“Hutong playground” installation in Baitasi, Beijing

“Hutong Playground”, a transdisciplinary and collaborative project between IAGS, CDH, and the “China Room” Research Group, Department of Architecture and Design at Politecnico di Torino, has been selected for the Beijing Design Week 2017. It successfully opened last Saturday in Baitasi Remade area and will last until 7 October. The installation creates a new aggregative space for the inhabitants of all ages in Baitasi: it transforms the existing space into a new place, where the human scale is exalted through the arrangement of different games from China and Europe. An imaginary volume is positioned indifferently inside the existing buildings and outdoor. It becomes a community-making tool, where people can meet, spend time together playing or, simply, talking. In this way, the liveliness of the Chinese public space is brought within the private sphere, redefining the traditional boundaries between public and private. Data collected in the frame of “Hutong Playground” will nurture the design of a future educational and research project between EPFL, Polito and Tsinghua University.