This website uses cookies

Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation uses cookies to create a better user experience, to interact with social platforms and for anonymised statistics of traffic on our website.

Social media cookies enable us to interact with well-known social media platforms and content. This may be for statistical or marketing reasons.
Neccesary to display YouTube videos
Neccesary to display Vimeo videos
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
Is used for UI states

On squatting as a spatial practice, Building Space of Appearance together

Name
Yuxiang LI
Education degree
Master
Subject area
Architecture
Study programme
Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability
Year
2023

The squatter movement has had an underestimated impact on the shaping of urban space in Copenhagen. This proposal explores the spacial practice of the squatter movement in public space, and how the spatial legacy represented by these practices can be a lasting spatial dialogue through new intervention with today's city in the kløvermarken.

 

An architectural ethnography was carried out on Den Sorte Firkant (the Black Square ) with a fridge (2020-now), Folkets Hus (squatted in 1971-now) and Byggeren (1973-demolished in 1980). Through the investigation, the concept of the space of appearance by Hannah Arendt emerged and allied with the squatted public space, which introduced the project into the spacial intervention phase. 

 

Those interventions included different scales,  the Urban “Squatting ”On Street Lights as the tactic of place-making. Charging stations, firewood stations, bee hotels, and street light swings, all adhere to the street light pole yet activate surroundings at the Small level. At the Middle Level, A Teahouse Squatted Under A Table is designed for a bigger congregation and a shelter, providing homeless, unvoiced youth with a platform. On the architectural level, A Commonalities' House Squatted On A Billboard is proposed with the need for public spaces of the squatter's community where individuals can come together to interact, express themselves, and engage in collective action for civic engagement and meaningful political discourse.

 

 

The project offers a new perspective by combining Hannah Arendt's concept of the space of appearance with urban history and encourages civic engagement and meaningful political discourse in public spaces.

1/3
Architectural ethnography on Den Sorte Firkant (1980-2022)
Architectural ethnography on kløvermarken (2021-2023)
Architectural ethnography after spatial intervention
“The word‘s squatters give some reality to Henri Lefebvre’sloose concept of the right to the city.‘ They are excluded so they take. "
- Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World (Neuwirth, 2004:). P311
Photo:Søren Svendsen Gyldendal
1/6
situated site visit
Psychogeography site mapping
site weeds section
local weeds collection
mapping of squatter movement history
models' archives
1/4
Urban “Squatting ”On Street Lights
A Teahouse Squatted On A Table
A Commonalities' House Squatted On A Billboard
situated interventions
“where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things, but to make their appearance explicitly.”
-Hanna Arendt<Human Conditions>p198-199

"Along a path known as 'the romance of the slums', the process of change ...... can easily be misinterpreted.

 

I don't think we should go back to the hard, old ways of living in cities, but rather try to show that in an age of affluence and prosperity, the emergence of new urban life erodes the diversity of cities and the possibility of complex living, which is the essence of urban life. In order to create new forms of complex, pluralistic experience, we need to make changes to the established order of wealthy urban life.“

 

 

- Richard Sennett《 The Uses of Disorder 》

The Royal Danish Academy supports the Sustainable Development Goals
Since 2017 the Royal Danish Academy has worked with the Sustainable Development Goals. This is reflected in our research, our teaching and in our students’ projects. This project relates to the following UN goal(-s):
Gender equality (5)
Reduced inequalities (10)
Sustainable cities and communities (11)
Peace, justice and strong institutions (16)

CV

MAA Master of Architecture(2023)

Telefon
+45 91191535
Collaborative, upbeat, and comprehensive are the three words I heard most in both the social, and professional sphere. I am good at making people work together and bringing good energy into space; like my professor said, good karma. Also, I equipped the unique visualising skills, diagrammatic thinking, a wide range of case studies, comprehensive review (from various scales to social-economic), and the skill to thrive in multiple tasks in the last 7 years, since the day I became an architecture student. Through five years of traditional architecture study, more than nine months of internship, thousands of hours of related academic activities, volunteer jobs all over the place, and now as a more rounded master student at KADK, I have never been better prepared to a new challenge
Education & Relevant Courses
2020
2023

Royal Danish Academy Master of Architecture

- MArch, political architecture: critical sustainability 12/12
2023
2018

Waseda University summer school

2023
2023

Bachelor of Architecture(HONOR) at Kunming University of Science and Technology

2022
2022

CPH Architecture Festival Summer School

Professional Work Experience
2023
2023

Assistant to Project Manager at Emergency Architecture & Human Rights

2022
2023

Event Assistant at Arkitekter Uden Grænser Danmark

2023
2023

Student helper for Architect Henrik Valeur

2021
2021

Student Tutor at Royal Danish Academy

2023
2023

Summer Intern at Bio-Architecture Formosana

Language skills

English

Chinese

Danish