We braved Beijing’s rush hour to walk to the Stanford Center at Peking University this morning. There was even more activity on the streets compared to yesterday—longer lines of cars, bigger crowds of bikes and pedestrians. We arrived at the Stanford Center, which sits in a quiet corner of the PKU campus, otherwise known as 北大 in local parlance. It’s built as a fusion of Eastern and Western architecture—a traditional Chinese 四合院 courtyard at ground level, with two stories of modern offices, lounges, meeting rooms and a sunlit atrium underneath.
International Urbanization Seminar visits SCPKU (Alec Hogan)
There’s a height restriction in this area because the 圓明園 Gardens are nearby, so Stanford decided to drill down and expand underground instead. The funds for this center were contributed by a number of Stanford alumni, and a variety of programs such as the School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Business rent offices in order to use the space. (Sorry, no free lunch.) While inside, we also visited the Highly Immersive Classroom (HIC), the room where we had so many of our teleconference exchange sessions.
We’re on the other side of the wormhole! (Alec Hogan)
Welcome to Designing the Human City, a joint workshop spotlighting sustainable urbanization, sponsored by Stanford University and Tsinghua University.
The Human City: Designing for People
From September 7-21, workshop participants will observe neighborhoods in Beijing, meet with local experts (in fields ranging from energy efficient architecture to transportation), and produce an exhibition for the Beijing Design Week expo on Smart Cities.
Many of the workshop participants are alumni of the International Urbanization Seminar at Stanford, or will be joining the seminar at the end of September. After the workshop, teams on both sides of the Pacific will continue working on projects throughout the fall—an example of continuing cross-cultural collaboration.
Please stay tuned to this site for updates along the way. We are excited to share our journey with you!
A project of the International Urbanization Seminar
