Collaborative Field Trip (October 2019)

A second field trip was organized by the project partners and Swiss colleagues from ETH Zurich in October, 2019. Over the course of a week, Florence Graezer Bideau and Thierry Theurillat did fieldwork with Christian Schmid, Christian Kerez, and Liu Yiqiu in the capital city. Visits included the Caochang hutong, Xinjian village in the southern outskirts of Beijing, the Huanghuacheng Great wall, the Yanqing area (the second 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games location), and the Haituo valley, including the Swiss village. They again surveyed the industrial park of Shougang, where the Beijing 2022 Organizing Committee is stationed, as well as some historical district of Beijing.

The purpose of this stay was also to strengthen the project’s academic network with visits and lectures to the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design group, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning and Design.

The methodology and the reflection of this project improved thanks to daily collaborative and interdisciplinary brainstorming within the team. This collaboration continues with the regular participation of Yiqiu at a weekly workshop at EPFL.