The concept of personal identity in China is largely determined by Confucian ideology. Today, with the country’s advancing technology, such ideology is translated through a digitised system deployed through the big data collected through online and offline surveillance methods. Superficially promoting sincerity and trustworthiness, the system quantifies people’s daily behaviours into points which are cumulated to ultimately provide each individual with a rating that becomes their ‘virtuous status’. The rating controls people’s access to different needs through reward and punishment mechanisms. It is non-voluntary - anybody in the country with an ID card is automatically included on the system.

Categorisations are prescribed without people noticing. The project tackles the system by targeting the people at the very bottom of the category called the ’blacklist’. It is a category created by government initiatives to manage the high population of those who are ‘in debt’. However, numerous pilot projects reveal that this isn’t the reason to have someone be put on the blacklist in numerous cases. Disagreements with the government’s scheme, publishing active political statements online and any activities irrelevant to the system’s objective but creating frictions with the government can put one onto the blacklist.

Being blacklisted and having a low credit score is different. People not only have to suffer from erroneous social stigma, but they are also isolated from the rest of the community for as long as their name is on the blacklist as all their access has been suspended. People won’t be notified when they’ve been blacklisted and are expected to find out naturally by attempting to access to different amenities such as applying for a bank loan, buying a train ticket or logging into social media accounts.

Places of appeal are where blacklisted people can go to if they think they have been wrongfully blacklisted. However, appeal application is only valid within two weeks from the time they have been blacklisted and more than 80% of the times people are left with no response. Consequently, blacklisted people have left astray with their past connections lost in contact. People instantly disassociate themselves from the blacklisted people as being directly involved with these people will lower their own credit scores.

This is a satellite project and Garden Of Lost Opportunitiesjust looks into one of them. The design is based on the concept of the Chinese garden- it is acknowledged as a secret enclosure that runs with a different set of rules, independent from what is governing the outside world. It contains its own data centre that holds the same set of data of the blacklisted people from the system but for a completely different objective.

This is a safe zone with surveillance that is temporarily suspended. It permits unsurveilled and secret conversations. The small huts at the most private zone of the garden project the data of the blacklisted user to build trust instead of losing it. The Space is divided into three levels of public spaces for different forms of interactions with spatial qualities alleviating anxiety and nerves of the users. The rock and water of the Chinese garden not only acts as a feature but also as an essential role that enables the data centre underground in the form of a water cooling system.

KOOZ What prompted the project?

RSM We think of the impositions of categorical labels as something unique to human. These expressions are made primarily for the more efficient, sustainable and convenient social realm. This is evident when reading into the origin of any form of categories, where a historical age and ideology embeds something essential about the ordering within a cultural temperament. However, the real implementation often reflects something of opposing qualities. With subconscious acceptance to the reading of these labels- either of ourselves or of the others- we forget where we actually posit ourselves in the society.

KOOZ What questions does the project raise and which does it address?

RSM Social Credit System is one of the many examples where ideology has been politicised during its translation to application and reinforced through the country’s advancing technology. Under its aim to strengthen trustworthiness is a list of questions regarding the definition of ‘trustworthiness’ the system is striving for. With the greatest population in the world, some assert that strict regulations are necessary to sustain the country of China- a harmonious society will form with the reduction of crime rate through the system.

The questions then arise from the research through the Social Credit System’s pilot projects that are being conducted in the major cities in the country. If the rating system itself is enough to ‘filter out the bad’ and ‘keep the city clean’, why is there a category that acts as an outlier and is enacted mostly through direct intervention from the government?

The project taps specifically into this outlier called ‘LaoLai’- also known as the ‘people on the blacklist’. This category faces a different level of consequences and restrictions from people who simply have low credit scores. The common punishments as found in the research states that LaoLai is suspended from the basic means of keeping in contact with their acquaintances such as using their social media accounts, travelling to other cities, and making a phone call. Much of the LaoLai claim that they have not defied any of the system rules - and that they have been put onto the blacklist without being notified. Common claims also include that often the action is made when they have published or participated in an activity or movement that creates friction to the country’s political movements. Most importantly, the social stigma the LaoLai have to go through from publicising the blacklist further disconnect themselves from the rest of the community.

Under the system’s objective, the social stigma is assigned mostly through presumption as no clear statement is made regarding who will be blacklisted for what reasons. The project tackles this category using the same set of data being used in the system and searches for the possible alternatives to voice their position within their own community.

KOOZ How does the project approach and define the notion of safety?

RSM The idea of a ‘garden’ is present throughout the project- a garden as an enclosure with its own governing rules independent from the outside world. The project introduces a microcosm situated within a macrocosm. Locating it right before a law court that is directly associated with the government is an action not for resistive friction but more for making a presence in an implicit manner. Instead of creating an escape or hidden resistance, the project aims to embrace Laolai by having the space existing within the system and not elsewhere. It is proposed and agreed by the Beijing capital to act as an additional plugin into the Social Credit System. The garden of lost opportunity will be suggested with the surface aim to reduce the illegal deals and markets that can be increased by LaoLai being banned from various access. This creates an extension to the existing journey of LaoLai where everything stops at the court of appeal- a place that they go to when they think they have been blacklisted. 

KOOZ How does the design satisfy and accommodate this sensation and safe reality?

RSM Considering the presumptions LaoLai might have about the place prior to their arrival to the garden, the design utilises the elements of Chinese garden to alleviate nerves and accommodate spaces for the meeting and reconnections.

The space is divided based on the sequence LaoLai takes in the garden, with their expectations to have their meetings safely and their reactions to all kinds of outcomes they get out of the meetings. The two main elements of Chinese garden I used to design the space is ‘rock’ and ‘water’ as the traditional sayings regard rock mountains as a place for the virtuous. It is a heavy material with form suggesting the opposite idea: lightness and afloat. The heavy waterfall the person meets right after the walk through the entrance not only act as part of the water cooling system for the data centre underground but also to occupy the space with placidity. The echoing sound of the falling water swallows the conversations and dilutes the sense of being under surveillance.

The narrow corridors and walls used in the Chinese garden recall a walk through a labyrinth- the plan is cut using walls of different heights, creating 1) spaces for sightseeing, 2) casual meeting and 3) planned meeting between LaoLai and the others. The plan is then organised with the level of privacy needed, and design decisions for this are made through porosity and level of enclosure.

The data centre underground holds the same set of data from the Social Credit System but for a completely different purpose. The set of data is projected on the screen in the small ‘huts’ at the two ends of the garden where the planned meetings are held for a possible chance to regain the lost positions and manifests the real data record to reveal who they are as a person instead of as a LaoLai. A way to protect not only themselves from social stigma but also their family members who have been indirectly affected.

KOOZ What role and power can architecture play within these systems?

RSM Very rare that architecture alone becomes an answer and solution to sociopolitical issues. How the programmes and spaces are designed may account for a space that servers purposes that were undiscussed. It plays a bigger role on a larger scale when narratives are added. The architecture’s modes of operation change its position within a system.

KOOZ To what extent can it act as a tool of resistance to mass surveillance?

RSM Probably the biggest barrier I had whilst doing the project is that I was dealing with the government of China. Almost all the local interviewees I’ve interviewed told me the project with such intention will not last long in real life- no matter how implicit it is laid out. I can only say that the resistance to mass surveillance is attempted through ‘disguising’ the spaces for the LaoLai through fusing the more public garden that anyone in the local areas can enter with the relatively more private data centre that holds the real intention of the project.

KOOZ What is for you the architect's most important tool?

RSM Means of representing the ideas are variable depending on who the architect is and what kind of project he or she is working on. But for every project, the architect or the designer needs to have the clearest understanding themselves on the objective of the project- whether that be commentary, research, experimentation, or practical. And to understand the objective, one has to have a thorough study into the design languages and concepts adopted as well as on the relevant contextual elements. I’ve heard people saying that justification is not needed for every single point of a design. However, with nonchalant perspectives and decisions made without reasoning comes careless production before careless design.