In my senior year at University of Florida, I participated in the University Scholars Program. Select students were given a grant to conduct their research over the summer and the fall semester and turn in a 4,000 word paper by the end of the spring semester. We also had to give a presentation in the spring. Back in 2010, I used the money to go to China where I studied Urban Density living in Shanghai. I turned in the paper in May 2011, graduated and thought that was the end of that! WELL, today, I get an e-mail from the UF Undergraduate Research Journal telling me that they want to publish my paper! (O____O) hard work does pay off!
excerpt : INTRODUCTION
"From the summer of 2010 I traveled with the University of Florida School of Architecture to China in order to study East Asian architecture. From the beginning I had anticipated to document interesting places exceeded our western imagination: exoticism, mystery and urbanity were my initial themes. Upon arrival I was immediately seduced by the magnitude of the urban development in Shanghai. Modeled as an aesthetic objet and symbol of great economic power, Shanghai’s urban skyline demanded attention, however my point of interest averted to the unique and endangered community of Lilong-Longtang dwellings. Through photography and on-site sketching, the attempt to catalogue the Lilong-Longtang neighborhoods invited new ideas about presenting and representing the image of Shanghai. In order to compare my documentation of the current, I sought to study one of Zhang Yimou’s films, Raise the Red Lantern in order to understand the character of Chinese dwelling. During the final stages of these comparisons, my documentation produced a visual hybridization of Shanghai as a transitional city. The images produced have become ambiguous and reflects the personal and impersonal state of disorder within the city. The nostalgia of these endangered neighborhoods connotes Shanghai’s strife between city living and city image. Divided into three components, this paper begins with a comprehensive analysis of Shanghai’s urban development, its unique residential communities and finally a strategic production of images that thematically collage the reality of Shanghai’s high-density living. "