Wencun Village Renovation Project

Description

This project takes a critical stance on Chinese urban development, which has encouraged mass migration to urban centres and hollowed out the rural environment. The founders of Amateur Architecture Studio, Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, have devoted much of their lives to studying China’s rural villages and analysing their way of life, which is in danger of disappearing due to rural exodus and lack of resources. This project aims to preserve their values, more in keeping with current principles of sustainability than with the now obsolete desire for progress through new construction. Wencun Village, led by Amateur Architecture Studio, is the first example of this regeneration process. The project encompasses the renovation and conservation of some of the village’s traditional houses, in cooperation with local builders, as well as new bridges, paving and even a new school. To the west, a new extension of the village has been built, with three-storey buildings using rammed earth and bamboo as the basic building materials. The houses have been designed to incorporate traditional spaces of local life, such as courtyards, small temples to ancestors or workshops that reconcile work and home life. Instead of recreating the past, the project succeeds in breaking the typical equation of progress in the minds of the inhabitants, which identifies it with the demolition of the old in favour of impersonal blocks of houses, abandoning the values of rural life. Contemporary design turns into an ally to build a new identity linked to tradition. A bridge for future generations.