Photo credits © Odile Decq
The ambition of the Xisi Bei regeneration project is answering to the fundamental question of what is the essence of a place and what is its materiality.
Its complexity and its historicity address every contemporary intervention. The transformation of its territory and of its elements helps linking the today life with its past and its future through a prospective vision.
It would have been paradoxal to think in a traditional way. The expansion of the city, the injection and transcription of ultra modern city life in a partially preserved urban tissue is a challenge.
New urban value creates usually in such urban condition and transformation the loose of a previous social life turned into a gentrification one.
The danger of the nostalgic representation of the ancient city is the same as the danger of its destruction.