Design students preserve 'fabric' of Shanghai

During spring break, a dozen graduate students in the School of Design went to China to preserve history.

Currently in its second year, professor Randall Mason's HSPV 621 - Seminar in International Conservation - is a semester-long course in Penn's graduate program in historic preservation. Students participate in seminar-style research, engage in international fieldwork and formulate recommendations for a specific area in China.

With Mason, the students in the course went to the Hongkou Creek district, just north of the downtown Bund area, in Shanghai, China, for a week. While there, they surveyed sights and assessed potential conservation needs. Their goal was to help the city protect historic buildings and narratives not currently accounted for in urban planning and development decisions.

The surveillance of this area is important in order to preserve some of its historical factions while the city develops, Mason wrote in an e-mail.

He said their final designs will be highly important for their local partners in Shanghai.

Despite Shanghai's great growth over the last 15 years, "there is also a growing acknowledgement that preservation of some parts of the city's urban fabric needs to be included among all the new tall buildings, highways, subways and suburbs," he wrote.

The groups' goal was to survey, identify and document historic, architectural and cultural resources in collaboration with their Chinese partners from Shanghai's Tongji University, said Bessie Lee, another student in the class.

International fieldwork allows students to have a richer experience, Mason added.

"It is important to go beyond the 'academic tourist' model and try to engage with the values, opinions, desires and knowledge of partners who live and work in the place," he wrote.

His students agreed. Lauren Vollono, a student in his class, wrote in an e-mail that the ability to witness the city's operation firsthand gave the class an otherwise unobtainable dimension that allows the class to have a balance of theory and practice.

Furthermore, she wrote that despite linguistic, cultural and political obstacles, they were "able to accomplish great work."

Mason added that his goals for the trip included the exposure of students to international fieldwork, meaningful, graduate-level research and professional-level designs.

After the initial surveillance, the participants attempted to determine whether there were enough historical and cultural remnants in the region to designate it Shanghai's thirteenth official "historic district."

The students are now in the final phase of the project and are forming a comprehensive report regarding the region's future development in a way that hopefully will both respect and accentuate the region's historical assets, wrote Vollono.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.