's deeper thinking. “
The essence of design is not to build a beautiful house, to fundamentally change it must require the participation of people, the generation of creative communities. People with the same goals, pursuits and interests in life gather together to create their ideal life dreams and living environment, which is the essence of community. ”
This is the first time we have experienced that "design thinking is related to the realization of human values".
When we asked why we should abandon the common innovation platform model and go into the social countryside, Lou Yongqi said"
The underlying logic is that I hope to find some new sources of sustainable development for China's future. Design must be closely related to life, modernization has invaded all aspects of life, to paraphrase the logic of Habermas's "living world" colonization, the big city and the entire administrative and economic subsystem that comes with it have colonized our living world, and the countryside and community are relatively less thoroughly formatted places, but also the environment closest to our living world and our essential needs as human beings. Here, there should be more possibilities. ”
Lou Yongqi did not explain what his so-called essential needs are, but we boldly guessed that it should be an emotional connection between people and people, people and nature, and people and the environment that cannot be touched by the tentacles of urban life on the one hand. In his eyes, NICE2035 is exactly the same logic as designing Harvest. On the basis of community thinking, you can get NICE2035 by playing the platform logic to the extreme. Platform logic is the power of organization
(Enterprises or NGOs, NGOs) to do the platform of knowledge, the platform of capital, the platform of infrastructure, and then there are various stakeholders on this platform, they can all have their own voices and contributions.
"Why the emphasis on community thinking is the foundation, because it determines whether the constituents of this platform identify with certain common values from the heart, and whether they can turn passive design into active design, so as to truly generate the motivation for innovation." Before 2005 I was an extremely prolific architect, I built a lot of houses, including many schools, but then I found that the buildings could not change a lot of things, the school houses were beautiful, if you can't change the model of exam-oriented education, it is just to create a more beautiful prison for the children. Compared with material things, spiritual things are sometimes more effective, and the underlying logic of social development is still changes in institutions and structures. ”