Architectural Innovations

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Artificial Intelligence

To stimulate students' potential for design innovation and cultivate imaginative and innovative design talents, the 2026 Tongji University International Construction Festival and the 2026 Fengyuzhu Innovative Construction Competition will take place from June 6th to June 7th, 2026, at Pavilion A and C on Shanghai Fuxing Island. Participating teams include 10 first-year student teams from the College of Architecture and Urban Planning and College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University, as well as 18 first-year student teams from China’s architectural colleges, and 5 student teams from architectural colleges in the US, Europe, and Asia. In total, 231 teachers and students will collaborate to design and construct 33 plastic hollow panel buildings.

“Home” is the spatial type most familiar to everyone, and also one of the spatial scenes most open to redefinition. In the city, there are many kinds of homes: homes of different scales, homes belonging to different times, homes preserved in memory, homes altered by reality, and homes still waiting to take shape in imagination. Each person also carries within them their own idea of home: it may be the home of one’s mother in one’s hometown, a home longed for in the future, or a state of dwelling that has not yet been clearly named. At the same time, “home” in the natural world does not belong only to human beings. The nests, shelters, and habitats of animals also prompt us to reconsider the relationship between home, the body, safety, environment, and construction. Especially now that AI is rapidly transforming our daily lives, how can we redefine our “home”?

This year’s Construction Festival will take place in a disused factory building on Fuxing Island, Yangpu District, Shanghai. One gable end of the factory faces the industrial wharf along the Huangpu River, where red tower cranes become the framed view at the end of the interior space. This vast factory, charged with industrial memory, will temporarily accommodate more than thirty spatial proposals on the theme of “home.” Each participating team will begin with its own understanding of “home” and construct a spatial installation within a 4m×3m site unit, using corrugated cardboard and bamboo rods. Ultimately, these different “homes” will gather within the same factory building to form a temporary miniature city. All the “homes” will be situated on a temporary, thin platform measuring approximately 93 meters by 23 meters and 5 centimeters high.

The main materials provided by the organizing committee are corrugated cardboard sheets measuring 1.27m×2.4m and 12mm in thickness, as well as bamboo rods approximately 2m long and 2 cm in diameter. The cardboard functions as a planar material, while the bamboo rods function as a linear material; each corresponds to different geometric properties, structural behaviors, and construction logics. Each team is required to cut the cardboard into a set of standardized modules, with no more than two specifications of cardboard components per team; the specific dimensions and forms may be determined by the teams themselves. The bamboo rods may be freely cut and assembled according to the design needs. We hope that each team will fully understand and explore the structural potential of planar and linear materials, and, within the constraints of limited materials, standardized specifications, and site boundaries, investigate how “home” can be constructed, perceived, and redefined.

Here, structure is not merely a mechanical concept; it also refers to the connective relationships between one material and another. The use of standardized planar materials should likewise not be regarded as a restriction, but rather as a response to the conditions of modern construction. From the age of handcraft to the industrial era, and further into today’s post-industrial and digital modes of production, standardization, modularization, and construction efficiency have continuously shaped architectural form and transformed the way we perceive space and structure. What this Construction Festival expects to see is not merely more than thirty formal answers to the idea of “home,” but diverse understandings, constructive experiments, and spatial imaginations developed under shared conditions of material, scale, and site.

As a construction festival, the evaluation will first focus on each team’s understanding of the materials, including their properties, formal potential, scale relationships, and methods of connection. It will also consider how the constructed Jia-Gou responds to the theme, including spatial organization, bodily behavior, formal expression, and the creation of atmosphere. Ultimately, we hope these temporary constructions will reveal the changes now taking place: home is no longer only a fixed type, but a space that can be redefined, reassembled, and continuously reshaped within contemporary urban and natural experience.

June 06&07, 2026 (Saturday)

Pavilion A&C on Shanghai Fuxing Island

ORGANIZERS AND SPONSERS

Organizer

College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University

Co-organizer

Shanghai Fengyuzhu Culture Technology Co., Ltd.

Supporting Organizations

Yangpu District Talent Bureau    Yangpu Riverside Group

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