other institutions for this new century:
BAU604 Qingpu District People’s Court

Qingpu, Shanghai, China

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Discipline

Architecture, Interior Design

Typology

Public

City

Qingpu, Shanghai, China

Date

2017

Status

Invited competition, 1st prize

Client

Shanghai Dianshan Lake Metro Development Co. Ltd.

Program

Court rooms 80-700m2, offices, canteen, library, meeting rooms, basement car park.

this new century (so far)

It has been suggested that 50 years from now, this particular time in human history will be considered Deleuzian. No doubt it could be argued that his agenda (destroy the world as we know it, dissolve the subjects of society, disintegrate its social structures and institutions, minorize its politics, and stutter its language) has opened up opportunities for highly educated and extremely articulate social conservatives; for tens of thousands of social media sophists sprouting evidence-free opinions; for pseudo-scientist peddling alternative facts; for artists producing commodities rather than engaging in critical practice; for self-interested, ill-informed public leaders; for obfuscators in general, to move society toward another pre-enlightenment.

Conversely, Deleuze’s agenda also includes the potential for countering what is increasingly becoming a post-factual world. He calls for all of us to: create a new world, one of equity, freedom, and tolerance; form new inclusive subjects with which society can engage; produce new tolerant options of existence; give a strong voice to the often unheard minorities; and invent new compositions in language to push beyond slogan and cliché. He asked us to reject opinion and embrace evidence supported by the three great bodies of thought we use to make sense of reality: philosophy, science and art.

a better institution

This building resists the trend of public institutions embracing commercial aesthetics and iconography – institutions becoming shops (looking more approachable but still remaining powerfully aloof). And being a public building, it can’t explore the suggested alternative – shops becoming institutions (being part of the ephemeral market while trying to look more substantive). This building tests a third alternative, the idea of institutions becoming better institutions,

the cradle and the jewel

All support services and spaces are located in a clearly articulated element that sits under, and wraps up two opposing sides of the courtrooms. Easily accessible to all; flexible and open to change; providing human-scaled services; aware of tradition, but embracing the future; interested in the minority point of view as well as the majority; this element forms a cradle of support, without which the courts would be unstable and inaccessible.

The courtrooms are gathered together in a centralized faceted form that, like a precious gemstone, sits within the embrace of the cradle. Intended to be clad in a semi-precious material, this function of justice is a jewel without which the cradle would be an empty gesture.

Like a well-balanced society, the cradle needs the jewel as much as the jewel needs the cradle.

openness, transparency, light, AND the circulation puzzle

The basic internal planning conundrum for court buildings is how to deal with the three separate circulation systems (court officers, the public, and the defendant) that need to end up in the same courtroom at the same time – without crossing paths! This problem is exacerbated by the fact that this building has 32 courtrooms of varying sizes distributed over over six floors.

Wrapping the courts in circulation, with one half private circulation (for court officers) and the other half public circulation (for the press, general observers, and family and friends of the defendant) accommodates two of the three systems. And bringing the defendants vertically into the courts from below (or above) accommodates the third. Unfortunately, this approach usually results in hidden (closed), internal (opaque), artificially lit ( dark) courtrooms.

However, by carefully manipulating the section through the jewel, the circulation issues have been dealt with AND natural light has been provided to almost all the courtrooms. Despite the complex circulation systems, the public foyers and the courtrooms of this building are open, transparent and filled with light – justice is not only done, it is seen to be done.

justice not judgment

It is hoped that this new institution doesn’t dispense judgment so much as justice – facilitating a path for those caught up in the justice system to be rehabilitated to become the best citizen they can possibly be.

Private Landscapes

2015

Nanjing

Playgrounds

2020

Suzhou

Public Landscapes

2000-2005

Shanghai

Structures & Pavillions

2019

2023

Office

2005-2010

2021

Shenzhen

Culture

Public

Planning

Hangzhou

Urban Design

Huai’an

Xi'an

Xinyu

Education

2013

Retail

Hospitality

Mixed Use

Sports

Education

2018

Jiangyin

Yixing

2017

Taizhou

Office

Culture

Retail

Melbourne

2016

2011

Residential

Infrastructure

Kyneton

Hotel

Hotel

Wuxi

Healthcare

2014

2012

Healthcare

Fuding

Shaoxing

Chongqing

Kunshan

Wuhan

Cixi

Ningbo

Meishan

Canberra

Jingzhou

Chengdu

Hospitality

1990-2000

Xiamen

Residential

Hopetoun

Caofeidian

an excessive minimalism:
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
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clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
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landscape, urbanity, networks, the suitcase, and the paper-bag:
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more than a frozen moment:
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look! up in the sky!
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Made in China, no question – Invented in China, of course:
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a hybrid infrastructure:
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large plains, small grains, and the in-between:
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on reflection:
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Place, typologies, programs, and public life:
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more than just a technopolis:
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a second network embracing history, smalllness, and complexity:
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a park for everyone and everyone in their park:
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disorder – not randonmness but beyond order:
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mosaics of teaching, networks of learning:
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walled cities within a walled city:
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co-existence without incompatibility:
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space-time conflict:
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clarity and unpredictable adjacencies:
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Journeys AND destination, not just destinations:
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continuous loops and internal courts:
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weaving and stitching:
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a constructed and cultured topography:
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it takes a village to educate a child:
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city typologies, cultural traditions, contemporary theories, and spaceships:
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artificial plateau:building more site:
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it is the least we could do: minimalism in an environment of expressionism
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more Piazza Navona than Levittown
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classrooms AND the in-between: teaching and learning beyond the classroom
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other institutions for this new century:
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building the unfinished:
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minimal AND maximal:
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small in scale large in monumentality:
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multiple rooms of difference:
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active cultural edges, passive natural centres:
BAU402 Shanghai Qingpu Qin Yuan Lake Park

intimate, cool, sheltered and lively:
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formal teaching and informal learning:
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an exercise in robustness:
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effortless complexity: learning from water-town:
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no longer but not only:
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actualizing the virtual:
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geometry, history, art, craft, iconography, and pragmatics: an exploration of intention, coding, narrative, and meaning
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there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in:
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BAU009 house in the sky

surreal adjacencies:
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mini-city of culture:
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keeping a low profile:
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positive space, human scale, and a blue-green net:
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dis-integrated guest houses :
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don’t look at me, don’t look at me:
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new buildings, old topography:
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defining the perimeter, programming the centre, inhabiting them both:
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turning outside-in:
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beyond PODS, networks, and nodes:
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podium and bill(ding)board:
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inner sanctuary, outer crust:
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an excessive minimalism:
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a plane of reference:
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rips in the fabric by place:
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other ideas of hospital:
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architecture AND terrain:
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crust: in-between and on the edge
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eco urbanism:
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microcosm:
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beyond the picturesque:
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don’t just re-use the typology, improve it!
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building a community not just housing:
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upside down program – ‘private’ circulation becoming ‘public’ circulation:
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extra-large private space as public space:
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mini-me:
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staggering:
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urban camouflage:
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the resort at the end of the yellow dirt road:
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critical regionalism and abstraction:
BAU487 Nanjing Yaxi Citta-Slow

hospital for the ill, health care for the healthy, aged care for the elderly: BAU469 Zhaoxiang Hospital

tear open the package: BAU247 Qingpu NGS Supermarket

urban sponge:
BAU324 Cixi Commercial and Culture Center

lyrical islands in pragmatic seas:
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fractured enormity:
BAU281 Chongqing Huarun

ring roads AND peripheral parks:
BAU243 Shanghai Ring Park

simple box OR 3 points in space – you choose:
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many utopias:
BAU129 Xinhu Pearl City Housing Development

a close family:
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stretching, squeezing, bending, trimming:
BAU550 Huanglong Xigu Urban Design

BOTH networks AND objects:
BAU497 Wyndham Cove Eco Sub-urb

ethics, democracy, difference:
BAU470 Towards a Socially Sustainable Canberra

warp and woof:
BAU460 Jingzhou Museum

sustainable technologies for clean living:
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network of learning:
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not in galleries, but a way of seeing:
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shopping sandwich:
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celebrating the collective, the intimate, the sustainable, and the local:
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21st century Ponte Vecchio:
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antidote: not another ghetto city:
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at last …finally …some diversity:
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recycling and beyond
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an assemblage of difference:
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streets as shelters, bars as amphitheaters, landscapes as playgrounds:
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reduce, reuse, recycle:
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binary oppositions defining a field of operation – all we wanted was a park:
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the hotel as microcosm of the city:
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…very strange:
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the beautiful and the extraordinary:
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a dynamic yet stable vehicle:
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palimpsest:
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innovation both inside and out:
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exquisite corpse
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landscape becomes urban design becomes architecture:
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repetition and difference:
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no longer drowning – waving:
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yet another point of view:
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ordinary not heroic, symbolic not monumental:
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woven threads:
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private precincts, public networks:
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creative networks:
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maximize commuication and cross fertilization:
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