IceBreaker

There is no gainsaying the fact that seemingly innate divergent intellect and unbridled imagination have spurred me to proactively search for progressive books and publications pertaining to the realm of artistic endeavours since childhood. The actual reinforcement of design as my lifelong career path stemmed from the insight and inspiration I garnered from a serendipitous encountering the stories about one of the foremost figures in Chinese architecture, Ms. Phyllis Lin and Mr. Liang Sicheng, who devoted their life-long efforts to the study and preservation of ancient Chinese architecture. Such a thought-provoking story instilled in me a burning attraction to architecture and environmental design and motivated me to choose environmental design at the undergraduate level, empowering me with the aesthetic underpinnings, design concepts, and techniques requisite for environmental designers. Nonetheless, the more I was introduced to design projects, the more I have been aware of my deficiencies, such as a shortage of a forward-looking vision of design and a logical conception of the holistic view. Hence, considering my academic and professional ambition, I decided to join the MSc in Urban Design programme to undertake an extensive study of the phenomena of socio-cultural dynamics in a regional context to analyse and acquire innovative design strategies and design interventions. Simultaneously, I anticipate integrating my own experience and culture, along with my observations, experiences, and perceptions of life, to rationalise my design techniques and to nurture myself to contemplate the project itself from a holistic and systemic perspective, with a view to making my outstanding contribution to the sustainable development of space (architecture) in the city or even in the country

In my opinion, urban design is a discipline that focuses on urban planning and layout, urban appearance and urban functions, and pays special attention to urban public space. The complex process of urban design focuses on the relationship between the physical arrangement of the city and the social and psychological health of the residents. Through the treatment of physical space and landscape markers, a physical environment is created that will delight residents, stimulate their community spirit, and bring about healthy development on a city-wide scale.

At present, the generally accepted definition is “urban design is a discipline concerned with urban planning layout, urban appearance, urban functions, and especially urban public space.In addition, urban design deals with a much larger space and time scale than architectural design, dealing with blocks, neighborhoods, neighborhoods, and even entire cities (although contemporary urban design rarely covers an entire city, unless the city is small in scale), and its realization is usually set in fifteen to twenty years. Compared with architectural design, which only needs to deal with the construction work within a single land area, and the completion of buildings only takes three or five years at most, urban design has a considerable scale difference in space and time.Urban design also faces more variables than architectural design. The work scope of urban design involves urban transportation system, neighborhood identity, open space and pedestrian space organization, etc. The factors that need to be taken into account also include urban climate and society. The large number of variables makes the content of urban design more complex, in addition to the long time necessary to realize the urban design scheme, the result is a high degree of uncertainty between the urban design scheme and the implementation results. The subject category of urban design and its research scope and working object used to be only.It is limited to the narrow aspects related to architecture and cities. However, it is similar to the more historical and traditional fields such as urban planning, landscape architecture, and architecture,In the middle of the 20th century, the category of urban design has begun to change, in addition to the relationship between urban planning, landscape architecture, architecture and other fields has become increasingly dense and complex. It is also gradually closely related to urban engineering, urban economics, social organization theory, urban sociology, environmental psychology, anthropology, political economy, urban history, municipal science, public management, sustainable development and other knowledge and practice fields, so it is a complex comprehensive interdisciplinary discipline.