CONDITION / HONG KONG II
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Condition
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CONDITION / HONG KONG II Background City: Inhabited Urban Conditions of Hong Kong The Background City, the city we inhabit but are unable to acknowledge, the city we live in yet fail observe, is collectively dismissed and marginalized by architects who in their unyielding attempt to improve our habitat via new “designs”, seem to have lost the ability to appreciate the banal and quotidian urban presence. There are seldom any architects who claim authorship of the Background City, shame and indignation prevail. By definition the urban “background” is an orphan and circumstantial soul that at best can be described as a default urban byproduct only acknowledged via its antonym, the foreground city. Contrary to the foreground city, the city that is constantly projected at us with enticing adjectives such as iconic, dynamic and multi-dimensional that never cease in its pursuit of a unique identity, the Background 7
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City is preoccupied with coexisting, adapting and avoiding all manifestations of its ego, in short being invisible. The present reality of cities, for better or worse, the “here and now� of our urban existence is shaped by that 99% we arrogantly refuse to discuss, and rather than dismiss such pervasive urban agglomeration this paper seeks to observe and interrogate the mechanisms and traces of this non-city. The insignificant is paramount when it comes to appreciating the presence of the Background City, a condition rather than a physical place that has little relevant history and where the actual is all that counts. Just as one can never recall the sound of background noise, the background city cannot be reproduced, only recognized. Yet within this infinite sea of homogeneous scenarios, behind the scenes, back-stage lie infinite moments of inhabitation, existences that can only be brought into focus manually, in a manner similar to tuning into a wireless radio, one has to tune in to the right city wavelength to be able to absorb 8
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and appreciate its intimate world of micro inhabitation, its invisible latent energy that makes every background scene distinct. We are no longer following a flat and generic urban landscape but have entered a parallel actual world with real urban depth. Hong Kong embodies the notion of Background City par-excellence , a manufactured metropolis that came into existence accidentally, and is today a largely engineered territory; a city that co-exists with nature in the process generating an artificial state of reclaimed land, underground networks, bridges, retaining walls and other infrastructure elements. Based on the conceptual urban theory of the Italian anthropologist Franco La Cecla “Against City Planning� (2015) this paper will forensically analyze three Hong Kong conditions, articulating how the Background City operates logistically and most importantly without the aid of architects and urban planners to prove that cities are still fundamentally connected to human existence. Rather than anticipate the future 9
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architects should re-engage with the invisible networks of the present and in the process reconnect with its inhabitants. Only after a second glance do you realize that things aren’t quite what you expected them to be. Lift interiors in Hong Kong, specifically domestic lifts, appear to be the same as most other lift interiors around the world; possibly the decor is richer in ornament than an equivalent European lift but on the whole the 1.5m square ubiquitous cabin is a standardised component that simply gets installed and allowed to operate following programmed algorithms. In actual fact, your cognitive senses seize to function in these commonly recognised “background” spaces, it is as if your brain goes into default mode, basing assumptions on preconceived and premeditated conclusions about what is staring you straight in the face. On closer inspection, you realise that what you thought to be “standard” has been subtly manipulated: the lift buttons marking the floors of the apartment have been tampered as to omit any number 4 (4, 14, 24, 34…) 10
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due to its negative “bad omen” connotations, resulting in a paradoxical Spike Jonze situation where a building has no 4th floor. Such small, in most people’s eyes trivial alteration, embody the notion of background city this book seeks to explore, the city in transformation made up of material and immaterial inhabitation, a city that does not offer abstract theoretical positions rather provides customs that have to be read and interpreted. Hong Kong, 20th December 2016. Peter W. Ferretto Associate Professor, School of Architecture The Chinese University of Hong Kong
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Conditions Abandoned Adaptability Adjustment Advantageous Amphibia Area Artificial Backyard Barrier Belief Block Buffer By-product Canaan Canopy Canyon Church Circle Clearance Co-Exist Collage
p. 19 p. 23 p. 27 p. 31 p. 35 p. 39 p. 43 p. 47 p. 51 p. 55 p. 59 p. 63 p. 67 p. 71 p. 75 p. 79 p. 83 p. 87 p. 91 p. 95 p. 99
Colonizing Complementary
p. 103 p. 107
Connect Copy-Paste Core Corner Coverture Crevasse Decoration Designated Destruction Deviation Disconnect Discovery-Fication Dislocation Door Drift Dweller Elevated Elongation Emptiness Encounter Evolution
p. 111 p. 115 p. 119 p. 123 p. 127 p. 131 p. 135 p. 139 p. 143 p. 147 p. 151 p. 155 p. 159 p. 163 p. 167 p. 171 p. 175 p. 179 p. 183 p. 187 p. 191
Expansion Exposed
p. 195 p. 199
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Fabrication
p. 203
Mobility
p. 303
Fast-Temple Fill-In Floating Fragmentation Fusion Hermit-Crab Hierarchy Humility Iconic Inside-Out Interfere Intermediate Intimate Inward Isolation Juxtaposition Layers Localization Luxury Magnet Megapodium Memory Messiness Mini
p. 207 p. 211 p. 215 p. 219 p. 223 p. 227 p. 231 p. 235 p. 239 p. 243 p. 247 p. 251 p. 255 p. 259 p. 263 p. 267 p. 271 p. 275 p. 279 p. 283 p. 287 p. 291 p. 295 p. 299
Multifunction Multi-Purpose Mutation Monchalant Nostalgia Obstacle Occupy Omitting Overlap Partition Passage Patch Penetrate Podium Preference Pretend Proliferation Protection Protrude Raised Raw Reciprocate Recreation Reinforcement
p. 307 p. 311 p. 315 p. 319 p. 323 p. 327 p. 331 p. 335 p. 339 p. 343 p. 347 p. 351 p. 355 p. 359 p. 363 p. 367 p. 371 p. 375 p. 379 p. 383 p. 387 p. 391 p. 395 p. 399
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Remediation
p. 403
Replace Segregation Selective Sequence Setback Shell Shop Sidewalk Singularity Situational Spontaneous Sprawling Stage Storage Support Surreal Team Threshold Transition Transition Under-Stair Unseal World-Making
p. 407 p. 411 p. 415 p. 419 p. 423 p. 427 p. 431 p. 435 p. 439 p. 443 p. 447 p. 451 p. 455 p. 459 p. 463 p. 467 p. 471 p. 475 p. 479 p. 483 p. 487 p. 491 p. 495
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Abandoned Ma Wan Old Village, with a history of over 200 years, is going to be demolished and redeveloped into Ma Wan Park Phase II. The residents have moved out of the old village for many years but redevelopment still have not started. Therefore, most of the houses in the village are abandoned. The house shown in the photograph is one that is relatively well preserved. It is a typical 3-storey village house in the New Territories. There are balconies facing the street and the sea side. People used to live there put some tools, such as buckets and chair, outside the house under the balcony. This facilates gardening work, releases some interior space and prevents dust from entering the interior. Also, sitting outside the house is a way to get involved in the neighborhood and get some fresh air.
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Adaptability Most of the fishing boats in Aberdeen will pass the catches onto a collecting agent once they catch the fish. The agent will land the catches at the Aberdeen Wholesale Fish Market. The market is wet and untidy. The workers need to wear water shoes in their workplace. Water flows out continuously from the fish tanks, people walk carefully on the wet floor. Although the wet market is operated for the fish, the workers figured out some ways to help themselves to adapt to the place that seems to be not suitable for living. They built a resting place near the market which is elevated and connected to the boats. They can still pay attention to the workplace to manage their business but they can avoid dirtiness while taking a break. It is a condition about how to form a comfortable living area in some place which is not so ideal.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Adjustment Tin Shui Wai has once been known as the “City of Sadness� because of the homogenisation of land use. Over 90% of the housing are public housing in TSW. Situated far away from central, insufficient community services and activities, life for poor people in TSW is described as harsh and dull. As a result, a series of family tragedies and suicides are taken place in TSW. This is the 6th floor of the Tin Heng Estate carpark building. Due to the planning mistake, several public housing estates including Tin Heng Estate were originally built as Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) housing estates were eventually used as public rental housing due to the sudden change of housing policy. Eventually, residents of the estate seldom own a private car. As a result, the occupancy rate is as low as 42% in the Tin Heng Estate carpark. In order to cope with severe lack of communal support and recreational facilities, the fifth and sixth floor of the carpark are transformed from an empty carpark to the Jockey Club Tin Shui Wai Integrated Services Centre after an advocation from district council members and the residents. There is a semi-outdoor space where children can practice Kung Fu and elderly to engage in recreational activities. 27
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Advantageous Choi Hung contains a mixture of informal old city fabric and zones of planned housing estates. Significant contrast can be found between the two extreme city fabrics. Walking pass a narrow street in the old city fabric, a booth calling for recycling is extended from the dark back alley between two shop houses. The corner also contains signboards and advertisement board that provides economic incentives for setting up the booth underneath. The seemingly unfavorable position for business becomes a place of interest that draws people’s attention. Wide range of recycled materials can be observed: chairs in different form of decay, steel basket for recycling paper materials, plastic bags in various sizes for storing electrical gadgets. A shelter tank is hung for protection of the recycled property. Although the back alley contains air-conditioners and temporary bamboo structure, the space left is enough for hosting the business. The business eventually turns back alley location as an advantage rather than disadvantage. 31
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Amphibia Before the first Opium War, Ap Lei Chau was a fishing village. However, the island dramatically developed starting from 1980 and is now the second most densely populated island in the world. Despite the island’s rapid change of environment, fishermens managed to practice their livelihoods as they learnt their way to interplay with new infrastructures, just as amphibians which gain benefits from contrasting conditions. While the numbers of deep-sea fish caught of is reduced owing to pollution, they look for rabbitfish that living around the pier. However, to sell fish by themselves also means they have hack the barricaded waterfront to deliver fish to direct buyers onshore. They do this with a fish net just the size of the gap between two barricades and attached that with a long rod.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Area In smoking policy, an area with a ceiling is define as an indoor place, which usually is illegal to smoke. For that reason, smoking area is there for people to smoke legally; however, instead of having a room for people to smoke, it is actually an area, defined by the rubbish bin. Hence, there is no clear boundary for the “area”. People are smoking somewhere near to the trash can, to indicate that they are inside the legal smoking area. With the wordings of “smoking area” on the wall of a room, giving an illusion to people that a room is provided for smoking is actually not related to the smoking area.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
are
a
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
Artificial Ma Wan, an island located between Lantau Island and Tsing Yi Island, is connected by Tsing Ma Bridge and Kap Shui Mun Bridge. The place features a series of giant infrastructures linking the Kowloon district and islands. Here is a road towards Noah’s Ark. Walking underneath Ma Wan Viaduct, the mega-structure defines a covered walkway with street lamps illuminating both sides of the pedestrian road. The giant beam structures, following the form of wavy road, span across our head and guide us to the meeting point. The artificial slope at the other side of the road is decorated with bird sculptures in order to create a lively atmosphere. Street lamps and roadblocks are densely distributed on both sides of road. A total artificial scenario is created: concrete bridge, metal lamps, artificial slope, stone paving, even lighting is controlled with electricity.
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
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Tai O
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Tai O
Backyard The Entrance of a typical house in Tai O is opened freely to an intersection of two public streets. The relaxing condition of this space makes it more like the back of a house rather than a residence entrance. Due to tardy development of the streets, houses in Tai O have one unique feature: the boundaries between private and public spaces, and the separation from the exterior are not so clear and solid. For example, lots of paraphernalia are scattered at the entrance of this house, right by the street. Personal clothing are hung casually and unapologetically without any barriers. There is even a laundry room/ toilet right besides this entrance.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Barrier Ngau Chi Wan Village, one of the few old villages left in Hong Kong, still survives after 200 years of history, even under rapid development pressure from the city. With the growth of population, high rise housing have been built surrounding the village, making it more crowded and noisy compared to the environment inside Ngau Chi Wan Village. While inside the Village, houses are in simple structure, made of concrete with metal corrugated sheet as roof. The houses scattered in a random order inside the Village. Surrounding the Village, trees then act as a barrier. Trees are usually planted in the middle of a city to let the city less stressed and also as a natural decoration. In such a crowded environment, they give an atmosphere of calm and quietness, protecting the village from the busy city.
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Belief The old pier in the abandoned village is guarded not only by Tin Hau, the goddess protecting fishermen, but also another Chinese symbol present in a god statue on a pile of stone near the big square platform. In traditional Chinese religion, the image of the tiger and large stone can be used to exorcise and suppress evil spirit respectively. It is believed that people used to pray before taking a boat in the past. The statue is now situated under the government notice, which prohibits vessels approaching the fishing culture zone nowadays. People will never notice that they are actually stepping on an unstable pier structure with the support of nine weathered columns only, since the platform is balanced by putting some temporary stone cubes at the corners. The calmness makes people feel like the vernacular goddess is protecting the pier as well as the village even when no boat arrives at the pier now.
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Block Tin Shui Wai is located at the North-western part of Hong Kong. It is very distinct from the business center of the city. The Government planned to house the poverty in this district. As the whole area was planned as the residential sector, there is no space allowing commercial activities. Along the sidewalk, giant walls are built to separate the pedestrians and the residential blocks. Unlike most of the other districts where shops are located along the main street, there are no street activities to be introduced into this district. The poverty living inside are not able to get a job within their neighborhood and can only travel to other districts for work. It feels like isolated and lonely when walking on the streets in Tin Shui Wai.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
Buffer The space under highways are usually abandoned because of the unfavorable condition. It is a waste of land in Hong Kong where land is limited. In Shau Kei Wan, there are, however, layers of activity at the abandoned area. The first layer here is the circulation of vehicles. There are roads near the green buffer. The second layer is the pedestrian circulation. Footbridge is provided to cross the busy roads, as well as going to the green seating area just next to the road. The third layer is the elderly at the seating area. The dynamic passages of vehicles and people on footbridge form a contrast with the static elderly in the open space underneath. The space is activated and the resulting space becomes a rest space situated between the green buffer against roads and streets. The elderly peacefully sits in a circle and chat in such a dark, noisy and inhospitable place. Now, people have no choice but become the buffers of activity too. It is interesting that people can still find their “silence� in the scarce land.
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
By-product Chai Wan is the eastern terminus of the MTR island line on Hong Kong Island. The station is elevated and wellconnected with footbridges to the nearby residential developments. It frees up the ground floor mainly for bus terminals and infrastructures. The elevated paths can directly lead people to MTR station, shopping mall and residential area. Chai Wan Road Roundabout Garden is the by-product of the transit-oriented developments. There are few people using this public open space since it is abandoned by traffic roads and elevated pedestrian path above.
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Canaan According to the biblical narrative, Canaan is the Promised Land where the Israelites are to settle after they escaped from the slavery in Egypt. It is the place of refuge, far away from the oppressive social norm. For local residents in Tin Shui Wai, their Canaan would be away from the district centre, where streets are priortised for lightrail traffics but not social activities. It would also be away from all the shopping centres of the region, as they are all junkspaces with similar furbishings and identical chains of stores. It would as well be away from the parks, as any activities except sitting and walking are banned. It would be the residue spaces under the highways, as these are the places often forgotten and excluded from surveillance, and yet always sheltered from the sun and rain. In here, the local residents can finally lay down, light their cigarettes, do some gambling and live their lives away from the planned.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Canopy Canopies are usually artificial shelters to protect people on streets from harm or the sun. They are temporary removable structures that can be extended with the support of stands on walls, but is not load bearing. It is very common in Hong Kong that shops on the ground floor use canopies to extend their occupied area as well as to protect customers from drippings of airconditioners above. Trees can act as a shelter when people take rest under them. Tree trunks are then support of their canopies. They are lasting extensible structures as trees are growing. The space between branches is nice home for birds. In the Ngau Chi Wan Market, the locals combine the two above-mentioned structures with a permanent U-shaped cover of public and create a continuous shelter between buildings located either side. Shop owners tighten canvas to the tree which makes it become the centre of the little plaza. They even connect light bulbs under canvas and put prayers (fruit) on branches, transforming it into a more meaningful public space. 75
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Canyon The Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market is served by supporting courier companies to get supply and redistribute fruits across Hong Kong early in the morning. While the lorries are not in use during the day, they are neatly parked along the road outside the market. The lorries are double the human height. The gap between the lorries, just wide enough for one person to walk through, becomes a temporary canyon-like alley for pedestrians. The scale and proportion of this interstitial space give the illusion of walking along a street of tall buildings, while their metal car bodies reflect real buildings in the distant. One could only see a strip of sky, the ground and a frame of what is in front. This enclosure created by large objects responds to our senses in human scale, and thus creating a sense of space.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Church Hong Kong’s land scarcity problem does not only influence people’s living standard but also influence many public facilities. Church is a very good example. Many churches just like Tsuen Wan Baptist Church, have to serve a large amount of people in their community whereas they are not able to have sufficient land to build traditional church buildings with yard. At the end, they have to sacrifice the traditional religious architecture style and build podium-tower building in order to provide kindergarten, church hall , offices and hostels. It is no longer easy to tell the church building from far away until you see the decoration on the building facade.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
Circle A corner of a normal walkway along the coastal area is specially designed to be a “roundabout”, which is defined by the different pavement arrangement and a tree in the center. In order to further highlight the “circle”, the trees along this walkway are put into semi-circular pits. Discovery Bay is a newly developed district and full of single-detached houses and luxurious apartments. Everything has to be of the higher class than usual here. The circular path of this corner does not provide any traffic function. The extra effort spent on specially arranging the pavement is probably to make this walkway more grand in order to fit into context.
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Clearance Temple Street is located in the areas of Jordan and Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon. In the evening, many tourists and locals like to visit the night market. There are many local restaurants and some are located at the junction of the cross road. When it was raining, the workers cleared out all the furniture so as to clean the floor. They simply pour all the dirty water onto the ground. It would not affect others as the pedestrian road is originally wet. At night, the owners of restaurants will expand their business area. They will put all the furniture outside the shop to serve more customers. The pedestrian road at this junction is no longer a public space at all. The private owners of the shops start to occupy the road for some reasons. But this is one of the reasons that the Temple Street can become a busy and crowded night market.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Co-exist This multi-storey carpark building exists in Yau Ma Tei. This is a complex building which comprises of public library, Government offices, local market and carpark area. In 1977, to solve the complicated traffic route of the Gascoigne Road Flyover in the high-density living environment, the flyover was built to bypass existing surface road and penetrate the existing cavity inside Yaumatei Carpark Building. The co-exist of architecture and public transport system in the same place is a good design solution which minimizes the impact of existing urban fabric. It is a unique urban scene.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Lau Fau Shan
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Lau Fau Shan
Collage Lau Fau Shan is a traditional fish village to raise oyster at the intertidal flat. The oyster shell walls are made of abandoned oyster shells collected from the oyster farms. Traditionally, it is an indigenous building material which could be commonly found in the Lingnan style vernacular buildings. It is mainly used for security purpose. The building near the coastal line of Lau Fau Shan is used for storage. It looks like a collage by combining different building elements: oyster shells wall, large metal gate, and temporary steel roof structure.
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Lau Fau Shan
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Lau Fau Shan
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
Colonizing Jordan is known as its dense residential post-war buildings and intensive commercial activities on the street level. The design of the buildings are rather outdated and living spaces are smaller than average. Lack of supervision and maintenance are obvious among these buildings. As a result, there are many illegal structures constructed by the residents to make more sheltered spaces for themselves. This condition is located on a tiny outdoor platform at the corner of Wing On House. The owner utilized the platform by erecting a roof made of corrugated iron sheet and a custom made fence. The owner of the flat transformed this tiny outdoor platform to a private balcony as part of his own flat. To have more privacy and shelter against wind and rain, an additional corrugated iron sheet is erected beside the fence to further enclose the small space.
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Complementary Along the coastal area of Aberdeen, boats scatter over the typhoon shelter, promoting vivid fishing activities in people’s daily life. Piers situate along the coast for crossing to the Ap Lei Chau and floating restaurants in Sham Wan. Walking along the seaside park, we see a bamboo-made shelter constructed on a bamboo shed, just near the gate of Tai Pak Floating Restaurant. It is a waiting area for embarking food lovers to the floating restaurant. During off-peak hours, senior citizens make use of the temporary shelter chatting and resting, enjoying the natural shading favored by vines. Booths are set for selling snacks and drinks to the visitors. Beneath the bamboo canopy, plants are placed on the shelf and water containers are stored behind the shed. Hats, clothes and lanterns are hung on the shelter. Sufficient seats are provided, even storage cabin are provided to accommodate both the queue and casual occasions. It is indeed complementary for both functions happening during different time of a day.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Connect Tsuen Wan is a town of footbridge. The footbridge system almost connects the whole Tsuen Wan, with Tsuen Wan MTR station and Tsuen Wan West rail station as the two cores. The length of the flyover is about 1400m from east to west and 1000m from north to south. The footbridge connects 20 shopping malls, 2 sports centers, 2 hotels and 1 town hall. With this long continuous footbridge, people can reach many places without reaching the ground level or waiting for traffic lights. They do not even need an umbrella during rainy days or bear the hot sun during sunny days. However, abuse of footbridge in urban planning can also be a problem.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Heng Fa Chuen
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Heng Fa Chuen
Copy-paste Heng Fa Chuen is a residential estate in Chai Wan, Hong Kong Island, jointly developed by MTR Corporation and Kerry Properties. There is a total of 50 residential blocks, of which each of them is assigned a number in ascending order. They show the high density among buildings in Hong Kong. You can hardly see a gap between the buildings. The same size of units forms a uniform facade and form. Most of the Hong Kong residential estates have a consistent and uniform facade to show their own identity. However, when 50 residential blocks are totally the same, the building is just like copy and paste. The underlying problem is that good ventilation cannot be achieved as the walled buildings block the air flow. The higher the unit is located, the higher price it costs. People living at lower level can only see the windows of their neighbors. It may not be a good phenomenon but we are used to living in this situation.
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Heng Fa Chuen
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Heng Fa Chuen
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
Core Shau Kei Wan is located in the Eastern District, between Chai Wan and Sai Wan Ho. Highways are built to connect to the Island East Corridor and other places in Hong Kong. The infrastructures create lots of sheltered spaces underneath. These spaces are usually isolated from the centre of a city and treated as abandoned and residual spaces. Nevertheless, in Shau Kei Wan, Instead of leaving them isolated in the place, these spaces are as the core of Shau Kei Wan’s development. With the infrastructures and sheltered spaces in the middle of Shau Kei Wan, further footbridges and covered walkways are built at below and the sheltered space is extended from that under the infrastructures, for pedestrian circulation or green resting and leisure area. Thus, based on this core, it forms the city fabric in Shau Kei Wan.
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Corner In the high dense areas like Yau Ma Tei, the form of both buildings and streets creates thousands of back streets in between buildings, which look like many extremely narrow canyons. These back streets are usually hard to be used but they are also full of possibilities and have been used by local residents in various creative ways so as to adapt to the compact environment and maximize the use of space. Here is a small street when the shops fully used the site. Because it is located at an intersection, the side that facing street has been used as a takeaway area, and for the side that facing the back street, they made it into a place that allows sitting down and picking food like having buffet. The barriers of the streets also help separate the seating area from pedestrian streets.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Kowloon Bay
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Kowloon Bay
Coverture Kwun Tong is known as an industrial area which is undergoing a rapid redevelopment under the policy of Energising Kowloon East. A growing number of offices and working forces are occupying the industrial buildings of that area. Local eateries are in high demand in the district to support the working forces in the area. It is common for local eateries to extend their shops to the back alleys between the buildings. Just like the condition shown in the photo. These extend areas are usually found under the canopies of the old industrial buildings. They are vulnerable spaces when there is rainfall together with wind. However, unlike the ordinary eateries, which one is better in weather-proofing. Lucky enough to have an extended section of the facade on floor above to block rain falling on sideways and they are creative enough to mount an umbrella onto the street sign to provide further protection against rain.
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Kowloon Bay
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Kowloon Bay
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Crevasse Tin Shui Wai is one of the latest and biggest new town development projects in Hong Kong whereas the wrong planning strategies caused series of social problems. Both pedestrian streets and car lanes are much wider than old districts in Hong Kong, barricades and tree lawns are used to separate them and make the distance between pedestrians on each side even wider. The government also introduced light rail system. Communities are all surround by walls and relatively close to the outside, therefore there is nearly no shop on pedestrian streets. All these barriers, walls and roads create a crevasse that tear the community apart and make Tin Shui Wai a very uncomfortable place to walk.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
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Ngau Tau Kok
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Ngau Tau Kok
Decoration Ngau Tau Kok Estate is separated into Upper Ngau Tau Kok Estate and Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate, developed in late 1960s. Upper Estate was a low cost housing estate, while Lower Estate was a resettlement estate. An interior communal space is created inside the public housing. It is seen that elderly will use the space for chess playing and gambling while the teenagers will use it as a study room. It seems that a bookshelf is placed along the long study table, so that people can have a nice reading time over the communal space. Unfortunately, it is an optical illusion. The space is basically designed with a few of tables and chairs, which the bookshelf, sofas and plants are actually images from the wallpaper. Wall paper becomes a important decoration for the communal room there.
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Ngau Tau Kok
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Ngau Tau Kok
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
Designated Zoning is always the planning strategy in Hong Kong, where clear boundaries are created for each space. A particular type of activity and occupancy is allowed only at a particular zone. Areas for sitting, planters, roads for pedestrians, plants and vehicles are divided clearly using fence, railing and objects, just as by lines on plan. On the other hand, as there is no designated space for temporary storage for the market nearby, the foam boxes utilizes the residual space underneath and near the footbridge which was not used for any of the above, and would not block the passage of the pedestrians. This demonstrates the contrast of the flexibility of people versus rigid and unflexible planning imposed. Perhaps when we could break this mentality, freedom and creativity of everyday life would be displayed everywhere.
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
Destruction Chai Wan and Shau Kei Wan once were fishing villages. Today, the villages have turned into a town packed with backup industries for the city, providing crucial services and support for the city due to its close geographical location to the CBD such as bus depots, warehouses, vehicle maintenance shops, shipyards, marine cargo handling facilities. This motorcycle maintenance shop is located along Tung Hei Road, Shau Kei Wan. The shop front is separated to the road by the fence planned and constructed by the Government. It was not possible to run a motorcycle garage without having an access to the road, so the owner dismantled and altered one section of the fence to create a direct access to the road from the store front and use that man-induced section of the road for repairing motorcycles. This condition is crucial to sustain the shop’s business.
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Deviation In Kowloon Bay, on the both sides of the Wang Chiu Road, there are some high-density housing and some schools. To ensure the continuity of the walking system and protect the safety of the students, the footbridge and crosswalk are simultaneously set. However, the traffic lights for the pedestrians remain in green for a long time and only with a short interruption before it turns to green again. Only few cars will drive through the cross. This street is relatively easy for people to cross the street through the crosswalk since only a few of cars will drive through here during the daytime. Consequently, nearly all the people, even the parents with children, choose to cross the road through crosswalk rather than walking through footbridge. However, the footbridge is not totally abandoned by the residents. It becomes a place for the residents to hang their clothes instead of promoting the walking system.
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
Disconnect Discovery Bay is a serene resort development in the North-eastern coast of Lantau Island which is a peaceful place away from hectic Hong Kong. The garden houses, low, middle and high rise residential developments are built stepping up to the mid-level of mountain so that every house can have a view of landscape and sea. Ramp, an alternative pathway to stair, is an access between vertical levels. In this condition, ramps designed in zig-zag form sitting on the slope, intertwining with green area. The metal railings along ramps translate this means of communication into a vertical wall disconnecting rather than connection.
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
Discovery-fication Disneyfication is a term coined to describe the processes of stripping a place of its original character and repackaging it in a sanitized format, similar to what went through in Disney parks. In Hong Kong, similar transformation is occuring at Discovery Bay (DB), an upmarket residential district. Buying a house in DB means not just buying a dwelling – one also pays to live in a reconstructed, commodified resort-like atmosphere (in contrast with the bustle of downtown). In here, structures are designed with languages of Meditarranean architecture. It is common to see a bus stop with steel structure yet having a terracotta tile roof and granite-cladded pillars. Also, ways of transportation around the island is limited. One can only take buses (with branding images of DB) if he cannot afford golf cars.
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Dislocation Hong Kong is a city where efficiency is always given precedence therefore the requirements from people are always sacrificed by both the Government and developers. A very obvious example in our daily life is that it is very difficult to find a place to sit in Hong Kong’s indoor public space. The residents of this private housing estate are forced to sit outside the curbstone of the ramp for wheelchair to wait for buses because there is no bench in the luxurious and air-conditioned lobby. Residents found their own way to adapt to the situation and created a small gathering place at this place.
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Ap Lei Chau
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Ap Lei Chau
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Ap Lei Chau
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Ap Lei Chau
Door After rapid development of the fishing village (old Hong Kong), not many boats can be seen nowadays, except in “Little Hong Kong”. Some locals still live on them while some offer tourist trips across the Aberdeen Harbour. The boats are transformed into a one to two storey cabin according to different activities. Since the semi-opened “houses” or “transportations” are required to welcome guests, it has to connect to the shore with a simple plastic passage with metal railings, similar to the passage of ferry when on board. It is, however, a non-foldable board with some strings tied on shore and boat edge. The inhabitants create a double door (actually a metal gate) to separate the semi-private space from public when there is no service. The passage therefore acts as an entrance before the door of the room when it is closed, but a transitional space when opened. The gate is obviously not an effective solution for protecting privacy, but it symbolizes a sense of security and the right to access to a new space.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
Drift Cost to rent a shop in Hong Kong is high, especially in crowded places like Tsim Sha Tsui. Therefore, in Hong Kong, some kind of shops do not have fixed locations. They include fruit hawkers, shoe or watch repairing shops, etc. These shops are simple, small and easy to be transited. They are usually found on street sides, with only one shop owner doing business. As these kinds of shops do not have a fixed location, people might not be able to find them in one location. Therefore, to notify people of their location, they install advertisement board at main pedestrian path, with movable cart so that they could be moved easily. The advertisement board is usually made of wood with some text describing program of the shops painted on it. Phone number of the shop owner is usually included. So people could be guided to go to the shop or they could call the shop owner even if they cannot find the shop. These shops, together with the advertisement board, drift everywhere in the city.
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Dweller Water dweller, “boat people� , are the original residents of Hong Kong with a long history, who mainly lived in harbors like Aberdeen, Tai O. Now in modern times, the water dwellers still live in boating and live on fishing. A fish market is therefore formed with fresh supplies. The problem is that they sell fish on the land and the transitional areas (fish preparing and processing) are half water and half land but they still insist living on their unique boats, hauled ashore. Their boats are well decorated with modern amenities inside and look comfortable and authentic in a certain way. Tiny plants are everywhere. People could trace back and sense their tradition habitats according to the decoration they have now. The dwellers on water are representing the history of Hong Kong.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Elevated The Aberdeen wholesale fish market landing supports the adjacent fish market, which operates from 4am to 2pm. It is a space for storing fish temporarily which is also a dock for fishing boats. Water flows continuously into tanks and overflows to the public sewage drainages on ground, guaranteeing a fresh supply of water to the fish. Hence, fish takes the ‘ground’ while everything else would be above. Electricity, appliances, dwelling are elevated, safely away from the water, like stilt houses. Making use of hanging vertical structures and horizontal support, possessions are kept dry. The dwellings, built on top of fish tanks with metal panels, are reached by simple metal ladders from the ground. It is where the workers rest and manage their paperwork.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
CH
UN
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E S EA
FO
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OD
Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
Elongation Along NanJing Street, there are different kinds of restaurants located on the ground floor. The street is wide in about 12 meters, hence, the restaurants extends their space from indoor to outdoor. The extension of space is constructed by hanging the plastic sheet from one building to the other, which creates a temporary roof for people who are having meal underneath. Having a “roof � for the exterior area can help to illustrate that the area is occupied to the restaurants, and that people can enjoy their meal without disturbing from the natural force.
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Emptiness The region of TST and Jordon, the food paradise of Hong Kong , offers wide range of recipes for food lovers. Walking pass Temple Street, a restaurant, famous of its spicy crabs, is cleaning up in preparation for the busy night ahead. Tanks and chairs are put outside the shop as a staff washes the dishes. The emptiness of shop space gives a strong contrast with the vibrant scenes we are familiar with the Mongkok streetscape, especially during the torrential downpour. It creates an entirely different condition during the daytime compared with the night business. The extremely dense lamp distribution is located at the periphery of the restaurant properly. Large lamps are placed inside the restaurant to ensure sufficient lighting in order to boost appetite. Plastic water tanks are piled up outside the shop for washing the interior floor. Large fans are installed for cooling when customers are eating spicy crabs outside the restaurant area with extension by foldable desks.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Encounter Concrete panels are used to build the pier. The designer has not thought of any interactions happened between the people on shore and those on the boat. However, the old lady on her boat found out her way to sell fish using the net with a long rod. This activity has become a tradition for the people living on land to get the seafood they need from fishermen. They can exchange money and goods while they are positioned in two different levels. The old lady with the boat would only anchor temporarily depends on weather and amount of fish she got. They may meet today but not tomorrow.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Evolution This condition locates in Tsuen Wan, Ho Pui Street. Based on the type of the shops, the sun shades of the shops have different characters, in the previous stages most of the shops did not have the big shades and there’s no air outlet on the shade, the changing of the shading elements shows an evolution process during the time. At the early stage, some shops have only a small shade, which mainly prevents the rain. While the shadings of other shops(mainly restaurants and food shops) cove the street in front of their shopfront, and provide a more comfortable interior space of the shops. In the image of line drawing, one of the shops makes their shade unique that they cut some holes on the shade as a row of exhaust blowers is set above the entrance of the shop, which also set behind the holes. The little change prevents a too big pressure on the shade from the exhaust blower, and also prevents the blower from having much more adverse effects on the neighborhoods.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Expansion Aberdeen was historically a fishing village and the landing point of the British in Hong Kong Island. It is known for its floating community in the harbor. There is a variety of floating structures in the harbor from large floating seafood restaurant to floating residence. Despite the variety, these structures have one thing in common: they are all there to assist inhabitants to make a living. The selected condition is a private platform above the sea for the floating fishery wholesale market. It is not obvious to people but provides crucial support to the company’s business. Due to the lack of space, the platform is used as an extension of the market to store crucial tools like trollies and barrels for transporting fisheries. This condition is crucial to maintain the company’s business.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Exposed Ma Wan is an island that can be divided into two main sections: one with modern high-rise buildings and the other with old residential housings. As we walk along the old district, it is easy to discover that most of the buildings in the community are in poor condition. The buildings commonly have only two to three floors. An extra staircase is built for the two-floor buildings and that is the only staircase apply to the building. The flawed design of the buildings has made it easy for strangers to look into people’s flats: visually and physically easy access, which means the privacy level is low there. In addition, the staircase that is exposed to public is also not a common design in modern buildings nowadays.
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
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Lau Fau Shan
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Lau Fau Shan
Fabrication Fish stalls in wet markets usually occupy a large area because of the volume of fish tanks. The tanks must be stacked up as steps in order to showcase the variety of seafood and faciliate fresh water to flow through each tank by the pipe system. They must be easily accessed to faciliate owner. If the stall is so small that owner is not allowed to stand behind the tanks as usual, fabrication is necessary for the owner to store the tools and food in different area. After opening lock gate in the morning, the owner first pulls out a plastic panel to function as another base for the blank fish tank arrangement. Then, he or she would organise the tanks in a stepping up way and add water through the pipes. Thirdly, by pulling out the side volumes, a washing corner appears. Owners need to stand in line with smaller tanks, while big shop owners can stand inside the ring of fish tanks. It, however, provides efficiency for the owner to do the washes and organise storage at the corner while serving the customers in the front at the same time.
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Lau Fau Shan
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Lau Fau Shan
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Fast-temple Ngau Chi Wan Village was one of the 13 villages of Kowloon and now one of the oldest villages left in the urban areas. Having a history of 200 years, it was once a farming village. After WWII, people moving into the village surged and hence at the centre of the village a market has developed. At one end of the market one can find this old tree with offerings placed on top of its tree branches. Although being regarded as one of the sacred trees of the district, a temple or a shrine was never built beside it owing to the lack of space. Nonetheless, adapting the concept of ‘fast food’, one can also build a ‘fast temple’. By hanging a piece of cloth around the tree, with some simple decorations, a sheltered space for worshipping has clearly defined.
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Floating Aberdeen was used to be a fishing port. A lot of fishermen lived there. Some of them built huts along the coast of Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter. Some of them lived in boat houses. They anchored their boat houses along the coast next to the fish market. Some of them turned a part of their boat houses to seafood restaurants, which customers can access easily from the fish market. The people living in water have also established their own community within the neighborhood. They gather at one of the boat houses and play mahjong together during their leisure time. So, basically the fishermen can work and live within the space. Although many of the fishermen have already moved to housing estates nowadays, some huts and boat houses still remain.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
Fill-in Land is very limited in Hong Kong. Therefore, the land price of Hong Kong is very high. In order to make the best value of the limited land resources, everything is packed together. Whenever there is leftover space, people will do something to try to fill in the gap. For example, a fruit store is set up in the gap between two buildings in Tsim Sha Shui. A simple shelter was built with some structure supported by the nearby building. The nearby building also supports the store with electricity. Simple furniture, such as chair, shelves and desk are put in the store. Though it is quite dark in the store, it functions well. This store shows the adaptability of Hong Kong people.
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Fragmentation Tsuen Fung Centre is a shopping mall built in 1987. It is a neighborhood mall nearby Tsuen Wan MTR station. This is the atrium of the Tsuen Fung Centre shopping mall. Originally, the ceiling height of the atrium was 3-storey high. The ground floor is occupied and transformed into a network of shops of removable partitions. Smaller shops are selling snacks, playing cards for hobbyist, DIY products, and electronic accessories. The roof of these shops is used to display large advertisement posters stands and an art installation. The addition of the network of tiny shops adapted with the taste and needs of residents create a different atmosphere within the same mall. Teenagers often gather there to look for comic playing cards, enjoy snacks and look for electronic accessories.
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Tai O
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Tai O
Fusion Different from the urban area in Hong Kong, Tai O has its unique characters of living. As a remote fishing village, houses here have been built much more opened than those in the city. Almost all houses here have a tiny front yard with multiple functions. The fore yard of this house has been divided into two parts by the public path towards the old police station. The owner of this house therefore built a shed to connect the house and the small garden. Furthermore, they let the plant occupy the top of the shed and create a special view for the neighbourhood. To some extent we can say the owner rebuilt its yard with an innovative approach by sharing it with public while in the mean time embracing the nature. This is a special attitude towards life that you can only find in this place.
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Tsuen Wan
Hermit-crab The hermit crab is a special kind of crustacean that, unlike its relatives, does not have its own shell. For its survival and growth, it relentlessly searches for and adapts itself to possible new shelters in which it can crawl and hide. If there are no shells to be found in its habitat, a plastic cup or a broken bottle can also be something it can reappropriate and adapt. Hawkers in Hong Kong can be seen as urban hermit crabs. To survive in this late-capitalist city ruthless to small businesses, they look for urban conditions they can hack into. In Sze Pei Square, Tsuen Wan for example, a hawker decided to take over a long forgotten gap inbetween two tenement buildings to start up his small clothing business. Without the money to refurbish the place, he adapted an idling signage structure to hold up his awning and clothes. Through a series of reappropriation, the hawker has breathed new life into a once-dead structure hung above a residue space.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Hierarchy Main roads are usually separated from the community because of the noise of traffic. On the contrary, car parks are located within the community because its function is to organise cars in an efficient way. It is unique to see road and car park combined together and forming a hierarchical system within the community. This West Kowloon Corridor is situated under the Yau Ma Tei Multi-storey Carpark, which means trucks and cars have to pass through the building in order to get to the other side of the road. It functions as the parking area for the neighbourhood, as well as the passage of vehicles with two different needs. One is the vehicles on highway that is dynamic, while one is the cars circulating from ground floor to the parking levels. The building, the main road and the road on ground with pedestrian walking pass create an interesting interrelationship of different paths used in circulating the community.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
Humility The Haiphong Road Temporary Market in Tsim Sha Tsui is located under an elevated bridge, in a sunken site, beside existing buildings. As the elevated bridge gradually inclines downward to the South, the columns supporting the bridge become shorter and shorter. Therefore, the customers of the market would have to bend over in order to pass the beams that are of an inappropriate height. To accommodate this market in Tsim Sha Tsui, where land is in short supply, people have no choice but to adapt to the existing condition, bowing subconciously once in a while when scavenging for commodities.
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Tsuen Wan
Iconic Tsuen Wan, one of the earliest new town developed, showcases a vivid and stable community atmosphere. Recently, the issue of aging population raised public awareness, some public access facilities are lately installed in order to promote barrier-free accessibility within the community. While walking through a street, a ramp is placed for disabled access in the middle of the street connecting two plots with slight level difference. The ramp is equipped with metal railings on both sides, giving a sense of safety, yet the unusual placement at the center of the street gives an awkward impression in front of the open leisure space. It is as if the ramp is a distinct feature of the streetscape. Situating at the center of the open space, it is surrounded by a leisure corner provided with low benches, typical shop houses and restaurants extending their area to the street on the ground floor. Trees are planted in between the two urban space providing shading to the street. The iconic image stands out right at the node of transition between two plots and different urban land uses. 239
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Lau Fau Shan
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Lau Fau Shan
Inside-out Lau Fau Shan is famous for its oyster and seafood business since it is by the seashore. The main route into Lau Fau Shan delivers the potential customers into the restaurants and sea food stalls at the two sides as well as leads to the sea. Hence, the restaurants all face their shop front to the route, inviting customers to enter. The shops are two to three stories village houses. The outside of the shops becomes the inside of where the main activities happen, which is fully covered by corrugated metal sheets. The space is fluid and the boundary is blurred. There is an immediate relationship between customers and shops. The houses along the route could have been built first, as villagers’ home at the upper floors with a seafood restaurant at the ground floor, followed by the addition of canopy along the path to the sea when the business thrives. The canopies are stacked one over another while sometimes light would pour through.
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
Interfere There are lots of temples built near the sea side in Hong Kong to worship the sea god and goddess. This Hung Sing Temple in Shau Kei Wan is one of them. Now, it is not close to the sea side anymore because of reclamation and also the relocation of the temple. Nevertheless, the relocated temple is still facing the sea so that the sculpture of the sea god can overlook the sea. The temple was built in front of a Chinese Bayon on a slope. The Chinese Bayon keeps growing bigger and bigger. Its branches extend towards the temple and start interfering with the temple. To prevent the branches from blocking the temple, a structure is built to interfere in the growing direction of the branches.
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Shau Kei Wan
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Ap Lei Chau
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Ap Lei Chau
Intermediate Aberdeen, in chinese means ‘little Hong Kong’, is related to the initial development of Hong Kong: traditional fishing village. Aberdeen typhoon shelter is a nature shelter which allows boats parking there. Many fishermen live in house boats that they would group together in water. Since there are many affliated business of fisheries along the waterfront of the typhoon shelter, this intermediate platform is the access point for fishermen from water to the land. This intermediate platform is like an organic form floating on the water that fishermen can park their sampan adjacent to the platform and then go up to the land.
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Ap Lei Chau
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Ap Lei Chau
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Intimate These squatter huts used to be the shelter for refugees in Hong Kong after the Second World War. Nowadays, around 100 000 of them have not been demolished and are used to house the poor. 1542(Kowloon) and 2713(Hong Kong Island) informal dwellings are considered as illegal buildings while the Government allowed their existence, prohibiting them to further build add-ons onto the existing. These temporary houses made in tin plates and wood are built in a high-densed environment. The houses belonging to different individuals overlap together. There is no clear definition of one space as they all share the area. They trust in each other and are willing to place their personal belongings along the public aisle.
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Inward Benches in public space are usually oriented to face to a direction with an open and better view. However, the benches are oriented differently in this case. They are facing the railing, which surrounds a circular empty space. The empty space used to be a fountain but it is dry now due to inconvenience of maintenance. ‘Dry fountains’ exist in many housing estates in Hong Kong. Even with a fountain, people sitting on the bench can only look at the railing actually. The view is even worse when the fountain is dry. Orienting inward may be an option but if so, it is better to have the benches at a higher level so that the railing will not block the view. Otherwise, the view will be nicer to have the benches facing outward.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Isolation With more urbanization and city development, traditional villages in New Territories and Island District have been demolished and villagers were forced to move to modern village houses. The new resettlement area in Ma Wan for original residents after their village land had been levied was built on an artificial terrace and made the coast inaccessible, which isolate people from nature. The new villages did not inherit traditional village’s configuration and life style, people are no longer living with high intimacy but isolated by fences and level differences. Village buildings are also lost their own characteristics and diversity nowadays, the large-scale replication of village buildings lead to all village looks identical and depressed.
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Ma Wan
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Juxtaposition It is unusual to see logistic vans around residential areas. The juxtaposition of industry and villages in Tin Shui Wai reveals the transformation of land use over time. Villages near Tin Shui Wai are famous for its productive and fresh sea food supply. Years ago, the district was full of tourists coming for the delicious food and unique views toward Shenzhen. This area was a port with several informal villages in history. Not far was the community of Tin Shui Wai where thousands of people inhabited. Those houses are only two to three storeys high with well painted walls. However, not many supporting amenities around. Only trees are surrounded the houses. However, things start to change when the industry get involved in the development. Logistic companies with large vans and cargoes come to the place as the government planned, the villages’ territory shrinks and less and less tourists are willing to come for the food compared to the old days. This phenomenon could be considered as a threshold in history, in time.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tai O
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Tai O
Layers The Stilt Houses in Tai O are famous and unique in Hong Kong. Since Hong Kong was a fishing village with majority of population depended on the sea, they are built above water with the help of long wooden columns on mud. The interconnected structures present in the housing units form different layers of space in the chaos of blocks. Firstly, large amount of stilts support the wooden beams by distribution of forces. Then, the wooden platform is the base of the house and indicates the area of entrance and corridor. Thirdly, the corrugated sheets on roof support the accessible rooftop deck. The special layer is the ship storage. The ships are not used frequently nowadays so they are hung up by the columns near the house structure, creating an external space for the residents for storage.
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Tai O
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Localization A localized design of laundry shop in Ngau Chi Wan Village is mainly providing service for local residents. The shopfront composes with wooden cabinets and counter (roller shutter area). The laundry area is being hidden by the enclosed shopfront. It is noted that the laundry shop can be self-operating in 24 hours because of the enclosed shopfront design. Residents can put their dirty clothes into the inbox and then recollect the cleaned ones any time after receiving notice. It is a condition that the shop is transformed in order to adapt to the habitation of the local residents.
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
Luxury Discovery Bay consists of upmarket residential development and private and public recreational facilities in Hong Kong. It is situated on the northeastern coast of Lantau Island in the New Territories. The town houses in Siena Two are located near the Yi Pak Bay. There is a cluster of similar town houses facing to the sea. The common feature of these houses is the spanish roof tiles. Living in town house is a luxurious thing. The pyramid roofs make the houses more splendid and the orange spanish roof tiles serve as a kind of decoration to beatify and upgrade the value of the houses. This island has a very special cultural phenomenon. The architecture in discovery bay pretends to be the western traditional style. Most of the residents there are foreigners. When local Hong Kong people come to discovery bay, they seem to become visitors in Hong Kong.
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Discovery Bay
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Discovery Bay
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
Magnet Yue Wan Estate is a public estate in Chai Wan built in 1977 and 1978. Built on a reclaimed land, the estate is compact, self-contained community in which interdependent relationships can be easily found. Underneath a staircase leading towards a Dim Sum restaurant, one can find a newsstand. Selling magazines and newspapers of all kinds to diners coming along the way, the stand owner displays publishings with racks and stools placed outside the stall area while selling cigarettes and snacks. At night when the newsstand is about to close, goods and furnitures are packed and stored behind the iron gate, awaiting for tomorrow’s business. For the stand and the restaurant, they are magnets attracting people for each other and attracted to each other.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Megapodium “Hong Kong is a city without ground�, as some scholars state, the megapodiums in Hong Kong work as a way to extend the communal space. Megapodium means the rooftop of one building and on top of the podium there is another smaller tower, which means it is also the ground of the upper tower. In Tsuen Wan, the Panda Hotel has such a big podium that contains many amenities and social activities are all happening there. All of the activities are well hidden behind the green bushes that cannot be seen from the street level and creating a nice view at the same time. The platform is on the top of a car parking garage. The platform is also a kind of threshold of the city and the hotel. It separates the city with the hotel. For the visitors resides in the hotel, it helps to create some privacy and luxurious space, however, the lower part, the huge volume of the car parking space is relatively negative to the surrounding areas.
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Memory Once home to thousands of villagers, Ma Wan village is now isolated. Unlike most of HK’s rural abandoned corners, the residents here were evicted by the government in 2011 – some of them unwillingly. The village is almost empty now. No one is living there anymore though the redevelopment of the village has not started yet. Therefore, houses are now abandoned with some old or broken furniture left in them. So with the buildings and facilities left in the village, we could trace back their lives years ago. One example is showing in the photo, sitting benches are placed facing to a direction without a view now. Yet we could know that the villagers used to spend time sitting on the benches with a view to the sea on the left, which is now blocked by trees. The view is blocked by trees as trees grow naturally even the village is abandoned so they become taller than before. All these mark a memory of this abandoned village now.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Messiness Tin Shui Wai, a district densely packed with soaring residential towers, presents a lively community when we pass through Tin Yuet Estate. While walking pass Lau Fau Shan and an area of logistics industry, we reach a fish market that reaches the seashore facing Shenzhen. During non-peak hours, a currently vacant seafood market demonstrates a special spatiality: Numerous oxygen pipes are hung up for water tanks at the side of the corridor. The sufficient supply of oxygen guarantees the provision of gas for large amount of fish to survive. The disordered distribution of pipes creates a unique messiness for the fish market. Inside the seafood market, visibility is low as lighting are provided only for walking through. Place is filled with water tanks and wet floor, especially in rainy weather. The roof is constructed mainly by steel trusses and metal decking due to its convenience and low construction cost. Pipes are hung from the top, which are then separated into smaller water tubes for various size of water tanks. It allows flexibility for fisherman to allocate the amount of oxygen needed for different water tanks. 295
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Tin Shui Wai
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Mini Along the two sides of the roads in Aberdeen are groups of shrines that are dedicated to various gods and even ancestors. The shrine is built of bricks and additionally has a roof made of plastic, which is rarely to seen in Kowloon side. Back in the day, the majority of the population in Aberdeen were fishermen. As in traditional culture, praying at temples for full nets and safety before sailing is a long-held tradition for local fishermen. Mini scales of shrines, which approximately 1.2 m tall, were built by that time to facilitate people. Apart from that, there are a number of chairs placed around the shine, making it a comfortable resting spot for elderly.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
Mobility Street vendor is a long-established urban strategy for grassroots to earn a living as they do not have to pay rent. The hawkers can move their carts to the spot where most people get passby. The installation of the stores is made to allow everything to be packed by folding up. Easy-to-get materials like simple metal rods and trolleys are the only structural components of the giant cart. The maximum amount of products are displayed. Street vendors definitely activates the street by offering a wide range of goods to the public. Also, don’t overlook the fact that they can provide friendly and custom service to the neighbourhood. They also help to keep the street clean in order to sell their products decently.
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
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Tai O
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Tai O
Multifunction Tai O is a community of fishermen who live in stilt houses above water for generations. Through the years, the evolution of stilt houses in Tai O reflects the relationship between functional space and lifestyle of Tanka people. The space in front of the stilt house is a working area of making salted fish. The temporary bamboo structure extended from the house is a rack for drying the salted fish under sunlight. The elevated rack defines space for multifunctional use: working area of making salted fish, gathering space with neighborhood and public passage.
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Tai O
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Multi-purpose This village in Choi Hung comprises informal houses built by villagers in response to the amount of space they have. The houses are half sunken and are enveloped in materials such as timber or metal panels. Open space is a precious commodity in Hong Kong. This residual open space, from by two houses and the pavement, is harnessed in the fullest way. It acts as a multi-purpose space such as for hanging laundry to be air-dried, air-conditioner unit, windows for the house, entrance doorways and passageway, plants to absorb sunlight, mail box, hanging cables, fuse box. The space is utilized within hands’ reach. The ground is kept free of clutter while everything else overhang above the two-storey space so that water and trash would not be trapped. Things are actually well organized and managed. Perhaps it could also be transformed into an intimate shared courtyard among the neighbours.
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Tai O
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Tai O
Mutation Tai OÂ is a fishing village first inhabited by the Tanka, an ethnic group living on boats to pursue their traditional livelihood of fishing. With some of them are now still living in Sun Ki Village, they preserved and represented many of their native traditions, including the establishment of household shrines. The Tanka worship the godness of sea Tin Hau through building miniature shrines in front of their houses, unlike the Han who build temples collectively. Typically, it is built as a (wooden) structure sheltering the statue with a porch allowing worshippers to place offerings. Under modern influence, concrete casted mutations cladded in ceramic tiles are found. The shrine can also take form of a half-buried plastic bucket. And within that the Tin Hau statue is being replaced by a piece of stone. An example showing how customs constantly under adaptations can always thrive beyond survival.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Nonchalant It is not easy to feel lonely if you are living in Hong Kong. The reason is that you can easily get lost in the city’s prosperous and urban fabric. However, being nonchalant can be a tough thing in terms of the city’s density. The market in Tsim Sha Tsui shows a way to find a balance between the crowed people and the quiet inner world. The gray space in the street market creates the possibility for people to escape from the real life for a second. As shown in the picture, between the two types of buildings, which are very different, the person finds a place for taking a snap without being disturbed by the chaotic environment and the storming and raining outside. It is even more unbelievable to sleep in this environment as so many people are passing by and making noise. It seems this is in a kind of utopia, a sweet dream, rooted in such a busy and noisy city context.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Nostalgia In Qing dynasty 1897, the Ma Wan village was the military gate fighting against pirates. The village gained its dignity and glory with its economic and military power. Ironically, the ancient village is now abandoned because of the development plan of the Govenment to turn the place into an extension of the theme park. The giant Kap Shui Mun Bridge and instalment of Noah’s Ark, the theme park and hotel nearby, was built next to it. A young adult, who used to live in the village, comes back to the unused pier and looks into the awkward coexistence of pre-war housing and modern entertainment park that one day those historic marks might be demolished in the fast-pace society.
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Obstacle Ping Shek Estate is a public housing estate in Kwun Tong District. There are seven residential blocks in the Estate. A large open plaza is surrounded by the blocks and shops. One of the buildings is a Chinese traditional restaurant. It consists of two levels and there is a small open space under the restaurant. The structure of the building is special that it is supported by some V-shape columns. Since the space is not so wide and it is only about 3m height. The space under the restaurant seem to be not so user-friendly. People seldom do activities there. The space becomes a normal circulation path. However, the columns occupy a relatively large space, just like a large obstacle. Some children will play there and climb over the large columns. They regard it as a small informal playground.
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Occupy This restaurant in Choi Hung has its own outdoor dining area claimed from the public street just by providing shelter with a synthetic roof. As the district is not fully occupied, there is a lot of unused outdoor space, and the streets are normally wide, open, and exclusive for pedestrian use. Being surrounded mainly by residential housing, this local restaurant uses a canopy to connect the opposite facades of the street to shelter the restaurant’s self-permitted outdoor area. Suddenly, a quiet residential lane becomes a busy street. The seatings and tables take up over half of the area, leaving only half of the width for passers-by to continue their walk.
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Choi Hung
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
Omitting 15% of the Hong Kong population are aged 65 or over. 40,000 out of 1,100,000 live in Elderly Homes. As people age, they face physical challenges like mental disorder or even disability. Many senior citizens cannot live independently and require long-term care. With retirement, their socio-economic status dropped drastically, which can result in abandonment in nursery homes. Some of them were treated in an inhumane environment. The blocking out window limits natural lighting, ventilation and view, together it disconnects the elderly residents and the outside. The one shown in photo reaches an extreme as the nursey home put an advertising board in front of the windows so the environment get even worse.
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Yau Ma Tei
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Yau Ma Tei
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
Overlap There are many different types of transport infrastructures in Hong Kong in which footbridges and highway bridges are two of the most common forms. In most cases, footbridges and other structures associated with the highway system are required to be constructed separately. However, this is not the case in Shau Kei Wan – In a corner near the bus terminal, a highway was built over the top of a footbridge and such overlapping design is certainly a rare scene in Hong Kong. This has proved that the left over spaces under elevated highways have the potential to be revived instead of leaving them vacant, these undeveloped spaces can be appropriately used and transformed into useful structures that integrate with the surrounding environment.
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Shau Kei Wan
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Shau Kei Wan
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Ngau Tau Kok
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Ngau Tau Kok
Partition Many apartment buildings in Hong Kong are mix-used and the upper residential part is elevated. Therefore, many unused void spaces are left on the ground floor with columns or walls. In Ngau Tau Kok, a public housing has also been built like this and since the underground space is connected to the garage, residents barely visit this place. Therefore, some workers occupy them and have built two temporary structures there. The main one is for resting and storing their personal belongings and the other is a storeroom. Although this is a simple and straight forward idea about how to make the city space more efficiently, we can still learn something from them about the possibility of these spaces that have been ignored and wasted in urban areas.
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Ngau Tau Kok
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Ngau Tau Kok
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Passage In contrast to convention-guardrails running continuously to prevent pedestrians from crossing the road in Tsuen Wan, where the typology of programs by the streets are mainly small-scale retailers and residential houses, pedestrian railings are erected sparsely. In the location shown in the photo, there are few minibus stations along one elementary school’s façade and entrance. One line of retail stores occupies the other side of the street. Between the needs to protect pedestrians (especially students from the school) from the flyingspeed of mini buses and flexibility for the customers to shop after getting off or on the bus, few railings are erected discontinuously along the two sides of the street.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Patch Balcony with railing is usually included in residential housing, for better ventilation. Yet for the flats on ground floor, the balcony, which is opened to the street just outside the flats, affects privacy of the residents. Therefore, they would cover part of the railing to protect their privacy. Some residents patch with newspaper or magazine and some with plastic corrugated sheets. And the one in the photo is patching with plastic bags for rice, making it like an installation. In Hong Kong, flats are usually designed similarly or even the same on every floor. However, we might forget to consider locally for the flats which we could not see as typical. So now the residents use their own way to adapt in the living condition.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Penetrate Fuk Lot Estate, which is located at the reclaimed land along Castle Peak Road and opposite to Nan Fung Centre, is the oldest existing public housing estate in Tsuen Wan District and Kwai Tsing District. Nowadays, it is not often to see that residential will be built on ground floor, since the level of privacy is low when people on the street can always walk by, and look through into the dwellings. Hence, we can discover that even there are vertical strips on the openings for the ground floor residents, they will still use some metal sheets to seal the openings, in order to retain their living level of privacy. To prevent this kind of awkward moments, it is rare to have ground floor as residential for new built housing.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
Podium Public and private programs are all integrated into one podium, which provides public service, MTR station, and numerous commercial stores, standing right beneath the private housing. Being an example of Transportation Oriented Development (TOD), Chai Wan MTR station blurs the boundaries between private and public spaces. Pedestrians coming in and out will enter and engage in certain activities inside the podium everyday while residents live above peacefully. The integration of public and private is also shown in the enclosed outdoor gardens located on top of the podium. While residents exercise, trains pass by underneath.
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Chai Wan
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EducationalVersion
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Chai Wan
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EducationalVersion
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Tai O
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Tai O
Preference Tai O Market, a concrete shelter, was built in 1989 for gathering stalls along streets in Tai O. The area of each stall unit is around 2sq.m. However, the market is almost empty now. In contrast, people trades along streets, making the streets crowded and full of people. Since locals have always sold their goods on the street, the market becomes redundant now. Since then, the market is used for storage of goods and movable stalls, which the shop owners would move them out to the streets to sell their goods. The market is being used in another purpose which was not expected when it was built. From such condition, we can see that tourists prefer shopping along streets with shops on both sides and the stall owners prefer selling on streets with larger space and more buyers. Therefore, the market does not act as a market now but more for storage of the movable stalls.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
Pretend In Hong Kong, there are a lot of Chinese restaurants. This Chinese restaurants in Tai O make use of a traditional Chinese front door as a decoration to show Chinese characteristics and to attract people, especially the tourists. The restaurant is located at a two storey high building with cantilever. Therefore, the first floor slab of the building actually covers the fake Chinese roof. It is quite rare to see a slab covering the roof. Furthermore, glass door is used with the fake traditional front door and the styles do not really match with each other. It may not be successful in terms of architecture but it can somehow catch people’s attention.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
Proliferation In the suburb area, we usually treat the house in Chinese village as a cell, which can “grow� into a bigger size with the increase of family members. In the city, this phenomenon still exists. For instance, a temple in Aberdeen, people who works in the temple built a shed made by a small board and plastic film on the wall of the temple. It looks like an additional part of the temple. There is no wall on the two sides of the shed, which makes it look like a temporary storage space since many mass objects are put around the shed. However, under the shed, there is a niche for a statue and a man kneel down to it when I saw it. So it has the same function of a temple, which is for religious purpose. Although it is like an incomplete proliferation, it seems that this shed will be built in another room of the temple and finish this proliferation in the later future.
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Aberdeen
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Aberdeen
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Protection This footbridge in Tin Chi Estate, Tin Shui Wai, has a spiral ramp and staircase. The spiral ramp was built for the disabled. It is rare because many footbridges usually consists of lifts or escalators to help the disabled. There is a tree surrounded by the spiral ramp. The tree seems to be protected by the spiral and the people walking around it. The space in the middle become redundant because there are roadblocks that avoid people getting into the surrounded space. Actually, this space has potential to become a nice public area that could provide shading for people. People has overlooked this space and it is now only occupied by a tree.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
Protrude As there is a shortage of housing supply, buildings in Hong Kong tend to be taller and taller. Ping Shek Estate was built in 1970, some blocks such as Tsuen Shek House and Yuk Shek House are just eight-storey-high. Although there are also some blocks which are taller in the estate, Infinity Eight still stands out of the crowd being the tallest. Infinity Eight was built in 2005. It consists of a 40-storey residential tower sitting on a very high podium with many levels of car park beneath it. The car park of Infinity Eight is about double the height of the whole Tsuen Shek House and Yuk Shek House. One possible reason for the developer to build such a tall car park is to make the view of the residential units better so as to enhance the value of the units.
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Choi Hung
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Choi Hung
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Tai O
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Tai O
Raised Tai O is a fishing village known for a community of stilt houses and the organic grid of elevated pedestrian walkways crisscrossing between these stilt structures. These structures are mostly for residential purposes. However, there are few stilt platforms that are built for communal purposes such as fishing and food preparation. These structures have minimal furniture and equipment which I speculate most of these furniture are abandoned by residents living nearby. This condition is one of those communal stilt platforms for collective food preparation. A network of thin wooden columns joint by screws and bolts supported the platform around 2.5m above sea level. Surrounded by a cluster of houses, the platform functioned as a kitchen and a store room for large tools and materials for the neighborhood.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
Raw The Tai O Fishing Village in the Western coast of Lantau Island is a quaint and picturesque village. The majority of the population in Tai O is Tanka people. It is a community of fisher folk who have built their houses on silts above the tidal flats. Apart from their houses, they would also build their own pavilion as a leisure space. Different from the city, people here will create their own space by using simple structure. Instead of using concrete as a material, they will use wood, bamboo and fishing nets. Although they are using materials that are not refined, they create nice spaces for themselves.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
Reciprocate In Tai O, most of the residential buildings are built along the street and they fully occupy the sites to have the biggest inner space. But one building has different characteristic that the three-storey house setback for about three meters at the side facing the street. Correspondingly, the owner of the house had an extra space forming a private front yard, which is good for the house owner to run their business due to the transition outdoor space. The owner of the house seems to have cost their internal space. However, their domestic space is extended towards the public because of the extension of sun shades. Besides that, the south facade of the house is covered by large area of glass except the structure elements. It allows the users to have a better view. But strong sunlight during the day will still be the problem so extra sunshading elements are installed on the balcony beams of upper layers. So in this reciprocated way the condition is stable in a mobile equilibrium.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Tai O
Recreation The Tai O Fishing Village is located at the Western coast of Lantau Island. There are many small houses in this village. The houses do not have very good formal interior decoration. Most of them are used for storage but not living. The residents in Tai O are creative and they use the environmental-friendly way to build their own home. They also like to put some plants and handmade decorations outside their houses. Many materials like plastic and bamboo are recycled and people use them in a different way. They recycled the water pipes to make the holders of the plants. The different heights of the holders form a triangular shape. It is a very attractive green design. Also, they put their clothes hangers on the bamboo sticks. These kinds of private stuff would not be stolen and the visitors are interested in their homemade things.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Reinforcement Ma Wan main street village was once a prosperous fishing and farming village. It is also the first known human settlement Hong Kong. However, due to the urban development, the village is a ghost village nowadays after the government evicted the residents, some of them unwillingly. An old pitched roof village house was dismantled. There is one remaining wall still standing on the site because it was attached to the adjacent small house. It is too difficult and costly to dismantle wall without affecting the structural safety of the adjacent house. Therefore, a metal supporting structure was added to the wall to provide adequate stability for the wall and the small house. This condition was crucial for the survival of the adjacent structure, ensuring the safety the another family before they moved out and keeping the structure intact for heritage conservation of the village in the future.
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Remediation This condition is found at one side of Lau Fau Shan Road, in front of town villas surrounded by decorated walls. Most of this area is covered by plants except the slope connecting to the entrance and some areas on the right side of the door. The house owners firstly clean this area and cover the soil by cement. But after that, the house owners try to make this area covered by the plants again, because the owner put some bricks to form a planting area. But it seems that he failed and he filled the voids between bricks with cement again and put some foam box on the cement platform, then he planted some green plants in the box within the cement area. In the beginning, the house owner can leave the platform a planting area, but when they lost the planting area they started to realize the lack of plants and took some measures to remedy it.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Replace The developer built pedestrian bridges to connect the giant shopping malls. Many citizens therefore turn to the elevated skywalks for efficiency. The existing sidewalks on the ground level with shops owned by small entreprise lost customers as there are less people walking past them. Under the newly built bridges, there is an old neighbourhood where hawkers set up their stores along the street and old retail shops sell goods to their returning customers regularly. Those shops are identified as unhygienic and sloppy in the modern standard and fewer young generation choose to visit them. It is very likely that the old neighbourhood would disappear in the next decade.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
Segregation Known as an important industrial district in Hong Kong, Chai Wan is formed with spaces dotted with garage and parking lots, suiting large vehicles scale. It is an area known for its mechanic workshops and garages.. Walking past Ka Yip Road, we came across two spacious entrances for cars going in and out at Paramount Building, while in between two routes, there stands a relatively small security station, slightly segregated from the facade, the partition wall and column, watching over the two vehicular access gates. A security guard sitting inside, who segregates himself with an airconditioned enclosed space blocking noise, is unwilling to get attention from others. He is segregated within a vehicular world. The security station is built mainly of concrete and enclosed by aluminum mullions and glass windows. An air conditioner is installed between the aluminum frame, with blinds at the interior of the station. An aluminum door, partly transparent, is placed at the center of the station. The whole station is slightly off grid from the huge carpark, made in steel and concrete. 411
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
Selective The building in this picture is located in Shan Kei Wan, which has three platforms on the fourth floor at the corners of the building. But only one of them was chosen and altered into a balcony. It seems to be an accidental event but the selected platform has its characteristics. Firstly, both sides of the platform are opened to the street and have a closer distance to the footbridge, which increases the opportunities for social communication. While the other two platforms are facing the building so they are not suitable to be a balcony. What’s more, the household can get to the balcony through the stairwell directly. So they can reach the transition space not only from the living room or bedroom. Consequently, it can also be treated as an entrance, people cross the narrow aisle before entering the balcony. The alteration of the platform is carefully chosen by the household. So other platforms are abandoned, which shows the selective process of using the additional space of the building.
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
Sequence Ma Wan Village is an abandoned village with small houses. The land of the village is resumed by the government, forcing the villagers to move out. However, it has been left idling since then, while the buildings decay in natural forces. This corner next to a three-storey house was originally a slope next to the main route into the village. It was afterwards covered with concrete to form a wall, and eventually, a concrete column was cast and merged onto the wall to support a house. The tiny house becomes a shelter by adding corrugated metal sheets as a roof. When the house was abandoned, the cracks in the concrete become a foothold for wild weeds since light pours through the broken roof panels. They happened one after another when the suitable conditions arrived. In our universe, it is a law that the entropy of things always increases. This means that things will go more and more unorderly. Nevertheless, even when things decay, life can still thrive.
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Ma Wan
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Ma Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
Setback There are many residential buildings along Tseun Wan Market Street which are set back because of street corners. A small turn is carved out from the original rectangular shape of building in order to facilitate pedestrian flow on ground floor level at the sharp corners. The supporting slab on first floor remains, and therefore, becomes the permanently extended canopy of shops below. Residents on the first floor want to maximise their occupied space, so they build unauthorized structures to extend their territories and even transform the space as balcony and exit. A small enclosed room is attached to the original structure and barriers are set on the corners. Responding the above activities, the shop at the corner adds a temporary canopy under the L-shaped slab, to prevent drippings from the users above. As a result, pedestrians will experience layers of canopy at the corner of the street, where was originally an exposed area.
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Tsuen Wan
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Tsuen Wan
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Tai O
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Tai O
Shell The village houses in Tai O lined along the two sides of the main paths, and many of the old ones were abandoned. Although they are not inhabited anymore, many of them still kept the timber door front facing the street, with an empty inside. The space is just left as it was. For this house, the pitched roof has disappeared, but the brick walls on the two sides and the concrete and timber beams still remain. It has the shell of a house, but it does not feel like one anymore, and is invaded by the street. It becomes any space that is needed by the villagers, like a street courtyard. Here, it is transformed into storage spaces for trolleys when they are not in use, as well as bike parking space. It is surprising how fast an abandoned house turns dilapidated without the care of living beings. Its aged form poses a contrast to the surroundings which seems to tell that the village has been existing for long.
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Tai O
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Tai O
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Ap Lei Chau
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Ap Lei Chau
Shop Ap Lei Chau, a small island connected by a bridge to the south of Hong Kong, is a link to the city’s fishing past and famous for its wholesale seafood market. Some people are from the former Floating Village in Aberdeen and used to make a living as fishermen. Even nowadays, they have to rely on fishing to make their lives. However, some of them cannot afford renting a shop in the market. Therefore, instead of selling in the wholesale seafood market, they sell on their own small wood boat. They catch fish in the sea and parked the boat at seaside so that people from the land could buy fish from them. The boat is small yet with all necessary elements including tools for catching fish, gutting fish and even containers with seawater to keep the fish fresh. It is exactly like a shop selling fish in wet market but in a smaller size. The boat is an essential form of a shop for these people.
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Ap Lei Chau
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Ap Lei Chau
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
Sidewalk When one is walking on the sidewalks, one is drawn to look towards the light rail’s direction, and, noticing the height difference as well as the wide breadth of the sidewalk, one might feel like they were standing in a plaza while walking on it. In order to protect pedestrians or maintain the security of the rail station, Locwood Station is raised up to about 1 meter from the ground. The domineering high-rise is separated from the wide sidewalk by trees or bush barriers, preventing any physical access into their properties, while retaining limited visual connection with the passers-by. Therefore, this “plaza� seems even larger when no street activities are taken place.
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tin Shui Wai
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
Singularity A singularity, according to the definition of modern physics, is a location in space-time where space and time are infinitely stretched. In Hong Kong, one can also locate such a singularity point, which is the Haiphong Road Temporary Market. Established in 1978 to accommodate hawkers from the nearby Peking Road and Canton Road, this market has been running ‘temporarily’ for 38 years and on against all the developments surrounding it. In here time is stretched as one can find shops existing since the 80’s. Here, space is stretched as amidst the narrow gap between the skyscrapers and the nearby bridge one can find almost 60 stores and restaurants forming the largest Halal food market in the city. All these programmes are housed under a loose roof truss system which allows maximised span and hence adaptability for alterations. This is Cedric Price’s Fun Palace re-appropriated.
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Tsim Sha Tsui
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Chai Wan
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Chai Wan
Situational Hong Kong is a high density city lacking of activated public space. The Youth Square in Chai Wan demonstrates a good case in point to activate social and communal space. Meanwhile, people would like to use the place in different ways. In Youth Square, the public space is flexible and situational with the capacity to hold a variety of activities, from the daily rest and exhibition to larger events like a community chorus. The whole space is uplifted from the road and the upper part is the high rise hotel. All the space is covered by the concrete ceilings and the grey space also contains stairs which is not boring at all. In order to synthesize the living experience on the street with the need for long-term planning, this situational design approach addresses simultaneously spatial, socioeconomical, cultural and environmental issues. This method could give architects more idea about how to create more communal space in Hong Kong.
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Chai Wan
444
14_1.indd 444
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Chai Wan
445
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Choi Hung
446
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Choi Hung
Spontaneous The city is so highly compacted that people in the city are always seeking ways to take advantages of the space around them. Unlike spacious rural villages, the urban villages are surrounded by these concrete forest, namely the highrise residential buildings. It is a miracle that such villages remain alive today. Inhabitants are extending their territories by all possible means without considering too much about the Government’s regulations. In Choi Hung, the urban villages juxtaposed with the high rise residential buildings around. The picture they depict is an interesting and vivid one: clothes are all hung on the wall side, plants and flowers are well aligned on shelves or on small platforms. People are willing to stay in the small public yard as well. Activities can be held at the same place. In sum, the rules behind this is the spontaneous using of the space and full of wisdom.
447
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Choi Hung
448
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Choi Hung
449
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Discovery Bay
450
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Discovery Bay
Sprawling In Ma Wan, these floating structures are made by the fishermen for them to do their productions. And these floating structures seem to sprawl further to the sea, which seems to be like the trees sprawling to the sky. The floating area is growing due to the people’s needs and rising population of the community. This area is not lacking in the space on the bank but people need the floating structures to promote their efficiency when they are working in the sea. These structures seem to be kitchens, toilets and so forth. And the plan of the floating area in the sea seems to be quite similar to a village. Both with ‘streets’ (for boats to go through) and ‘houses’ (the house with functions). And they also grow in the same way. However, a village can be developed into a city while the village in the sea is controlled in a small area, due to the use of the ships that if the floating area grows to a too large scale, it would be hard for the boats to get in and out. Also, when it sprawls to the sea area further, the structures will become more unstable. So the bigger structures are found far to the shore.
451
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Discovery Bay
452
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Discovery Bay
453
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Tsuen Wan
454
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Tsuen Wan
Stage Fu Lai Shopping Mall in Tsuen Wan is undergoing renovation. McDonald’s has been an old shop there for many years. Originally, The welcoming entrance of this restaurant was at this corner shown in the photo. People coming from both sides could enter it easily. Because of the renovation, the new entrance is now inside the mall rather than facing the street. The original steps are kept outside the restaurant and become a kind of leftover. They form a very interesting space. There are only a few steps and a solid wall with advertisment on this triangular stage. Some people will gather on this small stage for a few minutes. The pattern of the floor obviously shows that it is a private space belonging to the restaurant but it somehow becomes a small public space. It is believed that people do not have intention to create this uncanny and weird space. It may have another potential use for this space.
455
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Tsuen Wan
456
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Tsuen Wan
457
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Chai Wan
458
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Chai Wan
Storage Hong Kong is a compact city with limited territories and large number of population. Therefore, land in this city has been become increasingly valuable. Facing this difficult situation, people have to find ways to let each limited tiny space delivers better value especially when they also intend to seek for more comfortable living environment. At this construction site in Chai Wan, workers slightly changed the hoardings and made an extension so that they can create a storage room. Furthermore, they use a barrier to block the first entrance of the pedestrian way so that to create an open-air lounge for them to gather and have a rest. The concrete fence turned to become a table to put small objects. By doing this, workers created an outdoor but semi-private space for themselves based on the common hoardings that we can see everywhere.
459
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Chai Wan
460
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13/1/2017 17:01:35
Chai Wan
461
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Yau Ma Tei
462
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Yau Ma Tei
Support On the Nathan Road, near the entrance of Kowloon Park, a banyan tree is inclined to the sidewalk. The tree is so big to cut off some branches. So rather than cutting off the whole tree or reinforcing it by using other artificial tools like steel supports, people noticed its roots attach to the ground. So people try to protect its roots to prevent it overturning to the walkway. People built an extra planting area to provide a space for the roots, without any other plants in it. Since the roots are not strong enough, some of the roots in the extra planting area are covered by bamboo tubes, strengthened by the steel wire, besides that it is also reinforced by some bamboo sticks. People take some strategies to utilize the character of the banyan tree. The tree is first planted by people, but after years of natural growing, people take some measures to react to the inclining trees. To protect the tree from overturning while protecting pedestrians at the same time.
463
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Yau Ma Tei
464
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13/1/2017 17:01:43
Yau Ma Tei
465
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Tsuen Wan
466
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Tsuen Wan
Surreal Tsuen Wan Market, built in 1981, is a three-storey wet market at old Tsuen Wan district in Bauhaus style. It is a popular place full of shoppers and is part of the market area together with the surrounding open-air market streets. The ground floor is for cooked food and groceries, the first floor is for raw and wet foods, whereas the roof is a children’s playground. The stalls are organized surrounding the rectangular periphery side by side, separated only by a parapet wall. The view is internalized by the double volume courtyard at the middle. A strip of balcony wraps around the exterior, providing a means of ventilation and a resting place for the stalls. There is no view towards outside except a small window opening at the back of each stall. Thus, it becomes a framed view of the exterior, which is the facade of the building opposite the road. Without any layering view of distant or far objects, the exterior world seems to be surreal.
467
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Tsuen Wan
468
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Tsuen Wan
469
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Lau Fau Shan
470
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Lau Fau Shan
Team Lau Fau Shan is a place famous for seafood and oysters. Shops there could be mainly divided into two types, one is seafood retail shops and the other one is restaurants serving seafood. Instead of doing their own business individually, all shops form a team, coorperating with each other. The team works in two ways: In one way, people could pick and buy seafood from the retail shops and bring to the restaurant. The restaurant would cook and serve them for their customers. In the other way, people could choose the restaurants first. Then the waiters in the restaurants would recommend and bring them to some seafood retail shops to buy seafood. All shops together form a system of restaurant and each restaurant links to numbers of retail shops. Therefore, the restaurants do not have a fixed location but in between the connection in Lau Fau Shan.
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Lau Fau Shan
472
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Lau Fau Shan
473
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Tai O
474
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Tai O
Threshold In the quite primitive fish village of Tai O, the thresholds of the village houses merge with the main road, which become an interesting condition that can be rarely seen in other places of the city. Similar to the utopia idea, these houses are occupied by the original residents of Hong Kong. Not far from these houses are the commercial streets that sells delicious local seafood and are full of visitors. All the roads are well connected and it takes only several minutes to walk from the market to the village house. The opening door or even no door represents the trust among people. Though quite busy and crowded outside, the small village itself is still tranquil and peacefully located between the mountains. In this way, the village houses are the thresholds for the the outsider to have a glimpse of the further mountains and beautiful nature scene. Hence, threshold have two meanings, one means linkage between the village and the nature, the other means the physical entrance area of a single village house.
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Tai O
476
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Tai O
477
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Aberdeen
478
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Aberdeen
Transition There is no fixed bridge or ramp crossing in this fish market. Rather, there are several wooden foundations for the storage boxes and plastic steppings serving as transitional bridges. The edge of the indoor space of the fish market is raised up by one step. Therefore, water from the fish tank overflows the ground but floods only till the edge on the exterior. Unlike other grand or formal entrances, throughout the edge of the fish market, trollies, boxes, garbage bins, and plastic tubs are scattered around, blocking the pedestrian’s path. It is sheltered by a few canopies, which prevent rainfall to some degree and allows little light penetration.
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Aberdeen
480
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Aberdeen
481
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Location
22°20’53.9”N 114°03’23.9”E
22°14’53.1”N 114°09’01.9”E Adaptability
“22°28’08.7””N 113°59’58.3”E Adjustment
“22°20’09.0””N 114°12’29.1””E” Advantageous
22°14’41.3”N 114°09’15.1”E
“22°27’46.0””N 113°59’55.1””E”
“22°20’53.8””N 114°03’39.7””E”
22°15’15.1”N 113°51’46.0”E
22°20’07.3”N 114°12’30.0”E
Abandoned
Artificial
Amphibia
Backyard
Area
Barrier
503
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Location
22°20’53.9”N 114°03’20.4”E
“22°27’43.5””N 113°59’59.3”E
22°16’38.8”N 114°13’41.8”E
“22°15’47.7”N 114°14’14.9”E”
22°27’41.4”N 113°59’49.0”E
22°20’05.2”N 114°12’32.7”E
22°18’41.6”N 114°10’07.2”E
22°22’13.2”N 114°07’12.5”E
22°18’22.9”N 114°00’41.4”E
Belief
By-Product
Canyon
Block
Canaan
Church
Buffer
Canopy
Circle
504
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Location
22°18’22.1”N 114°10’11.9”E
“22°18’32.5”N 114°10’13.6”E”
“22°28’07.7”N 113°58’53.6”E”
“22°18’29.1””N 114°10’12.0”E”
“22°14’51.0””N 114°09’09.7””E”
22°22’18.6”N 114°06’56.7”E
22°16’41.1”N 114°14’24.2”E
22°16’40.2”N 114°13’41.5”E
22°18’30.9”N 114°10’13.4”E
Clearance
Colonizing
Copy-Paste
Co-Exist
Complementary
Core
Collage
Connect
Corner
505
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13/1/2017 17:02:14
Location
“22°18’37.7”N 114°13’17.9”E”
“22°27’41.1””N 114°00’06.9””E”
“22°19’08.9”N 114°13’00.1”E”
22°16’38.7”N 114°13’41.8”E
“22°16’52.2””N 114°13’49.1””E”
“22°19’44.6””N 114°12’29.7””E”
“22°18’21.7”N 114°00’40.5”E”
22°18’22.9”N 114°00’41.4”E
22°14’27.9”N 114°09’32.9”E
Coverture
Designated
Disconnect
Crevasse
Destruction
Discovery-Fication
Decoration
Deviation
Dislocation
506
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Location
“22°14’50.9””N 114°09’10.7””E”
22°17’49.6”N 114°10’12.6”E
22°14’49.9”N,114°09’15.4”E
22°14’52.1”N 114°09’05.6”E
“22°18’21.9””N 114°10’12.4””E”
“22°18’22.0”N 14°10’11.8”E”
“22°14’40.7””N 114°09’15.0””E”
22°22’07.4”N 114°06’56.4”E
“22°20’53.3””N 114°03’19.7””E”
Door
Elevated
Encounter
Drift
Elongation
Evolution
Dweller
Emptiness
Exposed
507
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Location
“22°14’50.5””N 114°09’11.9””E”
22°28’04.6”N 113°58’57.3”E
22°12’01.9”N 114°07’23.7”E
22°17’58.0”N 114°10’26.2”E
“22°22’19.3””N 114°07’08.8””E”
“22°16’11.0”N 114°14’29.1”E”
22°22’11.5”N 114°07’02.3”E
22°18’32.6”N 114°10’12.9”E
22°18’22.9”N 114°00’41.4”E
Expansion
Fill-In
Hermit-Crab
Fabrication
Fragmentation
Hierarchy
Fast-Temple
Fusion
Humility
508
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Location
“22°22’15.8””N 114°06’55.1””E”
“22°28’04.0””N 113°58’58.8””E”
22°16’36.9”N 114°13’37.7”E
“22°14’35.1”N 114°09’33.2”E”
22°20’13.0”N 114°12’27.7”E
22°27’06.5”N 114°00’19.2”E
“22°19’09.7””N 114°09’55.9””E”
“22°21’04.2”N 114°03’27.3”E”
“22°27’28.1””N 113°59’26.2””E”
Iconic
Intermediate
Omitting
Inside-out
Intimate
Isolation
Interfere
Inward
Juxtaposition
509
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Location
“22°24’51.8”N 114°15’04.6”E”
22°15’24.7”N 113°51’46.5”E
“22°20’07.3”N 114°12’31.0”E”
22°18’24.5”N 114°00’38.1”E
22°15’56.1”N 114°14’26.6”E
“22°22’07.3”N 114°07’16.1”E”
22°20’53.7”N 114°03’18.9”E
“22°28’06.6”N 113°58’55.8”E”
“22°14’53.7””N 114°09’16.5””E”
Layering
Luxury
Memory
Layers
Magnet
Messiness
localization
Megapodium
Mini
510
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Location
“22°15’48.6””N 114°14’21.1””E”
“22°15’24.7”N 113°51’47.5”E”
22°20’09.1”N 114°12’29.8”E
22°09’06.8”N 113°30’56.6”E
“22°17’51.2””N 114°10’12.2””E”
“22°20’53.3””N 114°03’19.7””E”
22°19’59.1”N 114°12’32.9”E
22°20’13.0”N 114°12’27.7”E
“22°19’09.7””N 114°09’55.9””E”
Mobility
Mutation
Obstacle
multifunction
Nonchalant
Occupy
Multi-purpose
Nostalgia
Omtting
511
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Location
“22°16’42.1”N 114°13’41.3”E”
“22°14’27.9”N 114°09’32.9”E”
22°22’16.7”N 114°07’03.2”E
22°22’24.3”N 114°06’51.2”E
“22°22’25.2””N 114°06’47.7””E”
22°15’49.1”N 114°14’13.7”E
22°15’16.7”N 113°51’42.3”E
22°15’16.9”N 113°51’43.2”E
“22°14’41.2”N 114°09’21.3”E”
Overlap
Patch
Preference
Partition
Penetrate
Pretend
Passage
Podium
Proliferation
512
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Location
22°27’08.6”N 114°00’22.7”E
22°20’02.8”N 114°12’35.3”E
“22°15’21.4”N 113°51’53.4”E”
“22°15’25.9”N 113°51’45.5”E”
“22°15’17.4”N 113°51’45.4”E”
22°15’23.8”N 113°51’47.2”E
“22°20’55.8”N 114°03’21.6”E”
22°27’48.8”N 113°59’14.1”E
“22°22’19.4”N 114°06’55.9”E”
Protection
Raw
Reinforcement
Protrude
Reciprocate
Remediation
Raised
Recreation
Replace
513
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Location
“22°16’04.9”N 114°14’39.5”E”
“22°16’38.3”N 114°13’40.4”E”
22°20’53.5”N 114°03’25.3”E
22°22’18.6”N 114°07’01.1”E
22°15’14.5”N 113°51’52.4”E
22°14’40.7”N 114°09’14.9”E
22°27’08.6”N 114°00’22.7”E
22°10’30.8”N 114°06’04.4”E
22°26’30.15”N 114°23’67,94”E
Segregation
Setback
Sidewalk
Selective
Shell
Singularity
Sequence
Shop
Situational
514
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Location
“22°20’07.9””N 114°12’32.4””E”
“22°21’05.3””N 114°03’22.3””E”
22°22’08.8”N 114°07’20.1”E
22°16’10.9”N 114°14’29.7”E
“22°18’07.9””N 114°10’18.1””E”
22°22’16.7”N 114°07’03.2”E
22°28’04.4”N 113°58’58.1”E
“22°15’17.6””N 113°51’47.6””E”
22°14’52.2”N 114°09’05.9”E
Spontaneous
Storage
Team
Sprawling
Support
Threshold
Stage
Surreal
Transition
515
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Location
“22°15’11.5””N 113°51’42.1””E” Transition
“22°22’06.9”N 114°06’57.4”E” Under-Stair
22°15’15.1”N 113°51’46.0”E Unseal
world-making Unseal
516
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Location
517
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Location
Lau Fau Wan Tin Shui Wai
Tsuen Wan
Ma Wan
Hong Kong International Airport
Discovery Bay
Wah Fu Tai O
Ap
518
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Location
en Wan
Choi Hung Yau Ma Tei Jordan Tsim Sha Tsui
Kowloon Bay Ngau Tau Kok Shau Kei Wan Heng Fa Chuen Chai Wan
Wah Fu Aberdeen Ap Lei Chau
519
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Authors
Chen Wei-i, Only
chenweiyihtcdesire@gmail.com
Lam Man Yan, Milly
Fung Ching Wai, Wilson
Kwok Hoi Lam, Helen
Lam Yan, Kati
Lau Miu Kwan, Micki
wlsnfng@gmail.com
lmy230@hotmail.com
lamyankati@gmail.com
Law Yin, Yan
Law Yuk Sin, Sincere
yanfrti@gmail.com
sin010055@hotmail.com
kowkneleh@gmail.com
mklau1014@gmail.com
Pang Lee Sze, Liz
lizpang1995@hotmail.com
520
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Authors
Sun Yu Xuan, Vicky sunyx@umich.edu
Wang Hao Ran, Howard adilein21@gmail.com
Tam Dik Yeung, Derek derektam129@gmail.com
Wang Yi
bryanw@foxmail.com
Tam Sin Yu, Crystal
crystaltamwork@gmail.com
Yim Yu Ching, Ben
yuching_2008@hotmail.com
Peter Feretto
peter.ferretto@cuhk.edu.hk
521
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CONDITION/HONG KONG © 2017 All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in an form
ISBN Printed in Hong Kong
First published in 2017 Authors: Peter Winston Ferretto Chen Wei-I, Only Fung Ching Wai, Wilson Kwok Hoi Lam, Helen Lam Man Yan, Milly Lam Yan, Kati Lau Miu Kwan, Micki Law Yin, Yan Law Yuk Sin, Sincere Pang Lee Sze, Liz Sun Yu Xuan, Vicky Tam Dik Yeung, Derek Tam Sin Yu, Crystal Wang Hao Ran, Howard Wang Yi Yim Yu Ching, Ben Editing Team: Fung Ching Wai, Wilson Kwok Hoi Lam, Helen Lam Man Yan, Milly Sun Yu Xuan, Vicky Wang Hao Ran, Howard Wang Yi Yim Yu Ching, Ben
School of Architecture The Chinese University of Hong Kong AIT Building Shatin, New Terretories Hong Kong SAR, China T +852 3943 6583 E architecture@cuhk.edu.hk W www.arch.cuhk.edu.hk/
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