Design as Politics from Delft University of Technology explored the relationship between work, architecture and urbanism in Shenzhen from October 30 until November 5, 2015. INTI introduced the group of 7 graduation students to the Da Lang Fashion Valley. It is one of the nine industrial parks in Shenzhen and an attempt to attract the creative industries. It hasn’t been entirely successful yet. The result: an isolated area with no connections to its neighboring urban village, half-empty factories due to a lack of investment, and no white-collar workers willing to live in these outskirts of Shenzhen. An iconic feature of Da Lang Fashion Valley is a three-year-old, but still vacant hotel. Da Lang Palace has 40,000 m2 of vacant space and symbolizes the problem of a mismatch between ambition and reality.
INTI has organized the exhibition Da Lang Fever 2.0. Empowering Migrant Society at the 2015 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. It proposes urban strategies to empower migrant workers in Da Lang Neighborhood. In the exhibition, architecture office space&matter presents possible scenarios for programming the vacant hotel to empower the self-organizing migrant society. INTI asked the graduation students from Design as Politics to do the same. Here is their proposal for programming the empty building.
