Portfolio Ximing Chen

Selected works from GSAPP MSAUD 2013-2014: The Urban Design curriculum exploits the pedagogic potential of the studio as a form of design-based critical inquiry. Studio projects focus on topics related to contemporary Urban Design practice. All three studios emphasize a multi-scalar approach to the urban site (local, neighborhood, metropolitan, regional and global scales), and view Urban Design as an inter-disciplinary practice that negotiates between diverse actors in the urban dynamic. By proposing an expanded architecturally-based teaching model for Urban Design, the program advocates working from the “ground up” rather than adopting a “top down” master-planning approach. It takes advantage of architecture’s traditional concerns for site specificity, spatial experience, construction logics, economics of organization, morphology and physical form, while also engaging realms of knowledge associated with disciplines such as urban ecology, urban geography, and landscape design.