Patch the Wall

Sammanfattning: In recent years, digital fabrication has become powerful tool for architects to process and implement design and construction. However, in some countries, architects lack sufficient support to achieve their intentions in digital fabrication. Since it needs high degree of cooperation with customized production, but from some precedents, we architects are investigating possible ways to combine digital design with vernacular craft strategy and local material in their projects, which are able to perform a good quality and local spirit. In China, although the country has experienced fast development during last decades, there are large amount of projects still undergoing with the limitation of “low-budget”, “low-tech” and “short-period”. Paradoxically, due to the development, China starts to lose its own memory in vernacular architecture since most historical buildings were replaced by new but non-feature buildings. Therefore, bringing back the local memory becomes another issue of discussion in Chinese architectural discourse. To explore intersecitons between digital fabrication and vernacular architecture, I selected an ancient wall in Xichang, China case study. This wall has been standing there for centuries, the appearance itself shows different layers from different ages. In the early 70s and 80s, people demolished parts of the wall because of political reason. Recently, local government realized that the relic of this wall has potential to become a tourist attraction, and start to restore it. Thus the approach of this project to restore one damaged part with contemporary method, which could integrate vernacular traditions and tectonics with contemporary architectural design and construction. My objective is to draw on the masonry tradition that characterizes regional architecture to catalyze new aesthetics in object and space. By using architectural design as a means to introduce a new layer to the wall, the project supplements the historical wall with an architectural form that expands the vernacular tradition of brick masonry, yet introduces expression and spatial vocabulary that utilizes the possibilities that emerge with new technologies in structure, material, and construction.