In September 2012 the first aac workshop was held on the new Campus Rainvilleterrasse. With a total of 24 young architects and students from Asia and Europe, the teaching programme began at the new domicile high above Hamburg harbour. The studios, and not least the generous roof terrace with its fascinating view, proved to be an ideal setting for the aac’s intensive course.

For the aac’s first activity at its new site a highly topical and pressing urban structural, and at the same time social problem, was consciously chosen. Namely, the economically dictated displacement of poor and lower-income groups from the urban centres to the periphery, a process which has been under way in European and Asian metropolises for some time.

As this issue has been the subject of political and urban initiatives both in Hamburg and its partner city, it was only right that within the framework of the workshop the total of four teams with their intercultural make-up should develop designs for high-density, economical house-building for the two sites in parallel, HafenCity (Hamburg) and Lingang New City (Shanghai).

The workshop was accompanied by lectures and intermediate critiques from renowned experts. The resulting designs show how affordable housing can achieve an unmediated future viability by simultaneously addressing the issues of adequate urban spaces and neighbourhoods.

The results of the workshop were put on public display at the aac immediately following the workshop and at a large architecture exhibition in the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre in April 2013.
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Prof. Meinhard von Gerkan (ed.)
aac Academy for Architectural Culture
Urban Exchange: Hamburg-Shanghai 2012
Hardback
160 pages
German/English
Format 33 × 20.5 cm

EUR 29.95/SFr 49.50
ISBN 978-3-936300-87-1