UNIT 5

The Shanghai Urban Quarry proposes a carefully designed excavation strategy can lead to both: a refurbishment strategy of the endangered lane houses of Shanghai and to an experimental urban housing scheme, situated in the environmental microcosm of the carved out space. The architecture is a down-rise, where prefabricated living pods are bolted to the trenches of the clay pit and clad with terracotta tiles fired in-situ. The clusters of pods and shared lower-ground spaces ultimately bring back the Shanghainese communal living culture and opposes mass construction of residential high-rises. K.L.