MOUNTAIN OF ORIGIN

This is a myth and prophecy about the mountain.
In this project, I want to express the future of Taigen City:
An ironic hypothesis might become reality in the future-- the Feng Mountain of Daliang may be more artificial, but turn to be a public space for meditation and get back to the spirit origin as worship for gods.

Urban Design Studio
Site: Daliang Historical District,
Shunde County, Guangdong, China
Tutor: Haohao Xu( arhaohaoxu@scut.edu.cn),
Zhe Lin(5150545@qq.com)
Individual Work
Spring 2018

BACK TO ALL ARCHITECTURES

Each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents. Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name.

-Italo Calvino

01 From Taigen ( 太艮 ① ) Town to Daliang( 大良 ② ) Town

I am not talking about the Daliang Town after Shunde being included into the organizational system of cities③, but the Taigen Town that seems to be forgotten by people, a city existing in the history and legend.

In the Chinese culture, Liang( 良 ) represents discipline and Gen( 艮 ) represents the mountain. Daliang and TaiGen are people's completely different attitudes towards the mountain that was the origin of a city. Daliang and Taigen also overlapped because of a mountain.

Taigen is a city that really existed when we sort out the history. The Shih Chi (Hisrotical Records)④and the Yongle Canon⑤ proved its existence. However, after the failure of the insurrection initiated by Huang Xiaoyang
in the 3rd year of Jingtai Emperor, during which Daliang, as the fortified point, was breached, the new Daliang was established on the basis of the old one -Taigen, a name related to mountain and nature. The Daliang we see nowadays is an overlapped city.

Figure.Daliang Site Analysis

① 艮 (gèn) : n.mountain, one of the Eight Diagrams for divination
②良 (liáng) : adj.fine,good and honest；n.law-abiding people
③Shunde County Annals (published in AD1852): In the third year of Jingtai (AD1452), Ming Dynasty, the imperial court designated Shunde county.
④ Sima Qian. Shih Chi. The first general history of China. Sima qian in he Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD24).
⑤ Yongle Canon: An encyclopedia of China, compiled inthe period of Yongle(AD1403-AD1424) in Ming Dynasty

02 Mountain: Images & Ages

Feng Mountain once was both the geographical and psychological centre of Taigen. People have different images and different attitudes towords the mountain in the city.

Figure.Round-table Conference on the future of Mountain

1.Taigen( 太艮 ) Time: In 200 BC, Daliang Town was a mountain on the sea. The description of the fairy mountain in the classical literature reflects the active
exploration spirit of sea since ancient times①.

2. Daliang( 大良 ) Time: After the 20th
century, people forgot the way that Taigen
was originally, and went to the control of the
place and the discipline of nature. People took
a top-down approach and interrupted the Feng
mountain②.

3. In the New Millennium: In the 20th century,
Daliang Town is close to the urbanization
and the Generic City. In 2008, the goverment
deveploed the mountaion as ridge park.

Figure.Feng Mountain Symbols

4. In 100 years: In 2100, Feng Mountain will be the only enclave and the intentional spiritual paradiseas if held back by the hand of a god③.

① Kuang Lu.Chi Ya.It is a collection of mythology from the Pre-Qin period(BC21-BC221) to the Ming dynasty(AD1368-AD1644), all historical
stories in the central plains contain myths, legends and stories of various ethnic groups in the south part of China.
② The shunde sports center, completed in November 1992, interrupted the Feng mountain.
③ The Dogma studio's Stop City. The relationship between people living and working in cities today is similar to that between workers and factories
during the industrial expansion, so we need a way to stop the expansion.

03 In 2100

In Rayuela of Cortazar, the content is organized by two sets of paging systems. Reading the text in order and reading it by skipping generate two different kinds of narrative logic. It seems to remind us that we may have a different recognition by rereading the textual history.

So the future is also a returning.

An ironic hypothesis might become reality in the future: the Feng Mountain of Daliang may be more artificial, but turn to be a public space for meditation and get back to the spirit origin as worship for gods or meditation.

Site Plan in 2100

Ground Plan in 2100

Figure. The Funnctions on the Feng Mountain

04 PROJECT E In 2100

① Umberto Eco. “Jorge Luis Borges stared at the magical Aleph,the first letter in Hebrew - that contains the universe.”
② E means evolution, and nature and endlessness as well. Leonhard Euler:Natural logarithm e = (1+1/n)^n， (n →∞) ∴ e≈ 2.718281828....

In Rayuela of Cortazar, the content is organized by two sets of paging systems. Reading the text in order and reading it by skipping generate two different kinds of narrative logic. It seems to remind us that we may have a different recognition by rereading the textual history.

So the future is also a returning.

An ironic hypothesis might become reality in the future: the Feng Mountain of Daliang may be more artificial, but turn to be a public space for meditation and get back to the spirit origin as worship for gods or meditation.

One day, when passing through the shallow hill, you
will find such a space, a library named The Aleph,
horizontally arranged. There, issues of race, classes and genders could be discussed openly and equally by people no matter he or she is a Marxist or a Post-Marxist, a materialist or an idealist, a structuralist or a humanist, restraint by or beyond the disciplines.

All the people, even the citizens with no scientific
background, can appreciate and experience the
construction science and technology in this memorial
future architecture.

From the connection at the mountain foot, the city gallery swirls downwards and ends with a VR museum. Walking among the linear walls and curtains, VR is displaying the urban changes from BC 200 to 2100. For the first time you will experience the great conflict between the Generic
City① and Genius Loci②.

The 4D cinema is constructed as a high tower. As you walk upwards, the surrounding images can create a halfenclosure delusion of metropolis. The arena at the north mountain side is the end of this series of future projects.
Residents can participate in competitive sports, playing skateboards and climbing, in the underground arena.

① Rem Koolhaas.Generic City. He thought that the generic city which had no identity, no history, no center and no program was the suitable type for
the progressive cities.
② Christian Norberg Schulz.Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture.Genius Locithe is the guardian spirit of a particular place.

05 Mountain as a City Personality:

In the generic city that Rem Koolhaas advocates is a city without individuality, history, center and planning. In this discussion, Koolhaas touched on an old and fresh topic:
How to treat history, the individuality endowed by history, and the urban life center formed in history?

If the generic city has some characteristics, such as facing mountain, facing water, port and so on, then the symbol based on this characteristic will spread all over its
whole territory. The phenomenon mentioned by Rem Koolhaas is frequently seen in the current urban construction, and it seems to have become an indisputable criterion of how fast and how good a city is.

However, the central mountain task is hard to meet those expectations mentioned above in terms of its small scale. The central district was meant to be "the most
important place" with some paradoxical qualities, such as, to be both the oldest and the most fashionable, the most fixed and the most dynamic at the same time. We
may find the most radical and expensive solution, reverting to an anti-archaeological approach: lists new modernity - shopping centres, car parks, banks, basements,
factories - are placed below the centre. The new urban centre is beginning to move towards the centre of the earth - Feng Mountain.

06 A Memoir of Mountain-reversal Development

The construction activities along the network of rivers finally made the massif from the city boundary into a hidden green land in the city center.

At this moment, only the accessibility to buildings and rivers were necessary to be considered. The massif, as a boundary, would not be considered during the positioning process.

As the angle of view on mountain was deadly danger to the city management, by obeying the regulations and disciplines, people did not have to and were barely possible to have relations with the massif space. As
the intermediate zone like Berlin Wall, Feng Mountain became the “enclave” of the city in the ancient times. With the development of cities in recent days, the road network has become the major transportation media in
lieu of river network. The overlapped city constructions of the ancient times had to give way to the construction of road network for vehicles. Therefore, Feng Mountain was developed from the waist. The massif was exposed to the residents again.

1.Enclave of Spirit
As we sort out the geological information, we find that as it is recorded in the mythology, the historical Daliang was a city truly established over the ocean. From Qin & Han dynasties to Sui & Tang dynasties, the coastline was nearby the Shunfeng Mountain southeast of Daliang.

The Feng Mountain located at the marine outfall was the foothold for the residents avoiding flood tides due to its high massif. As the origin of the city, the massif could protect the residents from flood tide and received the worship offered by the local residents for their beliefs. It was closely related with the city development. With the development of sea reclamation, the network of rivers in lieu of massif became the core element of the city; and the position of massif in the city shifted from the core to boundary. The inclusion of Shunde County into the organizational system of cities facilitated such process.
In the high-density urban environment, from the view of people, the city center shifted from the sole massif to the complex and changeable allies.

2.Mountain-reversal Development
Due to the change of city management and the
awakening of the civilian awareness, the establishment of mountainous park became a way to deal with the enclave. However, the great height difference and the interruption of accessibility to the old cities on foot, the mountainous facilities, especially the Jinbang Mountain, were not well recognized and applied. Therefore, even Jinbang Mountain was not known as an enclave, but
was a true one.
During the past years, Feng Mountain developed from the spirit origin receiving the worship for gods into part of resources used by human beings, from the city barrier to the subsidiary of river network, from the public property of the citizens to the only space remained as undeveloped land among the concrete forest.

3.Daliang in Mythology
For me, I find a city from the joint of the text and the site and try to dig it out. During this process, the residents can reach the mountainous park more conveniently; the tourists can receive more and systematic tourism
resources; and the government can get a floating central park that has barely been seen. Maybe after five years, ten tears, fifty years or one hundred years, all buildings will be replaced by numerous high-rise. The system
assumed currently will be destroyed to nothing, while the connecting Feng Mountain will remind the future designer of the city origin. To some extent, Daliang may become the city once existed two thousand years ago, an island floating above the endless ocean. Among the sunlight and ocean, the mountain reveals the truth of the fictitious experience: not only the past, but also those cursed and tortured thereby.

Taigen and Daliang are connected by Feng Mountain like a pair of twins. Similarly, those existing in and absent from the residents memories, or in other words, the proved existence and ambiguous absence, will also be connected((Figure.Now and Future Collage).

Figure.Now and Future Collage