Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Campus

Located southeast in the Guangdong province, the capital city of Guangzhou is experiencing rapid growth and development, becoming one of China’s most imperative centers for foreign trade and exchange. Since the late 1990s, radical expansion of higher education admission in China has given rise to the creation of ‘university towns’ - districts of several adjacent university campuses - across the country, the most famous being the Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center. I completed this project in the third year of my undergraduate urban planning degree at Toronto Metropolitan University over the course of five weeks, three of which were spent locally in Guangzhou, China under the supervision of Dr. Zhixi C. Zhuang for the completion of the PLE 855: International Field Camp course. The intent of this study was to critically analyze the built form and environment of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts’ (GAFA) new campus located in Guangzhou University Town (GUT), also known as the Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center (GHEMC). The project team consisted of both local GAFA students as well as Toronto Metropolitan University students.

As seen in the 2003 and 2019 aerial photos respectively, the development of the new GAFA campus has significantly disrupted the waterscape by diverting and cutting off the water canals, building a man-made pond, and putting up harsh barriers at the riverfront. These findings set the foundation for our project proposal, which was aimed at addressing the lack of connectivity between the adjacent Nanting village, the GAFA new campus, and the southern waterfront - all of which have been historically connected through the river system, but are now separated by the built harsh barriers.