The Vrij Nederland article about Guiyang Eco City is now online on the page ‘articles’; download it here.
This week in Vrij Nederland: Guiyang Ecocity
Last year Tony Blair came to Guiyang, Guizhou province. Why? To talk about sustainability. Guiyang is on of China’s 60 eco-cities. In this weeks issue of Dutch weekly ‘Vrij Nederland‘ you can find a story and photo’s from our trip to Guiyang, last January. Run to the store!
The other Huaxi Project
Guiyang received architectural world fame last year with the Huaxi project, a masterplan made by Beijing MAD Architects. In this masterplan, 11 young architecture offices were invited to contribute. The result is a bouquet of contemporary architectural forms. The project is widely published, widely discussed and widely criticized. And not yet build.
Last week, we were taken to Huaxi by Wei Haobo, director of Westline Studio in Guiyang. He showed us his project “Dream Stream”, consisting of 4 different buildings in the hills of Guiyang. Each building has a – especially for Chinese means – radical building typology. And most of all: they succeeded in building these proposals! Take a look:
The Bamboo Tree House is a structure with different dwellings lying on the hill. The houses are connected by staircases. The shape refers to the informal architecture of the farmer villages. Wei was also inspired by the village architecture in the South of Spain, he told us. The facade was meant to be filled in with local stones. However, the developer decided to make a cheaper solution by filling the structure in with tiles…
Arrival in city no. 10: Guiyang
This evening, after a very beautiful 11 hour trainride from Kunming, we arrived in Guiyang. In this city we will focus our research on sustainability. Guiyang is appointed as eco-city in 2003, and organized an eco forum in 2009 with Tony Blair as one of the keynote speakers. We are curious what else there is on sustainable city development.
Moreover, Guiyang is a very special city. First of all since it is Go West city number 10. Second of all, because this city does not have a single Mc Donalds! Fortunatly, the KFC across our hotel is open 24/7…