The Xizhimen overpass is one of the most important traffic nodes in Beijing, the capital of China. It connects several essential streets including the second Ring Road, Xueyuan road and the Xizhimen external road. Because these roads are all the busiest ones in Beijing, there are more than tens of thousands of vehicles running across the Xizhimen overpass every day. It has become a concentrated urban landscape for the symbol of Beijing, a super busy city.

 

For the connection of different roads, the Xizhimen overpass becomes a maze on which people cannot distinguish the right direction without the guideboards. Each time when I drive to that place, the enigmatical space would lead me to an unknown place, which has become a special experience for me. The spatiality of the Xizhimen overpass inspires me to imagine a possibililty, which is that by utilizing the existing structural system, can I interpret the Xizhimen node into a Overpass City? Along the high density roads, people drive up and down to shuttle back and forth in this unique realm. There are busy roads, tens of thousands of buildings and various scenes of life here. A high density urban germinates, which matches the prototype of modern urbanism, and turns to a special system for the residents here.

 

The Xizhimen overpass is a giant infrastructure. The volume of it is similar to some biggest biuldings or architectural complexs, such as the Pentagon in the United States, The Chinese national stadium and the Forbidden city in Beijing, meaning it occupies a big tract which can be potentially constructed several biuldings in a city. Obviously, the houses cannot be put on the roads directly. However, under the bridge, there is a great amount of space for the construction, which is a possible area to form a linear city.