Session 4 - June 28

[Taylor Bub]

I think it would be such a cool idea for a warm up to have students just simply view the image of the Town Hall in Mumbai, and maybe try and guess where this buidling is located as an introduction to your unit.  I imagine a lot of students would guess that same as you mentioned that it was located in Germany or some other Eurocentric area.  you could use this as a segue into students understanding how much of an influence cultures have on one another.  I think a lot of students would think this is so interesting because many of them (including us!) have the misconception that the architecture in certain places does not necessarily have outside influence.

[clay dube]

Great suggestion Hannah - it's just up the street from USC. A couple more links:
https://losangelesexplorersguild.com/2022/04/22/velaslavasay-panorama/

Shenyang is a fascinating place, with a variety of influences and districts (including 14 years as a Japanese colony, but also a significant Korean presence). All of northeast China is too infrequently visited and discussed. Farther north is Harbin, where the influences are primarily Russian.

 

[clay dube]

Taylor (and others), Thanks for the great ideas for class activities. Thinking of a building as meeting the needs of residents as villages meet needs - what is gained, what is lost. Our big box stores are convenient in some respects, but also a bit strange. I recall Ikea coming to Shanghai in the early 2000s. People loved it (and not just for naps and coffee refills -- plenty of documentation on that), but how to haul that stuff home? Everywhere else in Shanghai (as Miguel can attest), people relied on public transportation and Volkswagon Santana cabs (manufactured in a suburban town, an example of local protectionism). But outside Ikea, plenty of small van taxis that you wouldn't see elsewhere. Now China is by far the largest auto market in the world, so many people have their own SUVs to lug stuff home.

Miguel raised the question of the increasing sterility of some places in China. With high prices for land, plus the desire of officials to "modernize" you see that many services now require travel when it was once close at hand.

[clay dube]

When China feared attack from the Soviet Union (and to a lesser extent, the US) in the 1960s, extensive tunnels and bomb shelters were built. In the early 1980s, some of these were turned into restaurants and retail stalls. Now, the high cost of housing in many Chinese cities, but especially Beijing and Shanghai, has led people to choose to live close to their jobs, even if it means living in tiny places in the basements of buildings. USC's Annette Kim has studied this extensively and spoke on it at our Finding Solutions conference in 2018: https://china.usc.edu/watch-presentation-housing-panel-china-finding-solutions-conference

At an earlier event, historian Qin Shao spoke about struggles people waged to preserve their homes, often against developers and officials. https://china.usc.edu/video-qin-shao-resident-protesters-urban-china
 

[Madelyn Masterson]

In class we discussed how dense urbanization was designed to be ready for a crisis. I never realized how much land pressure there is on Tokyo regarding potential natural disasters. I was wondering why there was not as much nature or land space within urban cities in Asia. For example, we have cities like New York city with famous public locations such as Central Park. However, the second lecture video mentions how “Land scarcity became an emblem of urbanization that the western world has never seen”. This reminds me of the country of Singapore. I know Singapore is more southeast Asia but I feel Singapore is famous for their sustainability efforts in introducing nature into their high-rise buildings. Their airport has many features of nature including a waterfall. Are there any particular influences that brought this style of architecture into Singapore or if there is in relation to the urban design in Singapore to Hong Kong or Japan?

[Madelyn Masterson]

Hi Lauren,

I was wondering the same thing in regards to the effects of COVID19 and the cultural interactions within urban cities of Tokyo and Hong Kong. I feel cities in Tokyo and Hong Kong encourage public interaction. For example, I feel public transportation is more advanced compared to American cities. I feel there is such limited public transportation to visit other cities or states. As mentioned in Dr. Bharne’s second video, Tokyo has comparatively smaller housing or apartment units to that of urban living in America. Tokyo also has public locations including karaoke and bath houses that are a part of the culture. Even within urban cities in America I feel many look for housing units with as much space as possible to encourage interaction with individuals within the home.  

 

[Hannah Klein]

This reminds me of the family in the movie Parasite, who in order to survive live in a below-ground cave-like apartment that ends up completely flooding during a big rainstorm. I wonder how the legacies of colonialism in different east asian countries contribute to the high cost of living, and the conditions of life that force ordinary people to make many sacrifices and live in very difficult conditions? And of course there are so many parallels with rampant social/economic inequality here in the US and around the world!

[Amy Stamm]

Nia and Nina, I appreciate your trying to get at more specific complexities and ways of addressing particular flows of power in the colonial relationship. Nina, I thought your question about what the nature of the exchanges within colonial relationships was excellent and not fully addressed in our discussion. The creative outcomes and reuses that colonized populations have put into circulation are one part of the story, but the suppression of ideas, the deferring to colonial authorities and their bureaucracies and cultural backgrounds, the lack of access for marginalized and indigenous populations all have specific effects on the aesthetic terrain that gets carved in particular colonial contexts. Thanks for raising these issues.

[Amy Stamm]

Taylor, I really like this idea of having students research steps various cities are taking to address climate change. Doing this research initially would give students a bigger vocabulary from which to then research what is going on in their community. Our school is a regional special education school, so students come from cities that are defined as environmental justice sites, and that brings up a whole other set of issues in terms of who suffers from pollution and infrastructural decisions, and what steps communities have taken to counter these forms of marginalization. Our students would love to install solar panels on our building, and I think it would be a great project for them to research the steps necessary to do so and then advocate with the school's administrative staff and board for it. I think that even if the school weren't willing to fund such a project, students would know a lot more about how to make something like that happen in their future lives.

[Amy Stamm]

Yes, and how is the concept of sustainability related to on-the-ground practices? It seems like the concepts of modernity and modern life in many contexts were coupled with the idea of disposability, plastic, conspicuous consumption, so places in which people for years practiced re-use, craft, and other things that have been subsumed under the language of sustainability, now that climate change is a glaring issue, changed into places where waste became commonplace and attached to status. Because a lot of economically humble countries are disproportionately experiencing the effects of climate change and because youth around the globe are taking leadership in the climate change movement, I think the idea of sustainability is circulating in many of these contexts, but I would be curious, too, to understand the history of these concepts and their cultural underpinnings.

[Taylor Bub]

This is such a cool idea to have the students research and advocate for solar panels.  I grew up in the santa clarita valley, and all of the high schools there now have solar panels installed.  I think they were able to capitalize on solar when it first became big because it is a much wealthier area.  My principal has mentioned things like teachers writing grants for solar panels before, and your ideas on having students research how we could have solar installed and have the students advocate for this would be much more impactful.  I love the idea of showign students that they are able to make a difference in their community, especiallt now when so many crazy laws get passed and it seems as though they have no say or way to challenge things.   Our school has an environmental magnet and our students are very passionate about working towards saving the environment, so this would be such a cool project to have students look into.

[Madelyn Masterson]

The critique of American architect, Charles Moore, in The Western Genome in Japanese Architecture reading is very intriguing. His critique points out the loss of traditional Japanese architecture through the overpopulation in Japan. I can see how this resembles what is happening in the west. I live in Santa Clarita, a suburb within Los Angeles County. There are many homes and apartment buildings that display a repetitive architectural style. These “cookie-cutter” style neighborhoods are often sought after in Santa Clarita. Charles Moore points out a resemblance of “scattered mass” that is taking away from the peace of Japanese gardens. This reminds me of the topic of carrying capacity within overpopulation in my biology classroom. As populations get closer to reaching the carrying capacity, resources including land become scarce and competition increases. I can use the example of the hillside terrace complex and its reflection of the suburbs in the west to explain the results of overpopulation and competition for land in my Ecology unit.

[Miguel Diaz]

Video 1

I really enjoyed listening to Professor Bharne’s perspective on colonialism. I especially liked how he juxtaposed his views on colonialism to those of his grandfather.

As a person of Mexican ancestry, I'm especially interested in this subject because Mexico had a long colonial past. One interesting area of study for students, especially those interested in Latin America, would be to study Spain under Moorish rule. What were the lives of those who would eventually become conquistadors like under Moorish rule?

[Miguel Diaz]

I spent a summer in Beijing a year or two before the Olympics, and I remember walking into the basements of several large buildings that had been converted into small apartment units. I remember even seeing small businesses (such as convenience stores and hair salons) being run out of some of the units. I didn't get a chance to visit one of the bomb shelters in Beijing, but I did visit a bomb shelter in Shanghai that had been converted into a small recording studio. It even had practice rooms for musicians to rent out. I didn't know that Shanghai had any bomb shelter or basement apartments like Beijing.

[Miguel Diaz]

Hi Madelyn,

I had not given much thought to Tokyo's permanent state of alert – and it's constant need to rebuild following natural disasters – until professor Bharne pointed this out in his lecture. Japan has long faced land scarcity given that only a small percentage of Japan is habitable. I found the explanation on why many buildings in Tokyo don't appear to follow strict zoning and/or architectural guidelines. I didn't know that policymakers allowed for so much flexibility to compensate for the destructive forces of nature.

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