My Summer as an architect not in Beijing

Abstract

Spatial intelligence, one of the seven acknowledged human capabilities, is the result of millions of years of evolution. It enables us to celebrate the complexity of space. Just as the linguistic, mathematical, kinetic, natural and musical intelligences, spatial intelligence is distributed through the organism and linked together by the nervous system. The Arrowsmith School in Canada has issued 19 neuron deficits of our brain to identify the weakness of human cognition for participating the world. The modernism tower in China with its over-simplified spatial structure disregards the social arrangements and formations of the local. The sterile nature of the spatial organization of the Modern apartment leaves the human neurons un-stimulated and limits the development of human capabilities. The proposed contemporary apartment, which is situated in a University campus in Nanning, South-east of China, privileges the polyvalence of the space. The polyvalence of space informs a spatial structure with complex relations and meanings both with the local narrative and the kinesthetic experiences of the author in Auckland. The project investigates the relations based on Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang and the Radical Relations proposed by Bruce Wexler in contemporary western thought. The project aims to improve human cognitive capabilities by stimulating the body's neurons in acceptance of the reality of neuroplasticity. The stimulation is the everyday experiences of the encounters as residents encounter the relations proffered by the spatial complexity of the apartment. The process of making the building and the articulation of the complex relations of the apartment ecology is aided by the computational design. Computational design, identified by Jane Burry, allows designer’s spatial intuition to freely oscillat between the space of constructing the representation, her potentially turbulent ocean of different states, and the imagined experience of possible realizations in physical space. By constructing the dynamic system models, relations between different subjects are explored and reconciled before any final statement of building. This is primarily design thesis sets out to comprehend the complex relationships between the cultural informed economic landscape of China and its current obsession with the un-stimulating world of convention building stock. It looks to re-stimulate apartment living by understanding how the modernist block captured the body in a machine, so that contemporary engagement with Cognitive Architecture might inform a new community in China.