Search

The epidemic of COVID-19 is a public health emergency of international concern. China cities have taken many measures to control the outbreak, which are timely and effective, but the problem and weaknesses in the urban planning stage have emerged. At the urban level, a comprehensive disaster prevention planning for the dual situations of normality and epidemic should be concerned. At the community level, the necessary improved facilities, the reasonable form, optimized spatial structure can support to construct a resilient community. At the architectural level, it is necessary to conceive the variation of residential buildings and the flexibility of living space to respond to the changes in daily lives in the Post-epidemic Era.

What could be the outcomes of an urban regeneration project in China nowadays? Should we really choose between ordinary districts composed of tall, anonymous buildings or gated communities closed into inner villages and dominated by fake restorations in the traditional Chinese style? In the contemporary Chinese society, with the economic system becoming more and more complex along with the new rules concerning ownership, all these novelties demand designers and decision-makers to find a third way, namely, the new sustainable architecture that is designed based on the typological and morphological fundamentals of the city. That is also a way for the necessary renovation of typological and morphological studies into the architectural and urban worldwide culture towards much less rigid and much more flexible ideas of what a type is. The paper describes the teaching experience of two architectural design professors (one Chinese and one Italian) in Nanjing at SEU Arch during the last four years.