Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Final Presentation with Students


Xwinston Yan, Professor Tom Laging, Wu Lei and Hu Ying of KX Design, and the students who worked on this project

Ten days of collaborative work between the University of Tianjin students and University of Nebraska students have yielded four site proposals that could be categorized into preservation, central park, arts corridor, and car-free development. The productivity this week was not as rapid as when we are situated in a familiar studio environment and our communication isn’t always centered on an architectural standpoint. We have been exposed to an entirely different studio atmosphere where we are still trying to understand each other’s culture, studio habits, approach to problems and way in which problems are addressed. becomes the primary learning experience.

Professor Paulo and Tom discussing project will all students

The end of our stay here concluded with a digital presentation of the progress of each group and their vision for the redevelopment or renewal of our site. Our groups had the opportunity to present to Tom, Xwinston Yan, and continually influential and dedicated member of this exchange program, Paulo Genovese and Wu Leie from Beijing’s KX International Design and Planning office and Hu Ying from the KX Tianjin Office. All had excellent thoughts on how our projects developed and where we might look to strengthen our views. This critique was more formal considering our audience and each and every member of our diverse group was eager to present their contributions to the jury. This truly illustrated the cooperation we were able to achieve with one another and the architectural dialogue that the two cultures were able to reach. It also gave the Tianjin students a basis of understanding of how our critiques are set up and the outside jury members that are ever present and appreciated for their time commitment to the educational spectrum.


Presentation Group

Though the final presentation in Tianjin is complete the relationships we established as designers and friends will continue and as our studios move ahead separately we expect to keep in contact with the development of our Tianjin partners.

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