Daiwei Wu

Renovation of Liyuan Community

August 2026

Medium:

Architecture

Renovation of Liyuan Community explores how architecture can act as a medium of social repair within a dense historic residential fabric. Based on Qingdao’s traditional Liyuan courtyard type, the project addresses overcrowding, aging infrastructure, and the fragmentation of communal life through a strategy of careful extension rather than replacement. New structural layers widen circulation, reorganize ground-floor uses, and introduce semi-public platforms, allowing the courtyard to function once again as a shared social field. The intervention does not erase the compact character of the original typology. Instead, it reworks its spatial order to improve light, ventilation, safety, and privacy while preserving the everyday intensity of collective living. Corridors, roof spaces, and community rooms are redefined as spaces of encounter, negotiation, and mutual support. In this sense, the project treats renewal not as the restoration of a fixed past, but as the continuation of a living urban form. It proposes architecture as an adaptive framework through which historical memory and contemporary life can coexist.

About the Artist

Daiwei Wu

I am an undergraduate architecture student at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University. My work is centered on urban renewal, community-oriented design, and the social dimension of architecture. I understand architecture not simply as formal production, but as a spatial practice shaped by everyday life, collective memory, and existing social relations. This position has been informed by research and design projects on lilong renewal, rural resilience, and high-density residential environments. A recurring concern in my work is the relationship between architectural intervention and lived reality. Historic neighborhoods have shown me that residents are not passive recipients of renewal, but the most direct users of space and the clearest interpreters of its problems, potentials, and limits. Their daily habits, spatial experience, and practical judgment provide an essential basis for meaningful design decisions. For this reason, renewal should not remain a one-way professional proposal; it requires careful observation, spatial analysis, and sustained dialogue with local users. I hope to further develop an architectural methodology that combines analytical rigor with social responsiveness, and that contributes to more dignified and sustainable living environments under conditions of spatial constraint.

Daiwei Wu

Renovation of Liyuan Community

August 2026

Medium:

Architecture

Renovation of Liyuan Community explores how architecture can act as a medium of social repair within a dense historic residential fabric. Based on Qingdao’s traditional Liyuan courtyard type, the project addresses overcrowding, aging infrastructure, and the fragmentation of communal life through a strategy of careful extension rather than replacement. New structural layers widen circulation, reorganize ground-floor uses, and introduce semi-public platforms, allowing the courtyard to function once again as a shared social field. The intervention does not erase the compact character of the original typology. Instead, it reworks its spatial order to improve light, ventilation, safety, and privacy while preserving the everyday intensity of collective living. Corridors, roof spaces, and community rooms are redefined as spaces of encounter, negotiation, and mutual support. In this sense, the project treats renewal not as the restoration of a fixed past, but as the continuation of a living urban form. It proposes architecture as an adaptive framework through which historical memory and contemporary life can coexist.

About the Artist

Daiwei Wu

I am an undergraduate architecture student at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University. My work is centered on urban renewal, community-oriented design, and the social dimension of architecture. I understand architecture not simply as formal production, but as a spatial practice shaped by everyday life, collective memory, and existing social relations. This position has been informed by research and design projects on lilong renewal, rural resilience, and high-density residential environments. A recurring concern in my work is the relationship between architectural intervention and lived reality. Historic neighborhoods have shown me that residents are not passive recipients of renewal, but the most direct users of space and the clearest interpreters of its problems, potentials, and limits. Their daily habits, spatial experience, and practical judgment provide an essential basis for meaningful design decisions. For this reason, renewal should not remain a one-way professional proposal; it requires careful observation, spatial analysis, and sustained dialogue with local users. I hope to further develop an architectural methodology that combines analytical rigor with social responsiveness, and that contributes to more dignified and sustainable living environments under conditions of spatial constraint.

Daiwei Wu

Renovation of Liyuan Community

August 2026

Medium:

Architecture

Renovation of Liyuan Community explores how architecture can act as a medium of social repair within a dense historic residential fabric. Based on Qingdao’s traditional Liyuan courtyard type, the project addresses overcrowding, aging infrastructure, and the fragmentation of communal life through a strategy of careful extension rather than replacement. New structural layers widen circulation, reorganize ground-floor uses, and introduce semi-public platforms, allowing the courtyard to function once again as a shared social field. The intervention does not erase the compact character of the original typology. Instead, it reworks its spatial order to improve light, ventilation, safety, and privacy while preserving the everyday intensity of collective living. Corridors, roof spaces, and community rooms are redefined as spaces of encounter, negotiation, and mutual support. In this sense, the project treats renewal not as the restoration of a fixed past, but as the continuation of a living urban form. It proposes architecture as an adaptive framework through which historical memory and contemporary life can coexist.

About the Artist

Daiwei Wu

I am an undergraduate architecture student at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University. My work is centered on urban renewal, community-oriented design, and the social dimension of architecture. I understand architecture not simply as formal production, but as a spatial practice shaped by everyday life, collective memory, and existing social relations. This position has been informed by research and design projects on lilong renewal, rural resilience, and high-density residential environments. A recurring concern in my work is the relationship between architectural intervention and lived reality. Historic neighborhoods have shown me that residents are not passive recipients of renewal, but the most direct users of space and the clearest interpreters of its problems, potentials, and limits. Their daily habits, spatial experience, and practical judgment provide an essential basis for meaningful design decisions. For this reason, renewal should not remain a one-way professional proposal; it requires careful observation, spatial analysis, and sustained dialogue with local users. I hope to further develop an architectural methodology that combines analytical rigor with social responsiveness, and that contributes to more dignified and sustainable living environments under conditions of spatial constraint.