PORTFOLIO LI XUECHANG
LI XUECHANG, Lexie
ARCH7082 Design 12
Allessandra Cianchetta TA: Allan Chong, Cynthia Leung SEMESTER 2, 2021-22
Artscape Hong Kong
Research and strategy on Future Art Space
Location:Hong Kong 2022 Spring Group Work(Overall Strategy) & Individual Work (Site Strategy)
Instructor: Allessandra Cianchetta Teaching Assitant: Allan Chong & Cynthia Leung
A defining trait of Hong Kong's landscape is the close relationship between the urban metropolis and the nature surrounding it. For this reason, it takes very little travel time to pass from the city centre to the primarily untouched countryside woodlands. We chose the New Territories as a potential art space for its more scattered communities, cultural heritage and still-thriving villages with century-old traditions.
Nevertheless, the richness of its historic architectural and natural resources is under significant threat. Our strategy explores a way of connecting nature, history, and art in the context of Hong Kong's expanding land use while bringing a more localised and vibrant art form to the post-pandemic era, bringing new life to the future of Hong Kong art.
Manifesto Urgency
A defining trait of Hong Kong's landscape is the close relationship between the urban metropolis and the nature surrounding it. For this reason, it takes very little travel time to pass from the city centre to the primarily untouched countryside woodlands. We chose the New Territories as a potential art space for its more scattered communities, cultural heritage and still-thriving villages with century-old traditions.
Nevertheless, the richness of its historic architectural and natural resources is under significant threat. Our strategy explores a way of connecting nature, history, and art in the context of Hong Kong's expanding land use while bringing a more localised and vibrant art form to the post-pandemic era, bringing new life to the future of Hong Kong art.
We propose utilising already eatablished hiking trails to create 5 distinct travelling routes in woodlands spanning the New Territories' primary economic districts fo Tai Po ( 大埔 )， Sheung Shui ( 上水 ), Yuen Lung ( 元朗 ), and Tuen Muen ( 屯门 ). Themed around these distinct travelling routes, multiple smaller art spaces are to be built by renewing and revitalizing historic buildings and integrating outdoor exhibitions with nature. To deal with the large volume of potential sites across each of the 5 routes, a system was devised for cataloguing boteworthy individually the ways one could tackle the design of art spaces across a single route (from) according to their designated landscape type.
The main visitors for art spaces like museums and galleries are tourists but their numbers have rapidly declined since fewer people travel cross-country during the pandemic and post-pandemic periods.
1. The art spaces are losing attractions to local people and may not be readily accessible from certain districts. (The same old way of exhibition, the boring space, the ancient media... )
2. The decline of cultural and historical symbols in Hong Kong. (The continual need for land redevelopment drives many sites of historical architecture or cultural phenomenon to be replaced by modern residential housing and disperses the tight-knit local community built around it)
3. Hong Kong has a high-density urban space where inequalities are spatially visible, and there are some places in new territories where local villagers and developers are pushing for new economic drivers for the village.
Urgency
1. Fish pond ridges are the only way to be close to nature, and the complex and interesting trails here give people a sense of discovery.
2. Periodic changes happen in the work cycle and water levels. During the dry season, the fish pond's water level drops dramatically every spring, revealing dry ground with great groove patterns that attract many photographers.
3. Most of the small docks and houses by the fish pond are dilapidated.
Strategy
The architects provide a spatial installation on the ridge of the fish pond. It provides a space for villagers, hikers to enjoy nature and art. The content of these installations will change according to the seasons and work cycles of fishers, bringing a better quality of living and working space for the villagers, and a continuously changing art experience for the visitors - nature and art, in one place. The project also maintains a sustained openness, where villagers or artists can take the initiative to transform the space to make it more localized and naturalized.
Relationship with Nature
The natural landscape can be integrated into the space. The scaffolding structure is very economical in labor consumption and can be built very quickly. The exhibition space can be flexibly changed according to different needs. After removal, it will not cause any harm to nature.
Treated fishing nets and canvas can be hung on the structure as decoration. Intricate paths allow people to wander through them, rest, to view the artwork.
Small boxes are inserted into the structure as temporary view frames, providing a different way of looking at nature. The exterior skin is dominated by the graffiti work of Mr. Doodle, a young but rapidly emerging graffiti artist.
Compared to Keith Haring, he prefers to create a more happy visual language to let everyone can enjoy and feel involved in. By placing this visually striking work in a natural context, everyone can experience the power of art.
The outer skin is a very suitable place to display textual work that people can notice at a distance. With the webbed ridge, people can notice the massive textual banner in all directions. American artist, Jenny Holzer's Neon work is perfect for this. The artist specializes in conveying ideas by creating poems or sentences that are placed in neon or projected on the façade of a building or on the street.
A huge screen is placed on the structure, which can play the film at night with people sitting on a boat to watch.
Artwork, "the end of civilisation", is a film installation by artist Douglas Gordon. It happened on the boundary between England and Scotland, one of the Roman Empire's borders. The grand piano, emblematic of high culture, is destroyed at the primeval edge of civilization. The fire can be a symbol of optimism and hope but also of risk, danger, and destruction.
Renewed small docks are inserted into the structure for both anchoring and storage. One can observe such a working method up close.
Horizontal Garden
The Asia Society Hong Kong Center was founded in 1990 by a group of local Hong Kong business leaders. The new Center, which opened in 2011, is situated on a steeply sloped site at the Victoria Barracks, Former Explosives Magazine. The site has four military building built by the British Army in the mid19th , and soon was expanded by the Royal Navy in early 20th, finally was abandoned in the 1990s.
The project located in a rainforest which surrounded by skyscrapers. It consists of two parts of buildings and are connected by a corridor which goes through the woods. At the upper site is the heritage compound, where two large, stone-walled earth berms made to deter explosions separate three landmarked structures. Now these buildings are restored to house new programs. Magazine A holds the Asia Society Gallery; the Old Laboratory holds the Asia Society’s administrative offices; Magazine B is a theater containing 100 seats. Many original building elements are maintained; mechanical equipment is hidden below-grade to preserve the site’s historic character.
Inspired by traditional Chinese gardens, a covered walkway forms a path between the structures. One the lower site, a 1940s structure was restored for office space. A new two-story pavilion building, clad in dark green stone sourced from southern China, floats above, serving as the Asia Society’s entrance. It holds a multi-function hall, visitor amenities, gift shop, and restaurant. An exterior stair leads to the roof terrace. Set against Hong Kong’s skyline, it is a place for quiet contemplation and an outdoor venue with dramatic views.
IceBerg in the City
The Foundation Lovis Vuitton is located in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris and is supposed to showcase art and France to the world along with house the contemporary art collection of LVMH mogul Bernard Arnaud. Referred to as “a veritable ship amongst trees”, the design features a hovering glass carapace and various sails that part at various points to reveal concrete “icebergs” at the building’s core. The design responds to the setting of the Jardin d’Acclimatation, evoking the tradition of 19th-century glass garden buildings, and the desire to create a contemporary art museum that will be attractive and welcoming to the children and families who frequent the Jardin.
Constructed on the edge of a water garden created especially for the project, the building comprises an assemblage of white blocks (known as “the icebergs”) clad in panels of fiberreinforced concrete, surrounded by twelve immense glass “sails” supported by wooden beams. The sails give Fondation Louis Vuitton its transparency and sense of movement, while allowing the building to reflect the water, woods and garden and continually change with the light.
As visitors move from gallery to gallery within the building, the large expanses of glass provide picturesque views of the gardens, integrating the landscape into the experience of the museum. Visitors are able to climb exterior stairways underneath the glass sails to reach roof-top gardens and exhibitions.
Grand Palais Éphémère
The FIAC in Paris was hosted in the Grand Palais for many years, but the building closed for major restoration work since 2019, during which time, this ephemeral building is intended to house the major art, fashion, and sporting events, such as the FIAC, Saut Hermès, and Chanel fashion shows.
Located on the Champ-de-Mars, the Grand Palais Éphémère has a strong connection with the history of the Universal Exhibitions. The slightly curved design follows the curve of the feet of the Eiffel Tower viewed from its perspective. The height has been strictly limited to the needs of future use and therefore leaves the dome of the Military School sixteen meters higher, so as not to hide it. The curvature of the ensemble does not show any break in the lines between the roof. The building has a main nave with an uninterrupted span of 51 m in breadth and 33 m in depth, completely free of any posts or structural elements interrupting the space.
The wooden structure of the building is not only designed to be modular and quick to assemble, but also to be reused in multiple configurations when it is dismantled and reused after the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It required 1.500 m3 of European spruce assembled in glued laminated timbers, sized for efficient road or river transport to reduce assembly time on site.
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, 1830
Katsushika Hokusai Japanese, Edo period in Japan (1603 – 1867)
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper 25.7 × 37.9 cm
The Art Institute of Chicago, CCO Ukiyo-e print
The Large Glass, 1915-1923
Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire and glass panel 277.5 × 177.8 × 8.6 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art Temporary Installation
John-Paul Stonard explains in The Guardian: “That the Great Wave became the best known print in the west was in large part due to Hokusai’s formative experience of European art.” Not only did he absorb Prussian blue into his repertoire, but “prints from early in his career show him attempting, rather awkwardly, to apply the lesson of mathematical perspective, learnt from European prints brought into Japan by Dutch Traders.” By the time of The Great Wave, he had perfected his own synthesis of Western and Japanese art, over two decades before European painters would attempt the same in the explosion of Japanophilia of the late 19th and early 20th century.
The Large Glass is a curious contraption; it looks a bit like a mechanical diagram and was designed it to function like an allegorical machine. He made preliminary paintings and drawings for components of the Large Glass including Chocolate Grinder (No. 2) (1914). He also amassed an impressive collection of cryptic notes that he brought together in The Green Box (1934), which scholars have used to interpret the work’s many different meanings—from the frustrations of love and sex, to the physics of electromagnetism and the fourth dimension.
Oase No.7, 1974
Haus-Rucker-Co Viennese group, 1967
Tubular steel and PVC foil shell A sphere with a diameter of 8 meters Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany
Temporary Installation
Taking their cue from the Situationist's ideas of play as a means of engaging citizens, Haus-Rucker-Co created performances where viewers became participants and could influence their own environments, becoming more than just passive onlookers. These installations were usually made from pneumatic structures such as Oase No. 7 (1972), which was created for Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany. An inflatable structure emerged from the façade of an existing building creating a space for relaxation and play, of which contemporary echoes can be found in the 'urban reserves' of Santiago Cirugeda.
Wataru Shinji & Lily Zhang Japanese & Chinese
The Large Glass, 1915-1923 Sand Depend on space The Catalyst gallery Temporary Installation
From a single tiny grain to a vast planetary environment, the exhibition celebrates this humble yet extraordinary substance encapsulating the very essence of the earth we inhabit, and explores sand’s distinct material significance through the limitless potential of design in recasting our own impact on the ground.
The gallery’s upper level features a series of educational and interactive displays, focusing on the origins and importance of sand as an invaluable yet often overlooked resource from the planet, and its essential role for not only humans but also all living species in the world.
Simply Enjoy the Scenery, 2010
MAP Office France and Italy group, 1998
Wood model, plants Gallery VER
Temporary artwork
Be-Hide, 2018
Alicija KWADE Polish-German, 1979
Limestone, aluminium, concrete, mirror-polished steel Thailand Biennle 2018
Temporary installation
‘Simply enjoy the scenery’ is map office’s contribution is based on their ongoing research project on islands, this time, 100+1 islands in a grid pattern occupies the gallery floor, creating an installation that has its centerpiece in the island of koh tapu, a real place connected to fictional imagery and southeast asia.
For the first Thailand Biennale, concrete walls and reflecting panels of mirror-polished stainless steel build the basic structure of Kwade’s site-specific installation on Noppharat Thara beach, transforming the space into different dimensions to extend the limits of observable reality. A limestone boulder found at quarry in Krabi is reproduced as its own mirror-image by being cast in aluminium. Both versions of the object - the found original and its mirrored copy - are connected through the mirror-polished panels that enable the installation to melt into the surroundings. As viewers circle the work, they become part of the installation adding a performative dimension to it. The installation presents a framework that illustrates and challenges viewers’ understanding of their surroundings, emphasizing the subjectivity of perception and thus reality.
