Euro-Asian Design Studio I : City & Water Infrastructures

The Euro-Asian Collaborative Urban Design Studio was part of a new English speaking master curriculum at ENSAS and benefitted from the partnership between ENSA Strasbourg and the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) of Tongji/Shanghai University, being linked to the Franco-Chinese double master's degree and the IMM Collaborative Workshop.

The studio favours a comparative Europe/Asia perspective regarding design approaches and urban themes related to spatial and societal evolutions in contemporary metropolises: How do urban global issues spatialize in distinct socio-geographic contexts and how can this guide project scenarios differently? 

Organized in two distinctive working groups - Studio Shanghai and Studio Strasbourg - the Europe/Asia confrontation was experienced at different levels:
- Through the discovery and personal experimentation of a "foreign" terrain and context: ENSA Strasbourg students were confronted with the metropolis of Shanghai, Tongji students discovered another metropolitan configuration, that of Strasbourg and the Upper Rhine. 
- Through the confrontation of disciplinary cultures and project cultures: ENSA Strasbourg architecture students and Tongji University urban planning & design students were brought to exchange, collaborate and debate throughout the studio by putting in mirror the European contemporary city vs. the Asian contemporary city, as well as their own urban and design project cultures.

In 2019-2020, the studio addressed the city-water relationship through two complex metropolitan design cases: the future of the Strasbourg's harbour area situated within a cross-border territory on the Rhine river, and the transformations of Jinshan former fishing village in Shanghai.

Through their designs the students critically explored themes such as : cultural heritage / industrial heritage spatial renewal, contemporary productive city, urban logistics, ecosystemic thinking, eco-tourism infrastructures, mobility&energy transition.