Scope: Rebekah Radtke: China Into College Grant 2020 - Global Studio

This grant proposal seeks funding to support the knowledge advancement of China through a traveling public exhibition and a broadly disseminated publication related to the Global Studio: Shanghai, developed by an interdisciplinary and collaborative team of faculty members in the College of Design. The materials included in these deliverables feature original scholarship, essays written by faculty and students, and student work developed in the Spring 2020 semester. PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION An interdisciplinary and collaborative team of faculty members in the College of Design - Jeffrey Johnson (Architecture), Dr. Gregory Luhan (Architecture), and Assistant Professor Rebekah Radtke (Interiors) lead the College of Design students enrolled in the Global Studio: Shanghai course comprised of undergraduate Architecture and Interior Design students working both individually and in collaborative teams comprised 3-4 students per project. The Global Studio: Shanghai is currently exploring the lilongs of Shanghai as a series of interior urban conditions that address themes of timelessness and currency. The intent of in-depth mining of this unique context centers on learning from the lilong, rather than just designing for a specific courtyard house typology. The studio explorations interrogate historical contexts, develop representation techniques, and utilize material fabrication as outputs related to the lilongs in Shanghai. The designs utilize the premise gWhat can ancient, non-Western cities teach us about urbanism and living?h By understanding the hidden private layers and filters of the lived condition, the studio will better understand and interpret the implications of these existing social constructs that occur in the lilong neighborhoods and translate them into possible developments in Kentucky. The studio conducted critical analysis and spatial explorations, both on campus and in Shanghai, that reflect the experiential learning acquired in China. Throughout the semester, the design students formulated a pattern language that emerged from the study of the infrastructural and structural (economic, social, and environmental) flows typically found in Shanghaifs urban condition. The students then produced two-dimensional and three-dimensional visual representations and narrative descriptions of these taxonomies. EXHIBITION + PUBLICATION | GOALS Whereas the goal of the collaborative Global Studio: Shanghai is to enable a model for collaborative design studios in the college, the intent of the exhibition and publication is to bring the classroom to the world through a public display of artwork, design, and construction. The Global Studio: Shanghai will produce a curated exhibition and a published book that documents the learning outcomes, showcases evidence of student learning artifacts, photographs from the contextual exhibitions, and then expands to include faculty and graduate student-written scholarly essays and a listing of all students and sponsors. Through these means, the Global Studio: Shanghai will be able to share its findings with the University of Kentucky Confucius Institute (UKCI), the University of Kentucky Administration, and the University community-at-large. As proof of concept, the Global Studio: Shanghai developed a curated exhibition of work that aligned with the Chinese New Year. The Global Studio has previously exhibited the work in the Pence Hall Library Gallery on the 2nd Floor of Pence Hall and then situated it at the Boone Center Faculty and Staff Celebration of the Chinese New Year. These successful exhibitions marked the first showcase of student work from the spring semester in 2019. The faculty and students will continue to expand and refine the work throughout this semester to add to that body of work. As an integral part of the studio, the final studio deliverables are due on April 2020 for a comprehensive juried review. After the review, the faculty will curate the work to create glass printed collages and a publication. This increased durability will enable the Global Studio: Shanghai to share its work with other Confucius Institute Centers across the US and beyond as a traveling exhibition and as an accompanying, peer-reviewed publication that documents the body of work for the entire semester. EXHIBITION + PUBLICATION | OUTCOMES AND TIMELINE While each of these elements of the show maintains distinctive agendas and outcomes, each element contains strategic overlaps that provide for conceptual reinforcement and reiteration that is necessary for active and effective learning. The exhibition and publication will enable formative opportunities for artifact dissemination and critique and subsequent peer-reviewed award submissions. The structure of each phase of the design studio will produce notable results: œ January 2020: Research preparation: flows of resources, information, and innovation (publication) œ February 2020: Information translation and exhibition: 2-d to 3-dimensional translation (publication, presentation) œ March 2020: Data gathering in China: textures, materials, urban organization (publication, exhibition) œ April 2020: Alignment + Application: project development of an innovative, affordable, useful option for adding much-needed housing and possible adaptive reuse of existing structures (publication, exhibition) œ May 2020: Dissemination: Finalized publication and curated exhibition complete to be displayed at local and global venues (publication, exhibition)