pinkcloud: flip city
‘flip/city’ by pinkcloud, shanghai, china all images courtesy of pinkcloud
copenhagen collective pinkcloud have developed ‘flip/city’ an urban identity proposal for shanghai, china. the model questions the traditional typologies by redefining methods of organizing communities built on the human scale. the scheme flips the horizontal cityscape to the vertical. footprints of the existing urban landscape that are currenly only visible by plane are reorganized to become the new face of the upright community. this plan increases density by expressing distinct functions for its citizens, such as green space, on an individual level.
by expanding shanghai along the vertical plane, unused urban voids will be activated. proximity and areas for informal meeting spaces catalyze synergy and an increased sense of community life accommodating a wider range of undertakings. residential, commercial, educational, cultural, and infrastructural functions are arranged to enable walking distance between all vital activities, as neglected areas are infilled with installations and necessary equipment.
new urban typology
the project looks at sustainability from a social, economical, ecological and culture perspective. from a public viewpoint the anonymous feeling of immense cities is challenged by interconnecting typically isolated diverse city zones. value is increased through green space as dead voids and abandoned sites are renewed. heating and cooling is accomplished by collecting solar and wind energy. finally, the heritage of shanghai is preserved by reinterpreting its historical urban framework.
seven modular typologies are constructed in the micro scale which are visible from the human eye at street level. each classification houses a function that is readable from near and far distances to enable clear wayfinding and navigation for all inhabitants. at the macro level, unique typologies are configured and distributed with a parametric algorithm to maintain an individual scale throughout the project. the planner can choose a number of housing and office modules and select the density and footprint. the calculations optimize the arrangement of units into close communities and uses site-specific qualities as parameters to improve the composition. ‘flip/city’, at the mega-scale uses different footprints to optimize the parametric arrangement of its modules. the proposal can be modified to a wide range of situations from environmental influences to social structures. six diverse sites with unique urban problems for analysis were used to test the model’s flexibility and adaptability.
perspective of ‘flip/city’
section of community landscape
detail of section
modular typologies
modular typologies
modular units reconfiguring new community
(left) existing shanghai footprint (right) ‘flip/city’ model development
creation of new urban spaces
site plan
systems model
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Hallo Omma!
First I was just about tho write something like \”this is stupid\” but I feel I have to elaborate a bit more to justify my strong criticism:
The people who did this should come here to Shanghai rather than making absurd out of context, realism and mind proposals. In this case Shanghai is just a photo backdrop for their rendering collages.
For me, living in and loving Shanghai, calling it a second home now, this is an insult to the city itself. If they would know or understand this city they would realize it\’s not a tabula rasa as they wish but a grown city with a history that makes it unique in its blend of European influenced high quality urban and public space with Chinese typologies of living. This heritage has come under threat by the recent development in which the densely knitted network of neighbourhoods are replaced by monofunctional vertical units.
Their \”expanding shanghai along the vertical plane\” sounds very hip but is yesterday’s news to people here.
“footprints of the existing urban landscape that are currenly only visible by plane are reorganized to become the new face of the upright community” – these footprints are actually very well visible to pedestrians and the network of longtang and shikumen houses which pinkcloud want to destroy is unique in the world.
Saying \”the heritage of shanghai is preserved by reinterpreting its historical urban framework\” sounds cool but remains empty. This proposal disregards the existing urban framework in the most horrible way possible. Within 20 years, 1.7 Million people have been relocated and their houses torn down to make way for highrises and shopping malls, but probably even few of those projects are as destructive to the grown urban space as flip/city.
I know each of the neighbourhoods in the proposed sites very well for years now and the way this proposal abuses Shanghai as a cheap flashy effect enhancer grosses me out. It’s like a cheap dish with too much MSG to cover the flat taste and bad ingredients used. For an abstract utopian play with ideas it doesn\’t provide anything new so I\’m asking myself why they did it in the first place.
Please pinkcloud, next time when you want to do some Photoshop blinbling go do it somewhere else and please spend more than fifteen minutes on it.
I agree with Arnd.
totally agree..living aswll here…..
i disagree
Hi TO
thanks for taking the time to write a critique about our project.
Please feel free to visit the full project description with additional drawings and texts here:
http://pinkcloud.dk/work/05/flipcity-shanghai
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\”This heritage has come under threat by the recent development in which the densely knitted network of neighbourhoods are replaced by monofunctional vertical units.\”
– these monofunctional vertical units as well as the gated community development are two things the proposal strongly criticizes. The new typology tries to maximize interests like density and being close to the center as well as maximizing green areas with diverse neighbourhoods. these new neighbourhoods will be a 3 dimensional densely knitted network.
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\”(…) the network of longtang and shikumen houses which pinkcloud want to destroy is unique in the world.\”
– none of the sites for the new typology is a longtan or shikumen housing area. instead these are conserved and strengthened – check the L-shaped structure that carefully wraps around the historic neighborhood. The sites we chose are all backsides of and urban voids or sites with developer highrise projects from the 90s.
\”check the L-shaped structure that carefully wraps around the historic neighborhood.\”