blog & reflections

Layers of Life: Unfolding Chongqing’s Liyuchi Through Section Views

When I was researching for my undergraduate thesis on the urban renewal of Chongqing’s Liyuchi neighborhood, I realized that words alone could never capture the intricate layers of life embedded in the city’s topography. It was through section views that I began to truly understand how space, elevation, and daily rhythms intertwined to create an ecosystem unique to Chongqing.

Chongqing is a city that defies the grid. It rises and falls with the undulating topography, where streets double as rooftops and staircases form arteries that pulse with the city's relentless energy. Liyuchi, nestled in this dynamic terrain, is a neighborhood where past and present coexist within its layered structure. A section view of this place does not merely dissect, but it narrates. It shows the intimate proximity of life: a family’s quiet dinner beneath a pedestrian bridge, a tailor’s shop tucked under an overpass, a teahouse perched on a hillside, watching the city breathe below.

During my field research, I walked through the narrow alleyways and staircases of Liyuchi, observing how different elevations dictated movement and interaction. Unlike a plan view that flattens a place into abstraction, a section allows us to see the depth of human experience. The market’s bustle is not just along the streets but within them, in sunken courtyards and under bridges that act as makeshift rooftops. A home does not exist in isolation, it is stacked, nestled, intertwined with others. The section reveals these invisible relationships.

In the same way, in movies, when a character’s house is cut into a section view, the director intends to reveal more than how other characters may perceive them. Instead, the audience is invited to intimately understand the character, their emotions, secrets, or insecurities. A cluttered basement may hint at unresolved fears, while a stark, isolated bedroom may echo loneliness. Just as film directors use section views to expose the layers of a character’s life, urban sections unveil the unseen connections and interwoven existence of a city’s inhabitants.

In this project, I created many section views to capture the complexity of urban life in Chongqing. Each iteration was an attempt to peel back another layer of the city, making visible the hidden interactions between people and spaces. My first draft, for example, had a strong execution of colors, well-designed graphics, and detailed facades that gave it a charming, almost “cute” quality. But did it truly convey the depth, the movement, and the vibrant chaos of life in Liyuchi? No. Even now, I don’t think my final section fully reveals all the elements that make Liyuchi what it is, although I am very proud of it. The depth of a city like Chongqing, with its countless intersections of history, culture, and geography, can never be fully captured in a single drawing. But perhaps that is the beauty of it, section views are never just about representing space; they are about inviting people to see, to imagine, and to understand in ways that words alone never could.

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In Liyuchi, elevation is not just geography... it is identity. The verticality of this cityscape shapes the way people move, interact, and live. The steep slopes dictate shortcuts, hidden alleyways, and unassuming doors that open into entire worlds. Life in Liyuchi does not unfold in linear streets but in layers, stacked like time itself.

A section view captures this poetry. It allows us to step inside the depth of a city rather than simply skimming its surface. In the jagged lines of elevation, in the spaces suspended between land and sky, Chongqing’s story is told… not in words, but in the silent, powerful language of the section.