Turn unfinished buildings into bridges and connections between urban and rural areas

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The process of rural and urban people came into contact

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Experiments about how distance effect the image

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The growing process of pumpkins and luffa

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The growing process of peanut and potato

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The growingBean sprouts and black fungus

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The layout of different place for different crops

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Space routes chart

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Equipment room

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Facade design

The wall facing the city is a wall of crops. The crops are pumpkins, loofahs, and peanuts, which require more sunlight. I use crops to design the walls in order to attract urbanites to experience a new lifestyle and reduce work pressure, and let the urbanite realize that countrymen do not only consume their resources after they enter the city from the countryside. Rural people also provide a lot of essential fresh food to urban people. The lens wall is facing the village. I want to use urban elements to attract rural people. I designed the convex lens wall because people walk towards the convex lens wall from a long distance, they saw the process of changing an upside-down image from a very vague image to clearer and enlarged upright image. I think this is very similar to the process of rural people entering the urban life circle. In the beginning, barriers and contradictions will arise because of unfamiliarity, but they will gradually adapt to city life over time. Even they will learn and try to use the technology in the city, such as the use of different colors of light in my project to promote plant growth. The life in cities will help them gain more knowledge to plant, increase the yield of crops, and their planting skills.

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The rotation of lenses because of the wind

The lens wall not only provides the ventilation needed for indoor crops, but also enhances the interaction between indoor and outdoor and becomes a bridge between rural and urban areas. The wind which is an irresistible force will make the lens rotate because the lenses are suspended on the wall by a string. As mentioned above because of the property of lens, the rotation will cause the distortion of the image. But both countrymen and urbanite inside and outside the building can actively rotate the lens and avoid distortion of the image, changing the angle the wind brings to them. Projecting this design into reality, wind implies the expansion of urban into rural, which is the result of national development and is irresistible. Neither rural nor urban people can stop it. Distortion of the image caused by rotation means the barrier between countrymen and the urbanites which makes both sides cannot see the real and positive side of each other. The reasons of the barrier are complex, including different stereotypes in their mind for each other because of some reason, the accumulated conflicts between the two sides in daily life, etc. The active behavior of people to rotate the lens to change the angle originally brought by the wind implies that urban and rural people can choose to weaken the barrier in their life actively. And they should integrate into the new life with active behaviors, and such active interaction can alleviate the obstacles and frictions between them. Although the two sides have to live together due to irresistible force, it does not mean that there are only obstacles between them. They can choose to actively blend into each other's lives, communicate, and learn from each other's strengths.

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Urban and Rural Communication Space

The Tide phenomenon is the periodic motion of seawater under the action of the moon and the sun. The same phenomenon can be observed in Chinese society, which has a similar periodicity. In each cycle, the house is built, decorated, and demolished, then the next cycle starts. It is an endless process. The buildings have very short life spans. If there is an interrupt in the whole process. The buildings are easy to be unfinished ruins. It happens because people make the wrong decisions, and it happens in an unpleasant way. And in a modern city, It’s not in harmony with its surroundings.

The unfinished ruins are also a kind of barrier for people. Different buildings have different languages and functions which can give people different feelings. People will have different subjective assessments of these buildings and know the functions of these buildings. However, unfinished ruins can be confusing for people because people even don’t know the functions of them. A barrier can block two objects, in this case, the confusing function is the barrier between the people and buildings. But from another point of view, the barrier is not only an obstacle but also a connection. The question is how to strengthen the connection and reduce the obstacle simultaneously. There is another barrier between people near the unfinished ruin site. It emerged because of the expansion of the city; the rural people had to enter the city life, the urban people also had to accept the rural people into their lives. There are many barriers to the formation of a new life circle between the two groups. Therefore, I hope to weaken the barrier between rural people and urban people and strengthen their connection by using the barrier of unfinished ruins as a bridge between urban and rural areas.

There are two ways to weaken barriers and strengthen connections. One is to be a field experience, where countrymen can still grow crops in cities. So that those countrymen whose main skill is farming can retain their original way of life after entering the city, rather than feeling confused and blocked by entering the city life. The other material is a lens. Although it is transparent, its image changes depending on the distance. It will bring people different visual feelings, such as a convex lens. Viewing from a distance will be a blurred and magnified inverted image, which is a kind of barrier from the perspective of vision. But when you get very close to a convex lens, what you can see is an enlarged image. However, you and the image are separated by a lens as if it were in front of you. This phenomenon can be regarded as a reinforced connection from the perspective of vision.