We walked first to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. This museum was an interactive, bright and colorful display of how Shanghai has grown and the goals Shanghai planners have for the city. The first real part of the museum had a scale model of the city of Shanghai. Although I am not sure what scale the model was to, I do know it took up the entire room and was the largest scale model I had ever seen. I am sure most all of us can say the same.
The model was also interesting because it would light up various parts of the city to display how they might look at night. On the same floor as the model was a movie that was on a circular screen, meaning we stood on the middle platform and could see the movie on the screen that completely surrounded us. It was flying through a virtual model of the city, which was fun to watch, but also made you slightly dizzy when attempting to walk out of the theater area. The next floor housed explanation and interactive displays about transportation, ecology, real estate, and redevelopment projects in Shanghai. There were also the comprehensive plan goals for future Shanghai. Another floor had a painting exhibition, although not directly related to planning, it was beautiful and interesting to see the oil paintings. The most interesting thing about the museum was probably the juxtaposed pictures of Shanghai in 1980-1990 and Shanghai in 2004. The pictures were taken by a father in the '80s and a son after the extreme growth of Shanghai. The amount of growth is shocking and most places were farms and neighborhoods only 15-20 years ago, and are now high-rise office and apartments or highways.
After the museum we walked to the People’s Square. This is a design square and park area surrounding the Shanghai Museum. This museum housed ancient artifacts from China. There were many old ceramic pieces, old currency and art pieces. Many of us ventured out into the square to sit and wonder. The park and square are heavily used, especially by families. The square is also frequented by pigeons.
We left the square by subway and made our way to the AECOM building where we split up to find our own lunch. Lunch can be tricky as the language barrier can cause problems, but by pointing to the menus and using large hand gestures we are able to get by.
After lunch we met Jonathan Corbett who is a K-State graduate. He explained what he does at AECOM and their various projects, as well as giving us work to do. We had a quick design charette which we were given a current project of theirs and were asked to help think of ideas for the project. It was difficult for a couple of reasons: 1. The project is an extremely large riverfront park that has a wetland and levy to work with, and 2. The client requested the park be "high tech," but no one is positive what that means.
We first were given background by Jonathan about the project and then were set free to think of how to define "high tech" for a park and what programs and design concepts would work well in a high tech park. Ideas we all came up with was making the park have educational features for the surrounding school, as well as health sensors and exercise equipment to promote health. There were ecological considerations and water treatment design concepts as well. We then presented our ideas and received positive feedback from various designers at AECOM. The experience was great and exciting to see and better understand the scale and pace of projects in China.
Jonathan then took us to the Taiking Road shopping area for dinner. We ate at a very good burger restaurant, and it was amazing. We listened to Jonathan talk about his experience living and working in China, then shopped for an hour, and then headed home via the subway!
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