Next, Chinatown

Next, Chinatown: community design for transforming Rotterdam Chinatown

xu, ziqi (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Harteveld, Maurice (mentor)
Milinović, S. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Urbanism

2023-06-30

This report examines the role of an urban designer in a multicultural society. When an urban society is overlapped with a spatial and diverse cultural layer, a cultural community is seen as the essential unit for outreaching and interacting with this complex environment. Community design is required for an urban designer to explore the intersection of spatial design and community development methodologies, top-down and bottom-up decision-making.

In this report, the author takes use of the case of Rotterdam Chinatown to develop an experimental community design methodology and apply it to the on-site practice. It aims to stimulate communication and resource links within the Chinese community in a globalization context by utilizing open spaces as a medium.

This research starts with the preliminary background study, followed by creating a set of customized pattern languages as the communication, learning, and design tools to engage the Rotterdam Chinatown community and the Chinese community in Rotterdam. A live event held in public spaces of Rotterdam Chinatown is embodied as a performance to evaluate the efficiency of the vision co-created by stakeholders. The final outcome learns about the requirements of the Chinese community of Rotterdam and concludes with refined pattern language and scenario design based on the conditions of Rotterdam Chinatown.

This participatory design methodology featured for the Rotterdam Chinatown community fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment among the community members and encourages active participation in shaping the future of the community in a pure bottom-up approach.

Keywords: community design, cultural glocalization, Chinatown, pattern language, public space

community development
public space
glocalization
cultural integration
Chinatown

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b8aa9a5d-9769-4e18-a75a-28a63768ec00

https://www.goethe.de/ins/nl/nl/ver.cfm?event_id=24703855 this project is collected as one project of Goethe Investigation https://www.instagram.com/chinatown.r.comm/ this Instagram account recorded how this project was developing

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 ziqi xu