Zhou Jun
Project Title
Opening-up and Settling-down: ‘Bordering’ as a Spatial Apparatus in the Making of Shenzhen Special-Economic-Zone during China’s Reform Era (1980s-2010s)
Project Description
Shenzhen is the leading Special-Economic-Zone (SEZ) which was launched experimentally in 1980 under China’s Reform and Opening-up campaign. By utilising the geo-proximity to Hong Kong – then a British colony and global metropolis, Shenzhen permitted the delivery of product lines into the global market beyond. This strategy was formulated by the exploitation/construction of multiple borders around and inside Shenzhen, including a ‘First-Line’, the land-sea-boundary separating British Hong Kong from mainland China to reach its resource ahead; and militarily-equipped ‘Second-Line’, geo-fencing inside the mainland to re-distribute population.
My project reads Shenzhen’s borderscapes before and after the 1997 Hong Kong handover, to examine how architect-designed spaces and centrally-planned infrastructures enclosed a particular environment to engage with globalisation while constructing a platform for creative or political agencies. It aims to understand architecture’s power in border construction from (post-)colonial periods of the 1980s towards (pre-/post-)globalisation of the 2010s. This borderscape, furthermore, has also become a changing setting where the changing cultural meanings and social structures of the emerging contemporary era became enacted. Such complexity can reframe our knowledge about the ‘power – space’ relation through a bordering experiment and also deliver border(land) studies into the design and spatial tectonics.
About me
I am a doctoral researcher in Architecture at Newcastle University. My research interests are situated in the mixture of spatial/design history, social processes and geopolitics – I’m intrigued to explore how architecture/the built environment and its knowledge, method and phenomenon get produced, used and (re)shaped by contemporary agendas, including social transformation, cultural appropriation, institutional power, technological evolution, etc.
From my previous training, I’ve held research backgrounds in vernacular architecture and the built heritage, with particular emphasis on the materiality and production of buildings. Also trained as an architect, I’ve got practicing experiences from the universities, institutes and design offices e.g. Atelier Feichang Jianzhu (FCJZ), mainly working on cultural buildings and historic environments.
Outside of academia, I enjoy outdoors (both in the wild and city-walking), handcraft and cooking – I love spicy flavours with fresh aromas but here in the UK – I am eager to try (to taste and to make) the cuisine worldwide!
I would be interested in further collaborations or just talks on the areas above.
Supervisors
Qualifications
Introduction to Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE) Certificate, Newcastle University, UK
M.Eng. in Architectural History, Theory and Heritage (research-oriented), Southeast University, China
B.Arch. in Architecture (1st Class equiv.), Hunan University, China
Research Group Memberships
Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA)
Architecture Research Collaborative (ARC), Newcastle University
Centre for Heritage, Newcastle University
Design History Society (DHS)