Chenwei Ye, The Tea Parliament in Hangzhou, Year 5, PG13, 2022

The project proposes a community forest landscape for locals to co-inhabit and preserve, whilst using architecture as a vehicle to accommodate forest events in order to re-establish the aesthetic and philosophy of ‘being in the forest’. Central to the ambitions of the project is the aim to question current non-interventionism models of forest preservation in the Longjing region in Hangzhou. This attitude towards forest management can be traced back to the government’s propagandistic ambition since the 1950s and consequentially generated a series of strict regulations that restricts local tea farmers’ rights and tradition to inhabit, exploit and co-exist with the forest. The architecture comes as a part of the new community forest