b"MUDD 25 - Urban Intensity l Urban Design - International StudioSTUDENT EXPERIENCEWhen one thinks of Beijing, you would imagine skyscrapers enveloping its skies. Within its folds it holds more to itself than it seems at first glance. Tony Garcia once said It is the people that make great cities, and that does seem to shape this mega agglomeration. Beijing I would say, is a land of lilliputs with Gullivers as tourists. They then scale their grand notions of size and scale to suit the locals' sensibilities. The skyscrapers are almost those of worship. You crane your neck for the view, bump into someone, and then feel the fast-paced city. It has people from all walks of life, living and working so close together.The spaces change drastically from one to another. You might find yourself walking down a narrow alley only to find yourself tumbling down and into to a large street. The transition is as magical as it is sudden. It seems to have in itself, a reel like quality where you can cycle across the city while your surroundings change as if you were on a giant movie set.The Beijing Planning Exhibition gave us an emphatic view of the city in a location where it's scale can be appreciated. The relationships between the spaces that are hard to appreciate when you are in them can only be understood when you are in a giant exhibition hall looking at three-dimensional model of the entire city.The Studio at Beijing was nothing like we had experienced before. Collaborating with students from Peking University, the employees of Turenscape and Professor Yu Kong Jian we learned so much from their hands-on experience of current projects happening in the city.While we came in at 9am every morning, we wrapped up later and later each night as we inched towards our deadline. Our weekends were short and we were eager to get our ideas and designs progressed. All of us zoomed in and out the office looking like insomniac zombies.All of it however paid off, with our work full of brilliantly different ideas and a final relief of tumbling pressure. Working on what was an intense experience, the input from locals who are designing real solutions for our studio sites helped us shape solutions that were realistically inclined to suit China and its people. The projects in this studio and the way in which we had to balance the ideas of designers, planners, officials and locals to help solve problems gave us an exhausting but valuable insight into the real life of an urban designer in China today. - Hitha Ramesh Babu148P6-20200302-OTHERS.indd 5 2020/3/3 0:10:06"