Background and Purposes

Ongoing urbanization has made traditional rural communities seem unable to support modern life. Confronted with economic underdevelopment, population outflow, infrastructure shortage, worsening living environment, and lack of educational and medical resources, local residents have had to migrate elsewhere for a better life. In the meantime, local cultures are being encroached by foreign ones, leaving traditional rural communities undervalued, and traditional rural communities and their residents gradually disappearing. Against this backdrop, traditional rural communities are becoming a thing of the past.

This project is designed to better sustain the cultural legacy in traditional rural communities, promote rural economic development, and solve the problem of “hollow” villages, based on which to protecttraditional rural communities and help them thrivein different ways. Through theoretical analysis and practical efforts, we will explore the ways of protecting, and reinvigorating traditional rural communities in the new era.

General Outline

This project follows a participatory and experiential model of design and construction and invites students in their third year or higher levels from SJTU, universities in Hong Kong and Macao, and China’s C9 League universities and foreign universities that have such disciplines as architecture, urban and rural planning, sociology, anthropology, and rural economic management. 25 students from Hong Kong and Macao, 15 students from the mainland, and 15 international students are expected to be enrolled in the project.

The detailed processes are as follows:

• Conducting field research in Lishui, China and the countryside in Turin, and the Alps,Italy. Through the research, we hope to learn how the traditional rural communities there are valued, and then explore solutions to save disappearing rural communities .
• Designing an infrastructure with local traditional building materials in Lishui, during which participants can have a better understanding of how the materials, forms, spaces, infrastructure are relevant to rural communities from design through construction. In the process, participants will have an insight into how to deliver tangible benefits to local communities with the infrastructure.
• Conducting close and extensive investigation of the deserted rural communities in the Italian Alps, based on whose result to propose a solution in the global context for threatened traditional rural communities  .

Management Guidelines

The project leader is supposed to ensure production of research report, chart progress, deploy personnel, and manage funds and materials. The other members shall work with each other to perform tasks as required.