Jo Ashbridge, founder and director of AzuKo, an architecture charity that works with disadvantaged communities to improve living conditions, will give a talk on rural development. Attendees are also invited to join a brainstorming event and a workshop. Entry is free but attendees need to sign up at the organizer’s WeChat (SIDA_China).

    Ashibridge has been trying to use the way of participatory design to solve tough problems in the world. The projects she has been working on include constructing one room shelters in Vietnam, developing an incremental phased expansion for a hospital in southwest Uganda, authoring guidelines for T-shelters post-disaster and researching earthen architecture in low-income communities across Bangladesh. This year she joined the jury for the Shelter Global 2017 (www.shelterglobal.org).

    As the community constructs new homes and continues to modernize living conditions, their previous homes become derelict and overgrown. An international call to designers and innovators has been made to imagine a new life for these buildings, and a vision for rural China. Ashibridge’s talk is titled “Reimagining the Forgotten Buildings of Xinguang Village.”

    Time: 6:30-8:30 p.m., March 20

    Venue: Tsing Cafe, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Xili, Nanshan District (南山区西丽清华大学深圳研究生院清咖啡)

    Metro: Line 1, Shenzhen University Station (深大站), Exit C and then take a taxi

    (SD News)