PIPI Tsinghua University Architecture
GPA:3.65/4.0
TOEFL: 100
Self-evaluation: Love the rotten intj
获奖经历：China Active House Award 2021
所获offer（截至发稿前）：
UCL - Urban Design
NUS - Urban Design
NUS - Integrated Sustainable Design
HKU - Urban Analytics
爱丁堡 - Urban Strategies and Design
MMU - Architecture and Urbanism
Application Timeline:
Purpose of the project
As a special type of urban landscape, urban villages are characterized by their age, high building density, serious private construction, and outdated infrastructure. Due to multiple reasons such as history, the multiple land properties of urban villages are intertwined. In the process of urban renewal, urban villages will be swallowed up by the city at any time, but they will also sprout new life from the city at any time, like weeds blown by the spring breeze.
As a special area in every big city, urban villages are mixed internally and have a large population mobility. But what few people pay attention to is that cities are all-encompassing complexes, and in addition to the dominance of humans, there are also huge groups of animals struggling to survive in the cities. Stray cats are a prime example. Humans often construct urban ecosystems with only the human scale in mind, ignoring the experiences of other species. Stray cats are either born here or abandoned by humans, and their survival is in a worrying situation. Some stray cats die in the extremely cold weather of winter, and some die from the rolling of whizzing vehicles. They survive in the cracks of the city. At the same time, stray cats also cause many social and ecological problems, such as cat plague.
Dealing with the problem of stray cats is crucial to improving the problem of urban stray animals and protecting urban animals and the environment. The goal of this design is to construct an experiment of cat survival devices in urban villages. Let architecture intervene as a catalyst and exert its own power on the urban space. In the space scene where a person is the absolute protagonist, we let the stray cat replace the person as the protagonist, and use the created building as a new symbol to establish a new space in the urban space, create a new tension, and the interaction between people and cats is also generated in this space.
Design strategy
「 Preliminary Research 」
The design idea has changed from "people-oriented" to "cat-oriented". Therefore, I investigated the cat's living habits and personality traits in detail in the early stage, such as cats like heat, are good at sleeping during the day and hunting at night, are territorial, and like soft things. Cats also have a very different perception of color than humans. They don't have rods in their eyes that can distinguish red, so they can only distinguish blue and green, and if they see red, they may turn yellowish-gray. But cats are still interested in brightly colored things. Cats rarely use color vision in the process of life, and cats rely more on smell to judge things around them than by distinguishing colors. Cats mark their territory with urine, and when passing cats smell the smell, they will take a detour and not go wild in other people's territory. Cats can also tell if they are female or male by smelling the urine and odor glands of other cats.
Secondly, since the design object was stray cats rather than domestic cats, I then collected the unique habits and characteristics of stray cats, and looked up information about the current state of stray cat conservation. Stray cats' desire to prey is a natural instinct that will not fade because of abundant food, and their predation is often a kind of recreational activity, as well as the act of killing other animals in order to protect the territory, protect children, and grab resources, which leads to the number of animals killed by cats is far greater than the number of animals it eats, which has a huge impact on the ecology. In addition to catching mice, cats also catch birds, squirrels, rabbits, bats, snakes, lizards, frogs, insects and other animals, it can be said that it can hunt animals that basically appear in front of it.
Nowadays, the treatment strategy of stray cats is generally TNR (trap neuter return), that is, traps are used to capture stray cats, sterilize them, and then send them to the wilderness areas of the city to reduce their numbers. However, in China, the treatment of stray cats has always been an unresolved problem due to cost and other reasons.
「 Cat Survival Unit Design Process 」
Based on the preliminary research, I selected the typical survival scenes of stray cats in the city, such as on the roof, under the motor vehicle, etc., abstracted the specific scenes into a design formal language, converted the 2D image into a line and then converted it into a 3D living unit module model, and constructed 8 living units based on the scale of cats. In order to adapt to the complex and diverse space of urban villages, parasitic buildings are adopted, and modules of different numbers of units are assembled to adapt to the changes in the spatial scale of urban villages. Each module unit has a length of 900 mm to create a cat-friendly living space.
Through the study of the living habits of stray cats, different units, different materials, colors and functions are given. The theme color palette is blue with greenery, based on the visual nature of cats that can only see blue and green. The unit size is suitable for the cat's body characteristics and adopts a module of 300mm. By combining and superimposing different units, a complete cat survival device can be constructed.
Based on the daily behavior of cats, these eight units are divided into three categories: eating, living, and entertainment. Use materials that cats like to add intimacy to stray cats. Among them, the diet unit is arranged with plants and water to meet the needs of cats to groom and maintain health; The living unit gives the cat shelter from the elements, keeps it warm, and provides some small corners where the cat can curl up for a sense of security; The entertainment unit gives the cat space to jump up and down and sunbathe.
「 Selection of the site of the installation in the field 」
The living environment of cats in urban villages is particularly harsh compared to other urban environments such as parks and residential areas, so I chose urban villages in large cities as specific experimental sites. I chose the Dinghai community, an undemolished urban village in the famous cosmopolitan city of Shanghai, to study the specific composition of people, the relationship between humans and cats, and the specific ways in which the device is placed in the urban environment.
I studied some of the spaces that are unique to the urban village area. For example, in an urban village, there are two buildings with extremely narrow spacing, commonly known as handshake buildings; The density of buildings is high and the quality is uneven, and the forms and languages are different; There is a lack of public space and green space, and there are some weedy wastelands in the area; The degree of utilization of the interior space of the building varies, ranging from crowded rental houses to idle floor spaces that have not been used for a long time.
▲ Handshake Building
Achievements and future prospects
In order to adapt to the complex and changeable environment of urban villages, the lightweight 900mm modular frame is retained to realize the free combination and transformation of the outer frame, and the internal survival unit can be replaced in time according to the needs of time and place. I designed the specific form and function division of the top floor, house gaps, roofs, and open spaces of abandoned houses in Dinghai Community, and associated the interaction between humans and cats.
The devices in different regions can flexibly adapt to different spatial characteristics, and build a multi-level human-cat interaction relationship and a multi-height difference cat movement space. Finally, the goal of giving stray cats a good living space and optimizing the relationship between humans and stray cats is achieved.
I chose three different locations to scale up the design of the cat survival device. On the abandoned top floor, where people interact most frequently with cats, people can come downstairs to observe the cats' every move and give them appropriate help. The remaining roof and building skin provide shelter for cats in winter, greatly reducing the chance of accidental death; On the falling roof, cats can jump up and down to release vitality and energy; In the open space, greenery provides a landscape for people and a place for cats to take shelter from the rain.
The gaps in the grid of different survival units allow people to move through the world of cats, providing opportunities for humans and cats to meet inadvertently.
epilogue
Based on the scale and habits of cats, the modular building form is adopted, and different functional units are arranged according to the characteristics of different lots, and different unit grid combinations are carried out. The 900mm module creates a wonderful collision between the scale of a human and a cat, creating a diverse human-cat relationship diagram. The design provides an architectural design strategy from a non-human perspective, and puts forward suggestions from an architectural perspective to solve a series of ecological problems caused by urban stray animals.
Selected Image Credits:
[0] https://dp.pconline.com.cn/photo/list_3259023.html
[1] http://mt.sohu.com/20171227/n526504989.shtml
[2] https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1695807245985937286&wfr=spider&for=pc
[3] https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/541235128
[4] https://www.sohu.com/a/454103276_722596
Photo and text source / PIPI
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