WU-ZHI BRIDGE

TYPE: PROFESSIONAL WORK AT WUZHI-BRIDGE CHARITY

TIME: 2010.10-2011.8

TUTOR: SONG YEHAO (TSINGHUA), EDWARD WU (CUHK)

PARTNERS: LIU YAYUN, PAN XI, DONG LEI, WANG XINYU, ZHANG CONGQI, ETC.

ROLE: TEAM LEADER, INVESTIGATION, DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

LOCATION: XIANYUAN VILLAGE, YUNNAN PROVINCE, CHINA

BRIDGE LENGTH: 21M

BRIDGE WIDTH: 1.2M

 

XIANYUAN Village is a village with 113 families of both Han-race and Yi-race. One stream separates the village into two parts. The only primary school was located in one side of the village. Floods sometimes prevent the children on the other side from going to school. The village was so poor that cannot afford to build a permanent bridge to avoid this problem. Because the village is crowded with houses, the open space near the stream becomes a potential place for villagers to communicate. The main challenge in this project is to connect the peoples physically and socially. What’s more, the construction would be conducted by both the student volunteers and the villagers. So let them work together and become friends.

We made investigation in the village several times to choose the proper location of WU-ZHI Bridge. The village was separated into two parts: the west and the east. And the east one was even subdivided into 3 groups on both sides of the stream. The primary school is near the east village. We finally chose the location in the east part for two reasons: 1) children from several other nearby villages also need to cross the stream here because the main road passed here; 2) the divided village groups were in need of an open space for social activities, the bridge and the riparian was quite a potential public place.

 

To encourage public activities and communication between the villagers live on each side of the stream, the bridge provide space and form to seat together, hold on, lean on or encounter each other. A thirty centimeter difference in handrail height has allowed children to use it, while different gestures to approach have promoted casual interpersonal interactions.

 

No heavy machines were able to pass through the mountains into the village, so the construction must be done by hand. Local materials and Light structure were chosen. The Bridge pier was an improved version of piled stones. Steel structure was carefully added. All volunteers from Tsinghua University, Hong Kong University and the United States were organized into construction groups. Each group had one leader and eight members. They worked together with the villagers to pick stones, carrying steel structure and finished the whole task as friends.