If you haven't heard the name Aldo Cibic, you probably know Memphis, a genre of design style that swept the second half of the 20th century and was comparable to the Bauhaus. Aldo Cibic, 64, one of the founders of the Memphis Group, talks about the "heroic deeds" of co-founding Memphis at the age of 28, and he will say mischievously: I don't know (why I am respected), I have never done anything, not even attended college, I just became an assistant to Sotersas, and then co-founded Memphis.
This master who influenced the world's design trends now lives in Shanghai. In Yangpu, near The New Village of Anshan on The Siping Road Campus of Tongji University, Aldo Cibic transformed a 34-square-meter old, dilapidated house, moved the typical Memphis style here, and announced that he "wanted to live in this house until the end of his life." Of course, Aldo Cibic didn't come to Siping Road to decorate the house; he also had an "errand" here that ignited his desire and enthusiasm for creativity — he was a professor at Tongji University's School of Design and Creativity and one of the participants in NICE2035, a community renewal and upgrading program that included Anshan New Village. And it was Lou Yongqi who ignited this passion.
Lou Yongqi is the Vice President of Tongji University and the Dean of the School of Design and Creativity of Tongji University. He has many identities: architect, urban planner, designer, manager, educator. In addition, he is the initiator of numerous design innovation projects such as Design Harvest and Needs LAB, including NICE 2035, which Aldo Cibic is involved in.
What is NICE 2035? You might ask. Lou Yongqi quoted the designer Buchanan as saying: Is it a symbol, a man-made object, an action and event, or a system and environment. It shows the world how creativity can actually penetrate and exert its influence in society, rather than just hanging on to the slogan "The world needs innovation." How should such a great thing be done, who will do it, and where will people come from? To understand all this, we interviewed Lou Yongqi.
I met Lou Yongqi on a Sunday afternoon. We waited for more than an hour with trepidation, during which we worried countless times about whether today's date was going to fail. We all know that he is a very busy man, and has received an unknown number of waves of people before talking to us. Lou Yongqi's studio is in the NICE 2035 campus, entering through a small inconspicuous door, a narrow street with gray walls on one side and rows of storefronts on the other. "When it comes to creative parks, many people think of colourful walls, huge graffiti and deliberately dewy paintings on street corners. The urban taste depicted with effort is more like an aesthetic volume that cannot be seen at a glance. Coffee shops, galleries, handicraft shops, and restaurants converge to form an urban cultural consumption and art commercial landscape, and the petty bourgeois mood and elite aesthetic set off a different atmosphere that is more or less higher than daily life. ”
But this is not the case with NICE 2035 Campus. The shop on the street has a narrow, low-key façade, and after getting used to the hustle and bustle of high decibel colors, you even wonder if the coffee seller is warmly welcoming you. If you don't go inside and investigate, you may not be able to guess what story is happening in that space, or what kind of thinking sparks are colliding between people. This simplicity sets off a calm and down-to-earth, muffled temperament. Walking inside, there is also a sense of "Ah, this is indeed Shanghai with little land" and fireworks. This is what he calls a project that has been "misunderstood", in addition to it, there is also a harvest of design rooted in Chongming Island.
"These two projects have been misrepresented by the media. Speaking of what "rural revitalization", "peach blossom garden" and "humanistic care" are, it is too superficial, and this is not what we really want to do. The so-called humanistic care is not my starting point, but things are done, and naturally there are such results, but it is not in my planning. ”
NICE 2035 started in 2015, choosing a mediocre residential community near Siping Road, just as Chongming Xianqiao Village, which was designed to do a bumper harvest, chose Chongming Xianqiao Village, which is "inconvenient transportation and has no special resources". It was originally a "fold" under the tone of the air cavity of the Ocean on the Great Upper Sea: the alleys were narrow, the aisles were cramped, the flies and stalls were gathered, the steel clothes rails of each house did not give way to each other, and the most united moment of neighbors was to pick up chicken feather dusters and drive away strange vehicles trying to park. This community is so ordinary, ordinary in Shanghai, that it is like a gray shadow of the city compared with large commercial circles such as Lujiazui, Jing'an Temple, and Xujiahui.
Old Siping Road Street
The remodeled Siping Road community
Such a community is spontaneous and organic, like a muffled machine: apart from flickering lights, you don't know what it's dealing with and what it's going to output. It's an enclosed grayscale space, and Lou Yongqi designed an operating system for it. In 2015, Lou Yongqi did the "Siping Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship Community" planning for Yangpu District. Since he supported two doctoral students, Minqing Ni and Mingjie Zhu, to promote the first project "Siping Space Creation", the design power of the School of Design and Creativity of Tongji University began to gradually enter the community, and the community acupuncture technique of touch was significantly but subtly improved the pain points. For example, the Fuxin Road Pocket Garden Project embeds children's play facilities into the sidewalk, turning an ordinary street corner green space into a parent-child hotspot. In the process of in-depth cooperation with residents, they found thousands of problems, but also dug into the resources of difficult number theory. Subsequently, many Fablabs (Rapid Prototyping Labs), including Aston Martin Innovation Space, Urban Science Design Lab, Neuni Materials Lab, SoundLab Sound Lab, etc., settled in the Siping community. Cutting-edge creations collide directly with front-line needs, giving birth to inexplicable works such as "Fireeye Lab".
Sound Lab
NICE 2035×CREATER （Neuni）
Aston Martin Design Studio
At NICE 2035, innovation is no longer a linear process of reasoning, but draws on ubiquitous creativity and inspiration and translates them into reality. Communities and residents are not seen as the end and end of the chain, but as the front end and the beginning. With NICE 2035, the Siping community is no longer muffled, and residents are given channels to express their needs and participate in the solution. NICE 2035 became an interface between community and professional forces. This may be why Lou Yongqi calls it the "prototype of future life" - every community in the future should have a window to interact with the outside world.
At today's NICE 2035, even a "foreigner" like Aldo Cibic who doesn't speak the language and has a poisonous eye can feel at home. Living, grocery shopping, laundry, working with guests, hanging out in the sun are all convenient.
NICE2035 is developing in the direction of Lou Yongqi's plan. Ostensibly, it is a makeover and upgrade of the community. In fact, in addition to the transformation of the living environment, talents, science and technology, capital, emerging consumer formats, design and creative laboratories and places of occurrence, a large number of resources related to urban life, and even future life are gathered to open up the platform is the core of its expression. As such, it is more like an incubator of creativity and innovation, a pilot of the future community lifestyle nestled in the pyrotechnic atmosphere.