an excessive minimalism:
BAU478-A U-Park Incubator, Shang Qing Huai, Nanjing

An excessive minimalism
U-Park Incubator, Shang Qing Huai, Nanjing

becoming Nomad
The history of modern architecture is also the history of exciting utopian visions. However, utopias generally fail because what is seen as a utopia by one or some, often becomes the imposition of a dystopia on the many. Unfortunately, utopias are often so single-minded and exclusive of difference that they alienate a majority of the very society with which they are purporting to engage.

Utopias are a form of meta-narrative, part of a structuralist idea of thought that ultimately suggests overly simple, rigid, and ideological answers to a series of complex, flexible, ever-changing problems. More recently, post-structuralist thought argues that meta-narratives are no longer useful in dealing with the complex opportunities and challenges of contemporary society and posit that a more inclusive and complex philosophical view could yield better results.

Within the 60 years of post-structutralist thought, Deleuze and Guattari have developed a philosophy of creativity that embraces many concepts, including assemblage, abstract machines, the Rhizome, and a resultant aesthetic of the sublime. Deleuze and Guattari have even questioned the very foundations of Western thought, calling for an ontology of becoming, rather than of being, and an epistemology of Nomos, rather than Logos? All of us are, and every thing is, in a state of constant change and to assist in dealing with this process we need become intellectual Nomads.

heterotopia
This post-structuralist thought has been reflected in contemporary architectural discourse and it has been argued that the ordering sensibilities of Alvar Aalto are a source of this attitude in architecture. Aalto’s ordering sensibility has been classified as a collection and coexistence of utopias, what constitutes a heterotopia. Not a singular vision imposed on the many, but a coexistence of an assemblage of utopias for the many.

Aalto’s work, together with the work of Robert Venturi and Dennis Scott-Brown; the other Greys of the post-modern movement influenced and inspired by the post-structuralist text of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture ; Koolhaas and OMAs dirty realism; and a focus during the 80’s and 90’s on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari; indicate that meta-narratives and utopias no longer hold their allure.

urban context
As China shifts to become the world’s innovator and not just its factory, it is transforming its industrial zones into technopoles. These new research and design (R+D) districts have all the essential ingredients of success: they are adjacent to industry and universities; have the support of government; and are located in a country undergoing massive change.

Shang Qing Huai district is in competition with 21 other new technopoles in Nanjing. The U Park Incubator is this technopole’s first seed development. It is intended to lure enterpises to start-up in, or move to, this district. The project is situated on the northern boundary of the 2 sq km technopole. To the east of the district a fourteen square kilometer residential district is being established. To the west an industry zone and to its north is a university district. The incubator is immediately adjacent to a planned metro station and factory outlets shopping mall. Opposite the site a small park has been completed. To the west an R+D office complex has commenced construction.

five utopias
At first the Shangqinghuai project seems to be a utopian urban project, a Metabolist mega structure or a (Dutch) Structuralist project on steroids, that could go on forever while ignoring both program and context. But this project is not another utopia. It is an engagement with all the complexities of what was a soon to become urban site and the architectural issues of a complex brief.

There are five utopias assembled for this project that transform the five responses into a complex emergence that exceeds each of the decisions. An assemblage truly is greater than the sum of its parts.

utopia 1: five towers to accommodate the program
The brief asked for 240,000m2 of office space. Height controls, FAR requirements and a desire for shared views and equity of solar access distributed the towers in a staggered configuration on the site.

At the recommendation of BAU the programs of two of the five towers were changed from working to living. One is an affordable apartment the other is hotel. The three office towers are for lease to established enterprises requiring large areas. All five towers have public programs at both ground level and podium roof level. Entrepreneur networking clubs are located on top floors.

utopia 2: add a podium to provide an urban active edge, deflect downdrafts, provide additional space for the incubator program, and provide a positive street space
However, isolated towers spread over a site 300m long and 130m deep would not provide a positive urban experience for pedestrians, so a three-storey podium of active programs was located over the entire site.