2019 UIA-CBC International Colleges and Universities Competitive Construction Workshop

 I. Workshop Background

The annual UIA International Colleges and Universities Competitive Construction Workshop dated from 2016 provides an architectural practice platform that enables students to walk out of their classroom, face the real environment and issues, and implement the full practice from design to construction. By offering practical construction opportunities, the workshop intends to have students thoroughly understand the Genius Loci, feel the architectural space, and learn things that will instruct their future design and practice.

UIA International Colleges and Universities Construction Workshop has generated leading and extensive influence due to its exploration of architecture education mode and architecture practice. The Third Workshop (2018) was reported by various medias including CCTV and Xinhua News Agency and has received attention from more than 1 million people. The workshop chooses a different site every year, defining the theme of workshop in view of the local environment and characteristics. It has attracted teams from dozens of famous international and local universities, including Tsinghua University, Hong Kong University, Syracuse University, etc. Many academicians, heads of colleges and universities, specialists and scholars, such as Academician of CAE Cui Kai, President of CAUPD Yang Baojun, Rector of Oslo School of Architecture and Design Ole Gustavsen, have been invited as judges to assess and instruct the students’ design and construction.

2019 UIA-CBCInternational Colleges and Universities Competitive Construction Workshop (2019) walks into Guoyuan Village, Aiyuan Town, Siyang County, Suqian City, Jiangsu. Taking the century-old pear orchard as the site, this year’s Competitive Construction Workshop sets a theme of creating “Pear Orchard Cabins” that can improve quality of living in the orchard. The participating teams will design 15 cabins in the orchard as well as infrastructure that connects the whole communityin order to contributeto the revitalization of the “Century-old Pear Orchard”, and also to explore a path for changing villages by the power of design.

II. Workshop Theme

Theme of the 2019 UIA-CBC International Colleges and Universities Competitive Construction Workshop: Pear Orchard Cabins

The site of the2019 UIA-CBCInternational Colleges and Universities Competitive Construction Workshop (2019) is located at Guoyuan Village, Aiyuan Town, Siyang County, a typical trading town at the boundary between two provinces, which is famous for its “crisp white pears”. Inside the orchard, there are “seven trees” which are more than 100 years old, giving this place the name of “Century-old Pear Orchard”. However, the orchard is now in urgent need of revitalization as the village has been confronted with the problem of primary and monotonous industrial development.

The theme of this year’s workshop is “Pear Orchard Cabins”, which takes the whole 100-year-old orchard as the site of design where 15 selected teams from renowned international and domestic universities will be involved to discuss how to “activate villages through design”. The teams will use a limited space to design and construct their cabin in order to provide more activity solutions to the villagers and visitors. The design will be based on the element of “pear” and picture future scenarios involving countryside spatial experience and pear-related themes all the way from design toconstructions orconstruction. The design content is not limited to installations and may also include consideration of the site and the environment.

As an integral part of village revitalization plan, the workshop seeks to explore a rural public architectural form than can fit in with nature. By linking up the 15 “Pear Orchard Cabins” in the century-old orchard with a continuous infrastructure, it emphasizes the fun experience of exploring the place, activates the heart of the village and injects the power of design into the basic mode of rural production, driving the change and improvement of rural lifestyle and providing a paradigm for rural construction.

Firtst meeting is on Monday, 04.March in SR AB, 9:00h

Mladen Jadric and Felix Siegrist

The Silk Road traditionally connects the East and the West. Thanks to the many exciting accounts, notably those by Marco Polo, many places that are on the route, such as Samarkand, Bukhara, Kashgar and Taklamakan, have become a myth. The Silk Road refers in fact to a network of connecting roads, which converge into the longest trade route of the ancient world. 

It branches out to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, India, Korea and Japan. 

Today, the Silk Road is the main economic axis of Eurasia, a dense network of highways, railroads and oil and gas pipelines.

Now, the fabled Silk Road is not only a trade route, but also one of the main platforms for religious and cultural exchange among the various countries that it connects. These influences are particularly visible when you set out to make a typological study of the dwellings found there.  

Many of these types have had a great influence on both Asian and European residential building models, as well as on the cultures of living in the past centuries .

Both the anonymous and the iconic examples, which rather fall under the category of "the art of building," exhibit high design qualities. Their high quality artistic and architectural living concepts serve as an unending source of inspiration for today's many ecological and construction solutions. 

The residential houses along the Silk Road with their typological variations reflect the entire complexity of the social, economic, and religious influences that converge there.