BLUE PATCH
New rural communities construction has been in full swing in China in recent years. In particular, the rural areas of the Yangtze River Delta have become a dreamy destination for the government, the developers, and young architects. However, there are always some villages forgotten by the reformers due to lack of economic and ecological value, spontaneously producing a marginal, mixed, and permeable landscape. I focused on my hometown, a small village in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, and observed the aging of a village through the spatial system restoration behavior called “blue patch”. Hence, for this project, I abandoned the traditional strategy of renewing the rural space and completed a documentary architectural practice from the perspective of architectural anthropology. Through the narratives of three different architectural entities, I will dig deeper into the power game that promotes the characteristics of the village and appreciate the aging process of the village. Besides, I will use photography, collages, interviews, models, architectural drawings and archival materials to penetrate into the daily lives of villagers, and explore the role of government and land policies, economy and kinship, religion and lifestyle in the penetrating landscape of my hometown.
