BEIJING BICYCLE CLUB

Part.1
Urban Strategy & Wudaokou Stn. Stubhub

Beijing, People's Republic of China

Date:
Advanced Studio: China
Fall 2015

Critics: 
Alan Plattus, Andrei Harwell

Collaborator:
Cynthia Hsu

Once famously crowded with bicycles, the rapidly growing city of Beijing has since built infrastructure that prioritizes motor vehicles to suit its rising middle class. Bicycle ridership has seen a sharp 78% decline since the 1980s. 

Today the city has begun to impose limits and control over vehicular use as w,ell as increased its public transportation capacity. However,  despite severe problems such as hazardous levels of air pollution and impenetrable infrastructure, the real obstacle against reviving the bicycle as a major means of city transportation is a cultural one.

At the urban scale, we proposed a city-wide network of bicycle routes and supporting infrastructure while also introducing a centralized bicycle hub south of the CBD, as well as Sub-hubs that work with existing public transportation. 

We are interested in the human scale of the bicycle itself, its soft interventions and successfully adopting it as a fetishized object of individuality in response to contemporary Chinese culture.

The Univeristy District in Beijing is home to two of the largest and most renouned institutions in China- Beijing University and Tsing Hua University, among many others.

The Wudaokou subway station that serves the area is particularly notorious for its high degree of human concentration during the peak hours. Here where ridership is very high, infrastructural support in its most basic form like parking is notably lacking, making it a perfect location for a Sub-hub.