John Lin stands on a remote mountainside in southwest China, a brick grasped in each hand. The one in his right, the 39-year-old architect explains, is the local standard. It costs Rmb0.45 ($0.07) and has a scorched surface with roughly hewn, crumbly edges. In his left hand is a clean, terracotta oblong with three penny-sized hollows bored through the centre. At Rmb1.95 ($0.32), this clay-sintered brick is four times more expensive, but Lin thinks the investment worthwhile. The hollows will help cool the new homes he has designed when it is summer, and insulate them in winter – and, should an earthquake strike this region again, the village will stand a better chance of surviving.
Lin is a founding partner of Rural Urban Framework (RUF), a non-profit enterprise within the University of Hong Kong (HKU), which works with charities and local governments on design and research projects in rural China. After decades of economic prosperity, the country is hell-bent on modernisation. With a focus on the development of cities, few architects in China are particularly attuned to the emerging rural quandary. Nonetheless, it is a region being transformed.
Conversely, it is the Chinese Communist party’s drive to move citizens into cities that is having a marked impact on the countryside. Li Keqiang, the premier, has called urbanisation a “huge engine” for growth as the government seeks to shift the economy from a model reliant on investment and exports to one buoyed by domestic spending.