Stone White

Minjie Si and Xianfeng Ye

With increased urbanization in China, both people living in the old city center and rural farmers are having to adjust to life outside of their traditional communal lifestyle. Meanwhile with the development of the Chinese middle-class, now many Chinese aspire to new collective spaces for the social change, which can accommodate more possibilities and variability, and therefore create collective memory for the new generations. VRAP (Vernacular Research and Practice) was established by Minjie Si in Beijing 2016. focus on re-defining new collective spaces through observing social evolution and technological progress, modern transformation of towns and villages. The main types of projects are involved with old city renewal, rural revitalization and cultural tourism development. The works by VRAP are trying to achieve a delicate balance between strategy and form, built and preserved, rigor and freedom, specificity and generality, immediacy and evolutionary instinct. Despite of practice, VRAP also consider research and publication as an essential tool for making design better. Research project Rural Area in the Mountain Area Surround Beijing was selected as the Science and Technology Project 2017 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. Project Sky Farm has won the China Design Power List 100 2018 and was exhibited in UABB (Shenzhen-Hong Kong Biennale). Urban design of Taohuayuan Eco City in Changde has won the Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements Awards 2019. Project Bridge Pavilion has won Paris DNA Design Award 2021 and shortlisted for China Sustainable Design Award 2021. Project Farm Factory was exhibited in Rotterdam Architecture Biennale 2016 (Next Economy) and Beijing International Design Week 2016. Besides Minjie also curated parallel exhibition in Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 and delivered a speech at the 2016 IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects) Annual Meeting in Turin, Italy.