Pedagogy 2025
Abstract
Design education has long privileged the urban. Studio briefs, site selections, and theoretical frameworks overwhelmingly focus on cities, while non-urban territories remain intellectually and pedagogically marginalized. These overlooked regions—what we call the Hinterland—are hidden, underexplored, but vitally important. In China, for example, 30% of the population still resides in these areas, which generate significant GDP, sustain diverse cultural ecologies, and face the frontlines of climate transformation. Yet students often lack the tools or mindsets to engage with such realities—exposing an urban bias that increasingly renders design education disconnected from the real world. At the same time, new technologies offer powerful opportunities to investigate these vast, under explored territories. This paper proposes a Counter-Urban Pedagogy that positions the Hinterland not at the periphery, but as a fertile ground for real-world research-by-design teaching. It outlines a methodology that integrates architecture, rural planning, and cross-sector collaboration—from government officials to grassroots actors—alongside new data-driven tools for bottom-up fieldwork, including social media analysis and POI mapping. More than a curricular shift, this is a call to expand the design imagination. Drawing on our ongoing Revitalization of Ancestral Roads research, we show how this approach generates a body of knowledge that becomes a steppingstone for students, researchers, and practitioners alike. It enables students to engage with open-ended design questions and firsthand issues, while fostering collaborations that reposition the academy not as an ivory tower, but as a field station embedded in the world’s most urgent challenges.
Martijn de Geus is a Dutch architect based in Beijing since 2010. He is a tenure-track associate professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University, and deputy director of its English MArch Program (EPMA). Martijn is co-founder of HanHe Studio, combining academic research with built projects. He holds a PhD and Master’s from Tsinghua and a Bachelor’s from TU Delft. He was named 2022 Dutch Young Architect of the Year and Pujiang Forum Youth Pioneer. His work has been exhibited at multiple Venice Biennales and published internationally. His research explores the ‘Science of the Hinterland’
Yi Shen is a Chinese architect and PhD candidate at Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture. She holds a Master’s degree with honors from Politecnico di Milano and dual Bachelor’s degrees (Architecture and Management) from Jilin Jianzhu University. Yi’s research focuses on research by design-teaching for non-urban areas. In particular, she explores how ancestral road systems can support spatial and social regeneration in hinterland communities. She has received over 20 national and international architectural design awards, and has led projects in China, Laos, and Italy, bridging cultural identity, material logic, and participatory design in rural contexts.