Reimagining local worlds: Wen village conservation and regeneration by Amateur Architecture Studio

Abstract

This article theorises the local world as a conceptual scaffold for future conservation and regeneration. It aims to catalyse a theoretical dialogue across the East and West to understand how ordinary places and lifeworlds are preserved, reproduced, and possibly reimagined. The local worlds discussed herein are conceptualised as the worlds of many, the worlds of relating, the worlds of structuring and the worlds of becoming. These four cardinal points present a source of open-endedness and futurity for contemporary architectural reinterpretation. The current article examines the characterisation of the Wen village conservation and regeneration project, led by the Amateur Architecture Studio in Zhejiang Province of China (2012–2016), as an architectural reimagination of local worlds, with a strong sensitivity to the ordinary places and lifeworlds of rural China and juxtapositions of new local worlds within old worlds. By piecing together the flows and fragments of the architectural process, this article shows how locally situated designs and dynamics have shaped the project in both its formation and afterlife, both ethically and contemporarily. Using close readings of popular and oral accounts from both architect’s and users’ perspectives, this article extends the case study by broadening theoretical conversations about contemporary architecture’s capacity to reimagine local worlds.