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Zhaizi Rural Development College is an architectural design to provide educational and training spaces in Zhaizi village, Shanxi. Zhaizi village is well-known for its practices of rural cooperative development and serves as an attraction for other villages who seek to learn from its experience. To transform local experiences into further formal education programs, a rural development college was proposed to provide all weather facilities and a centre for education-related activities for up to 200 people. Insitu Project working with the community conducted comprehensive survey works to understand local building materials and technology, brief and programme needs and developed design concepts. During the design process, villagers were invited to provide suggestions among design models. The final design consisted two new buildings with angled roof with an existing building on site, defining a triangle courtyard space. It serves as a multi-functional space for class programs, outdoor activities and traditional rural events.

Hou Tou Street Design project was a participatory and cultural planning workshop for the design of a communal neighborhood street in Zhaizi village. In the collection of memories and imaginations for planning and design of street the workshop consisted of three steps: making models, mapping memories and visioning future. Firstly, the design team invited villagers to collaboratively make a 1:20 street model by completing their own individual house. After making the site model, villagers were encouraged to share their memories about the street life on the model through images and models. Lastly, a serious of design toolkits are provided for villagers to trigger their imagination and display future street space. The workshop generated a 20 meter-length design model, documenting a collective storytelling of over 30 villagers.

The Children’s Activity Space in Beihuanggu village was designed in participation with the local community and Weifang Yuandu Volunteer Service Centre. It converted an underused courtyard house in the village to provide all weather multi-functional community facilities for children gatherings that included study areas, library and play areas for the village. Local stone-mason masters and the Insitu Project team worked on site to explore ways to modify stone architecture to a more open type of space, and source local resources and skills to construct the spaces. The project was completed in January 2018.

Xianniangxi community kitchen is participatory design and making project that arose from the need to relocate an existing social enterprise run community kitchen. Located in an unfinished concrete structure, the kitchen and dining area function as a community gathering space, giving character and memeorable spatial experience to the daily life of visitors and villagers. Using a material repurposing approach, villagers and participants collected waste materials to construct the external walls. Serving to both clean up the surrounding village and to enable participants to value found material. The project was made possible under a Poly U APSS Service Learning programme and involved both SZU and Poly U students.

As a second stage two groups from School of Design and SZU constructed devices and fittings for the space to provide special features for the community kitchen. These were made in classes taught by Kuo Jze Yi in both schools and transported and installed in the Community Kitchen.

The Miaoxia Village Community Guesthouse and social enterprise completed in 2017 was constructed through a participatory design process. The renovation of an existing house and construction of a new extension accommodating 20 people, provides six guest bedrooms, training spaces for disaster preparedness, a social workers office, a tea room, activity spaces for children’s play and study, as well as bathroom and laundry amenities in a total of 250m². Generous external bridges and deck spaces provide spaces of delight, informality and community are integrated into the overall design to contribute to place-making and flexible usage. The guesthouse run as a cooperative venture to provides revenue for the villagers, permits visitors to stay overnight or longer and to engage in other activities in the village. It also forms part of a community waste management system.

 

The Miaoxia Village Community Kitchen, a cross-disciplinary research project, implemented a community kitchen and social enterprise in 2015. The collaboration developed ‘software’ through Action Research (local understanding, dialogue and engagement; social systems and services) and ‘hardware’ through the applied research methodology of Participatory Design processes (design process, constructed spaces, capacity development and skill extension), involving over 100 participants. The resulting kitchen enables larger events to be catered for including festivals, weddings and visiting groups, and generates revenue for the villagers. It fosters positive change in the village, activating skills, self-organising capacities and higher levels of community cohesion.