Qianran Xu

About

Qianran Xu is a designer who hopes to explore the relationship between multidisciplinary perspectives and spatial design using various means. During her studies at RCA, she has always tried to explore the relationship between humans and the natural environment using different presentation techniques and styles.

Project Olea Terra: Community & Carbon in Sitia begins with the plight faced by the inhabitants of sitia, Crete, Greece today, to explore the many uses of olive trees, particularly their potential for carbon sequestration. It aims to help local communities cope with the challenges of climate change while maintaining and promoting their traditional way of life. Through carbon sequestration and community collaboration, economic support is provided to farmers using the symbiotic relationship between the existing system and the farmer olive forest community to enhance the viability of farmers and preserve Sitia’s cultural and agricultural heritage.

At the same time, my teammates and I tried to break down the invisible boundaries that existed between olive farmers through a series of shared space designs. We selected different plots  for  experiments,  using  the  modular  and  simpliied  design as the starting point to assist the experimental plots of olive trees and different plants, to further explore the realizability of carbon sequestration as a strate gic starting point. And in the final project presentation, we choose to use the model to show our design more intuitively, hoping that people can more easily understand our project in different languages, stimulate the active participation of relevant personnel, and put forward their opinions and suggestions. This helps us to optimize our projects and find the best solutions to meet the challenges posed by climate change while maintaining Sitia’s cultural and agricultural traditions.