Rethinking Chongqing: Mixed-Use and Super-Dense presents the work of a Edward P. Bass Studio at the Yale School of Architecture, co-taught by real estate developer Vincent Lo, founder and chairman of Shui-On Land, the Yale Bass Fellow, and Paul Katz, James von Klemperer, and Forth Bagley, managing principal, design principal, and senior associate, respectively, of the international architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. Chongqing, one of China's four directly-controlled municipalities, is a rapidly growing economic hub of western China with a rich urban history. As it seeks to expand its urbanized boundaries and redirect economic growth towards the high-tech manufacturing and service industries, it is also investing enormous resources in new transit infrastructure, parks, cultural facilities, and other public amenities. The site of the studio project is the soon to be redeveloped site of the central rail terminal, a critical nexus of infrastructure located near the riverside that offers rich possibilities for re-thinking the relationship between transit, public space, and mixed-use program in the city.
The studio investigated a diverse range of proposals for new scales, typologies, and program mixes. The book includes a comprehensive analysis of mixed-use projects in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Japan, interviews with the architects and developers, and insightful essays by Wu Jiang and Daan Roggeveen, Rethinking Chongqing demonstrates the role architects and developers might play in shaping new paradigms for the development of western China's emerging mega-cities.
