Anne van Stijn
ExploreLab
Image: LET’S REHABILITATE! A rehabilitation strategy for China’s crumbling high-rises
Rehabilitating China’s Crumbling High-Rises
Vast amounts of high-rise housing in Beijing are crumbling. Severe physical decay, social degeneration and a financial impasse initiated a negative spiral. By working across disciplines, scales and time, an integral rehabilitation strategy was developed to break this negative spiral.
The rehabilitation strategy consists of three components. Component I, ‘the socio-organisational proposition’, contains policy changes to solve issues originating from governmental regulation. Component II, ‘the financial model’, empowers, enthuses and facilitates stakeholders to rehabilitate. Component III is a step-by-step ‘physical rehabilitation method’, wherein residents rehabilitate their dwelling, and a stakeholder coalition rehabilitates the building and communal grounds over four phases. For an easy, attractive and affordable rehabilitation, stakeholders can select standardised, customisable and prefabricated rehabilitation products - TOOLS and RE:NEW products - manufactured in an on-site workshop.
The strategy was implemented in the case ‘Dongsishitiao-jia’ to illustrate how the rehabilitation strategy can offer a future to China’s Crumbling High-rises.