Urban Garden Kit @ Urbanism Architecture Bi City Biennial

Urban Garden Kit fosters micro-gardens for two Shenzhen Urban Village blocks at No. 8-Lane 2, Chunjing Street Shenzhen – China’s Urban Village through the use of a computer gaming platform.

Lecture, Workshop & Exhibition @ UABB 2017, Hong Kong & Shenzhen, P.R. China, 16-22 December 2017

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Bi-City Biennale
of Urbanism
& Architecture
Shenzhen

Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), the only exhibition in the world to explore issues of urbanization, will open for its 7th edition on December 15, 2017. It will be held at Nantou Old Town, a heterogeneous symbiosis of a historic town and a contemporary urban village in Shenzhen. Hou Hanru, Liu Xiaodu, and Meng Yan (in alphabetical order) make up the curatorial team, all known for notable accomplishments in their respective fields and trans-disciplinary practices. UABB is thrilled to host more than 200 exhibitors from 25 countries to share their perspectives on diversity and urban villages at this year’s biennale. A series of exhibitions are presented site-specifically in Nantou Old Town, with numerous artistic and architectural interventions in public spaces. Performances, forums and workshops will also be held, giving visitors a variety of exciting experiences.

Urban
Garden
Kit

The Urban Garden Kit program at the Urbanism and Architecture Bi-City Biennial (UABB) brings together urban planners, architects and landscapers, artists and curators, game developers and communication experts and other creative professionals. Goal is the development of computer games for neighbourhood greening: The Urban Garden Kit fosters micro-gardens for two Shenzhen Urban Village blocks at No. 8-Lane 2, Chunjing Street Shenzhen – China’s Urban Village

Neighborhood Making

The Urban Garden Kit fosters micro-gardens for two Shenzhen Urban Village blocks at No. 8-Lane 2, Chunjing Street Shenzhen – China’s Urban Village. The goal is the development of computer games for neighbourhood greening.

China Urban Villages

In China’s Urban Villages processes of informal urbanization have produced urban typologies with densities over 70% and thus with no space for green. Chinese Urban Villages, with their crowded multistory buildings and irregular narrow streets, can be found also in the center of greater metropolises and are not regulated by centralized urban planning. Formally housing the poor and transient populations of city-newcomers, they are today becoming home of the young urban creative classes.

In Shenzhen Urban Villages with their narrow alleys occupied by cars, a strategy to improve climate should aim at integrating green into the extremely dense existing building fabric.

Bringing Green to a Higher Level

As green is essential to climate adaptation, we have to literary ‘bring green to a higher-level’, integrating it into the existing buildings by involving the inhabitants in a digitally supported co-creating process

Co-Creative Game

With the help of the Urban Garden Kit, the Shenzheners of Chunjing and residents of 春景街二坊八號 upgrade their neighbourhood by inserting micro-gardens on the balconies, the roofs, the walls as well as the interiors of the existing buildings.

The Urban Garden Kit provides a co-creative bridge between the experts and the users of the neighbourhood, turning the users of the city in city-makers and neighbourhood-gardeners.

The program aims to activate the Chunjing residents and foster participatory processes of climate mitigation and city co-creation, transforming the perception of the Urban Villages. Urban Garden Kit creates a platform for exchange between different groups, focusing on local knowledge, among other on endemic plants and their use, and on local oral history.

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