Design Charrettes for Sustainable Building in China

Abstract

In recent decennia, Chinese building efforts are incomparable. The pace of urban developments has been fast and serious amounts of new buildings have been built around the country. Due to the rapid developing processes, and this is not limited to Chinese practice, the sense of quality can be questioned. For the Chinese Ministry of Construction and Dutch Ministry of Housing it gave reason to adopt a Memory of Understanding about collaborating and exchanging knowledge in the field of Sustainable Building. Within the cooperation several demonstration projects in different cities in China, not only being the usual suspects Beijing and Shanghai, but also in Chongqing, Guiyang and Shenzhen. In order to increase the sustainability in some of the largest building developments in these cities, the Sino-Dutch collaboration provided the opportunity for Chinese developers to organise weeklong design charrettes in which Dutch and Chinese expert teams participated to support, advice and design sustainable options for the respective sites.