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.Urbanvoid
Lu Jia Zhui Herbal Therapeutic Park, Shanghai, China
AuthoMasaki Kakizoe, Kenny Kinugasa Tsui

Fast growing Cities such as Shanghai create a 21st century phenomenon where its chaotic construction results in large plots of left over unused spaces- Urban Voids. The confrontation of such unidentified emptiness in the city generates “horror vacui”, based on Aristotle; it is a fear of emptiness in nature. Psychology knows fears similar to that of emptiness, for example ‘agoraphobia’, the fear of open spaces.

This project reinvents the perception of an urban void, by generating a positive complexity of interactive relationships based on the negative confrontations. The symbolical and topographical idea of a ‘Submerged Ginseng Root’ as an iconic intervention in the heart of the fast growing towers of Shanghai, the pulsating and sculptural qualities of the laboratories, promotes public interaction through an engaging herbal garden and therapeutic center. The multiple layering of the building’s organization creates a complex system of connecting roots that form the mass of the building. The void and its contextual relationships are hence redefined. In the reference of Gordon Matta Clark, geometric surfaces are excavated from its contextual mass, which results in various viewing voids that would appear to shift the distant skyscrapers when one views from the lower levels of the building. The intervention into the empty space of the city redefines the void as an important urban element that lives and evolves with the constant changes of the city.