FALL 2019 MLA Design Studio: Urban Archipelago - Tony YUEN

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

T O N Y U E P O R FOLI

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Y N T O

MLA2 FALL 2019/20

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

PROJECT PHASE

/1.1 |

20SEP

/1.2 |

22OCT

/1.3 |

16DEC

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

GROUP WORK

The Hong Kong Government published “Hong Kong 2030+” in 2016 and announced the proposed developments in Lantau Island including improvement of transportation infrastructure between Lantau and its adjacent areas; releasing land resources as to provide opportunities for both housing and commercial developments and to reclaim over 1700 hectares of land as to form the East Lantau Metropolis. The narrative in the publication has emphasized the importance of seizing the opportunity to connect the Greater Bay Area, as to boost up the economy and solve the housing shortage issues in Hong Kong.

Although the development blueprint described the crisis Hong Kong is facing and project the power of the proposed framework with hope, the topic has been under furious debates by different stakeholders. To understand the emergence and objectives of the blueprint and to verify the claims in “Hong Kong 2030+” which in our point of view, were intensely filled with depleted descriptions and diverted audience’s attention away from some of the rooted problems that the Government failed to solve so far.

Our group starts with the mapping out the blueprint proposed by the government and manipulate the given information from various sources, and by looking it in three different scales, we are trying to investigate political, economical and social factors shaping the proposal and the intangible forces underlying the framework.

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

/1.1 LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS STUDY OF EAST LANTAU METROPOLIS IN POLITICAL/ ECONOMICAL/ SOCIAL FACTORS

This map describes the existing development and transportation network at Pearl River Delta (now often associated with the term “Greater Bay Area” proposed by the People’s Republic of China), this map is crucial as it demonstrates the greater connectivity of the development blueprint which directly linking major cities on mainland China such as Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Shenzhen and fast growing economic zones like Nansha and Bao’An. The travelling time to the above-mentioned places has been shorten by the proposed railways and highways and form a one-hour travelling circle within the PRD. The improvement of connectivity unfolds better accessibility to industrialized areas on mainland China as most of the international entrepreneurs set up head quarters in Hong Kong and migrate their factories to mainland in history, the shortened physical distance between administration and manufacturing is beneficial in terms of reducing cost.

The improvement of network also attracts rising enterprises in China to set up branches in Hong Kong, the East Lantau Metropolis was built on these bases and strategically tabled as a wish to contribute the development in the Greater Bay framework.

This map describes the existing developed area and vacant land in Hong Kong, so story is more focusing the relationship between land parcels and the claims of having land reclamations. Based on the distribution of the country parks and constraints from the marina condition such as the fish breeding related area and the fairway, the location of the East Lantau Metropolis not just only taking advantages of on going connectivity to the Greater Bay but also based on the fact that the Eastern marine area of Lantau is the area with less constraints and has the potential to create new land supply to achieve the goals mentioned in “Hong Kong 2030+�.

The new development in Lantau District is proposed to be a new economic zone enhancing the pillar industries including logistics, tourism and housing developments and to provide new high-end commercial centre serving needs for the over-delta industries. The action aimed to terminate the domination of central economic zone and spread economic activities towards Lantau and Northern economic zone in order to transcend Hong Kong into Dual Core or Triple Core economic structure.

The map also unfolds the actual difficulties from developing the brownfield in Hong Kong (difficulties are most likely political and administration failure as there has been complicated relationships since the colonial period), there are two major issues: First, the scatter distributed brownfields are hard to reform before proposing any housing development plan. Second, the brownfields are now controlled by indigenous people living nearby and they have certain power granted by the Chinese Government.

This map describes the proposed development for Lantau Island and its existing context. Apart from the reasons mentioned on the first and the second map, the development of Lantau is bounded by the existence of the North and South Lantau Country Parks and Lawprotected areas where they crowned on early stages in the history of town planning. Therefore, the development can only squeeze on the edges and expand usable area by reclamation.

The East Lantau Metropolis chose to reclaim nearby underdeveloped islands like He Ling Chau and Gao Yi Chau as to avoid objections from other islands and reach an easy-consent. Whereas the benefits of greater population living at the northern edges of Lantau Island are covered by improvement of transportation and development extensions, the proposed blueprint can also get a certain supporting ground.

Unfortunately, the conflict between the proposed railways and highways and the North Lantau Country Park and the opinions of improving the southern Lantau transportation were all neglected in the blueprint, hence offered additional counter-arguing angles by concern parties.

The maps have explored spatial configurations of the new development in Lantau Island and briefly introduced some of the evidences to prove its emergence, the following diagrams will perhaps explore more undermined factors in terms of political, economic and social perspectives.

Since the factors are all various, and the strategic planning of the future blueprint depends on the stance one is having, the analytical diagrams aim to express the views from stakeholders in this society and criticizing the developed framework by the Government.

There are three key arguments which we think are essential for future consideration, first the uncertainty of land demand in future, second the difference of expectation between Government and local citizens, and finally the failure of ascend the economy structure in Hong Kong.

Based on the above reasons, the government shall definitely review and table their detailed planning strategies to release criticisms and perplexities from the public.

Grounded on socio-political factors and future needs for housing developments, a counter proposal is made based on the 2030+ blueprint. Our objective is seizing a balance between development and existing nature, streamlining transportation network particularly in railways and rethinking the edge conditions of future reclamation areas as to leave a line for fostering future landscapes and providing contingencies for onward urban framework.

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

/1.2 MASTER PLAN VISIONS ENVISIONING EAST LANTAU METROPOLIS A RESPONSIVE URBAN DEVELOPMENT DRIVEN BY SITE FACTORS

Inspired by the bio-structure of a cell as well as the anatomy of the coral, here we proposed urban prototypes for 4 major types of development which emphasized in government’s plan. They are public housing development, private residences, commerce and finance and high-tech industrial development.

However, none of these targeted development has clear information demonstrated in “2030+”, the criticisms from the public sector have been heated up by vague proposal which spent billions of expenditures. In the wake of limited information disclosed by the government, our group start utilizing site factors as basic design parameters as counter propose the “necessary” reclaimation areas in East Lantau Metropolis.

Based on the buffered area offset from the original country parks and protected areas, three major site of five islands were manually identified as striving balance between the government proposal and the nature reserves. Each area is then divided by 200m grid for our primary design framework.

We defined the origin of each prototypes by 200m grid and they are regarded as a single “urban cell” which will aggregate and transform themselves when they converge. Such convergence processes of urban cells will form the basic structure to morph the reclaimed area. The population and jobs supported in the cell is hereby also calculated from selected sample sites in Hong Kong.

These two diagrams show the design matrix of these ideas and gradually transforming the urban pattern by adding different parameters.

The left column demonstrated the idea of having a grid structured urbanism without exterior factor affecting the growth of urban cells.

The human-centred design prototypes featured high efficiency of transportation and regular pattern of buildings whereas the centres of the converged urban cells are served as green spaces and transportation nodes. For instance, the public housing prototype has social and community facilities nearby the station, the private residence has integrated commercial development with the station and connecting sub-centres of urban cells by footbridges.

For the middle column, country park and protected area buffer is added as the parameter to affect urban fabric. Distances between the development, the transportation node and the buffers are set up to create a gradual change of building densities, hence the role of landscapes is shifted from centre green space to buffering between natural resources and architecture. That also presents the initial idea of having responsive urban fabric based on our analysis.

The third column is the final designated morph by scripting random location of building points and Voronoi diagrammed road network which their width is also interpreted by the setup parameters in previous experiment. For the Voronoi road diagram, it is formed by the primary road and tertiary road respectively, average points are scripted based on the density of buildings as to determine the distribution of the primary road hierarchy. This parametric designed urban fabric narrates a higher fluidity and more organic urban fabric, though sacrificed some efficiency and controlled orientation, it better simulates the development corresponding to existing environments.

The pattern of commerce and high -tech industries, are imagined based on rigid designed grids due to their massing. However, the height of commerce development is also scripted in response to parameters in the second column which demonstrates similar case as the above housing and residence developments.

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

INDIVIDUAL WORK

With the invention of the Mass Transit Railway System (MTRS), the paradigm of the human flow within an urban area has been defined by 3 different layers. The project particle city aimed to imagine human, architectural and landscape units as particles to unfold potentials for future urban development, exploring possibilities of blending “landscapes� through processes of particlization and deconstruction.

The surface of the conventional urban fabric has been populated by buildings, the spaces in the architecture are the destinations of particles (human) and this is the layer where people are staying.

When one particle moves from one point to another, it moves vertically to the second level where particles are either self-flowing or being tranported by numerous small devices (vehicles). There are two possible scenarios since then, which also determined by the final destinations of particles. If the distance of travelling is short, the flow of the particle could be done in this level; but if the distance of which is far away from the origin, the particle will need to move vertically futher to the third level where the MTRS is located. As a result, the intensity of particle flows is observed and experienced either on the second or the third level.

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/1.3 DETAILED DESIGN IMAGINATION OF FUTURE PARADIGM IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT THE PARTICLE CITY IN EAST ISLAND METROPOLIS

This design project aimed to imagine a new way of particle flow from combing different small spatial particles and pulling them towards the railway network as to streamline the particle movements (travelling). Transportation network, being the wiring of a city has long been separated from it’s fabric and seen as auxiliary component to support the daily operation. This proposal is targeted to reconstruct a new wiring network and consider new urban development as a whole through scattered individuals, ultimately liberating landscapes from existing urban framework and allowing their future counter invasion and successsion.

URBAN ARCHIPELAGO