WALLS Mick Mingqing Shi Supervisor: Dr. John Doyle
A gated community’s wall is its own method of taxonomy, granting a clear definition of what is, and what isn’t. It aids in the grouping and separation of the human existence, as a pragmatic but less than ideal barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Within the traditional Chinese political and mental space however, it also confers a degree of autonomy and understanding of the world around us. It provides a space for which we are responsible. A space for which we may take ownership of, in a world where we are typically unable to influence the decisions and outcomes that affect our cities at large. The wall in this project has been modified along a path which removes the juxtaposition of the interior and exterior, the public and the private. With the non-existence of such concepts within the proposed gated community, the wall is freed to transform into whatever is required upon each specific threshold condition, which in turn affects the architecture it interfaces with. This embraces the populational transience that has gripped modern society and aims to broaden the oxymoronic group-individualism that permeates existing gated communities to include our co-inhabitants of the greater urban fabric.