The Lake Entered The City

1.This thesis investigates infrastructure as the programmatic link between cultural building traditions and political planning systems.The hypothesis is that these two forms are,in 21~stt century China specifically,deeply opposed to one another.It is,more likely,also a global phenomenon.Infrastructures regard the regulation of construction,politics,and nature.What is�natural building'construction when the program is overtly political and the form is beyond the scale of individual perception?In this way this thesis contributes to the research of�natural construction'at??????,under Professor Wang Shu.I have isolated three important events in Hangzhou,a city known for its close relationship to nature,in order to explore the political role infrastructure serves in forming the landscape and scene of West Lake.2.What is a lake?I have isolated three infrastructural events in Hangzhou to explore process of how West Lake was built.The first event is the construction of Hangzhou's walls(??)and embankments(??)in A.D.589.During the Sui Dynasty,the imperial army transformed the ancient�River City'into an outpost of the empire,and radically altered the logic of its topos.The second event is Governor Bai Juyi's construction of new dykes(?)in West Lake for the irrigation of surrounding farmland during the Tang Dynasty(800 AD).The third event is the deconstruction of Hangzhou's city walls in 1905.With the physical barrier removed,a new phrase was used:�West Lake moved into the city.�This represents a more recognizable,modern transformation of the role of the lake,and the classification of�rural space.'3.Hangzhou's infrastructure and relationship to West Lake signals a complex interaction between building and planning that moves beyond single categories of meaning and form.Infrastructure is at once a literal and conceptual concern:first it is the material basis which supports other structures,and secondly it is the invisible foundation upon which our ideas about those structures are based.In this way the paradoxical rise of folk imagery as a spectacle without politics is not simply a crisis of meaning and representation;it is also an intellectual crisis,regarding the acceptance of plural meaning in the face of certain authority.4.The essay ends by proposing a new relationship to typology�the explored element of tectonic theory�as an important intellectual and practical response to these questions.By combining unique structural categories with planning of landscapes,infrastructural typology has the capacity to scale between building and planning traditions.