Je viens de voir un article intéressant du New York Times sur un nouveau concept d’architecture basé sur un modèle ancien, le “tulou”, en forme de tambour! La première photo représente un tulou moderne dans une ville chinoise, et celle du bas montre les anciens tulou de la province du Fujian. C’est la première fois que j’entends parler de ça. Fascinant!

Source: ChinaHopeLive

Le légende de la photo ci-dessus:

Top, a rendering of Urbanus’s project shows two tulou structures flanking the highway in a southern Chinese city; above, ancient tulous in Fujian Province.

Voici quelques extraits de l’article de NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF:

“Tulou: Affordable Housing for China,” which just opened at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, may not dispel the Western image of Chinese cities as nightmarish visions of dehumanizing towers. Architectural projects as divine as this one are still the exception, not the rule.

Nonetheless the exhibition offers further evidence that China has become the most fertile territory on the globe for experimentation by architects. (…)

Designed by the up-and-coming Chinese firm Urbanus, the tulou is a centuries-old housing prototype (…) (Models) conjure China’s old tulous, or “little kingdoms,” built in rural Fujian Province to protect villagers from marauding armies. Organized around a large central court, the tulou was encircled by thick earthen walls, with only a single heavy door leading to the outside world.

Urbanus’s design process began with the simple question of how to adapt this old housing type to a radical new reality, the scale and pace of China’s urbanization. Fifty years ago China was mostly a country of rural villages. Today more than 150 of its cities have a population of a million or more — compared with just nine in the United States — and the speed of urbanization is only likely to accelerate. (…)

The first tulou, which has recently been completed in Guangzhou, in southern China, is enveloped in a perforated concrete shell that hints at the richly textured life inside. Urbanus set out to create a porous relationship between inside and out, with a series of small shops wrapping around the base of the structure. The architects sliced through part of the rounded shell to extend a restaurant and several floors of housing into the complex’s interior, visually drawing pedestrians inside. At other points, big entry portals lead into small courtyards and a small inn.

The apartments themselves recall Le Corbusier’s notion of “minimal” architecture, compact, super-efficient spaces that he modeled after monks’ cells. The smaller units in the tulou are essentially nothing more than dormitory rooms that serve the building’s service staff. The larger apartments, designed for groups of migrant workers or small families, have small living areas with bathrooms neatly tucked behind the kitchens. Cleverly designed L-shaped doors connecting the living areas to the bedrooms are cut out of the rooms’ corners to save precious wall space. Narrow balconies, some shielded by pretty wooden shutters, can be used for hanging laundry.

A communal spirit is fostered by rings of balconies surrounding the central court and bridges linking terraces and gardens on the complex’s upper levels. Like in some earlier Communist-era housing projects, such areas are intended to lure people out of their apartments and to encourage interaction. They also convey a generous sense of space even as the design maximizes efficiency. (…)

Le vidéo

Un autre vidéo

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Résultat: j’ai les souvenirs et les histoires à raconter de quelqu’un qui a vécu dans un pays étranger et a appris à en connaître un peu la culture, mais je n’ai pas les photos qui rendraient mes anecdotes beaucoup plus vivantes. J’imagine donc qu’il me reste juste à écrire des romans…

Donc si vous voulez voir plein de photos intéressantes, à travers l’oeil de quelqu’un qui atterrissait pour la première fois en Asie, je vous conseille le blogue de Philippe! Attention, il faut cliquer sur “View all Photos” ou “View Photo Album”, sinon on ne voit que 4 photos pour chaque entrée.

Je vous mets ici un aperçu de ses photos. On y voit le Shanghai (et un peu Suzhou) pittoresque que je ne voyais plus, sauf quand j’avais des visiteurs à qui faire découvrir “ma” ville! Merci Philippe!

Pendant ce temps-là, il y en a à Shanghai qui s’amusent à faire des bonhommes de neige…

Source: Shanghaiist

L’album de photos est ici: http://picasaweb.google.com/singaporeano/WFC

La nouvelle elle-même est moins drôle… Cette inflation cause beaucoup de problèmes, et en novembre il y a même eu 3 morts dans un Carrefour (genre de Walmart français bien implanté en Chine) pour une vente sur des cruches d’huile à cuisson!!!

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Source: Shanghaiist

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