RES PUBLICA:
POLITICAL SPACE POST DIGITAL
The thesis attempts to explore the phygital constitution of political architecture in the post-digital context of Hong Kong. With utilising and experimenting various digital tools and workflows, the project synthesises digital and physical entities together encouraging discourses in the city.
A phygital forum network, engaging Hong Kong citizens to heterotopic spatial encounters of the city’s political future in the post-digital age, is proposed. The scheme establishes new forms of political participation connecting multiple locations in the city to the main forum open space through post-digital means. Taking the Rostra from the Roman Forum and the Speakers’ Corner from London as references, the design captivates the power of the citizens influencing the city’s policies and addresses the polarizing views in the city through the phygital promotion of rational opinion expressions. The project with Augmented Reality, photogrammetry and digital imaging integrations generates and connects citizens’ discourse of social issues beyond certain constraints of time and space while advocating phygital assemblies in the post-digital era. The proposal, situating at The Statue Square, Central, redefines open public spaces in Hong Kong and becomes the prototype of phygital forums that can be further implemented across the city.
THE CORAL REBIRTH ALCHEMY
Located at Tai Lei Chau, The Coral Rebirth Alchemy acknowledges the marine pollutions happening due to Peng Chau’s industrial past and Tai Lei’s current role of an infrastructural hub. The design scheme with coral farming landscaping systems gives back to the environment, protects the seashore and establishes new identities for the island. Scientists and the public through engaging with the modular yet flexible coral reef rebuilding units in various scales take part in redefining the shoreline and celebrating marine culture. The design can further be implemented at artificial coastlines across East Lantau and forms a Coral Farming Network in Hong Kong.
WHITBY AFTERLIFE CHAMBER
Whitby Afterlife Chamber holds funeral ceremony where souls of the deceased depart their bodies to the afterlife dimension. The crematory service is a sorting process of the souls either heading to heaven above or Dracula’s ruins of pain and darkness within Whitby Abbey. Families and Friends meditate, witness the soul separating cremation and confess their sins within their journey inside the building. The architecture acts as an amplifying instrument for the town of Whitby with each funeral transposing the souls and commemorating the late citizens.
VILLAGE HOUSE PROTOTYPE
Located in Louna Village, XingYi, China, the project as a prototype explores a new alternative way of living at suburban sloped terrain sites. The ground design in concrete is to peel off the slope from one side as stairs and to stop as a vertical wall on the other. Flat slabs are created above the peeled surfaces at different heights and sizes. The roof in timber follows the gradient of the slope, with a series of structural supports separating private and semi-public spaces. Series of concrete casting models, 1:20 models and exploratory drawings are produced along the design development of the project.
DETROIT RUINS RETREAT
“The Digital” is no longer simply a tool for the production of architecture, but the context in which architecture is conceived. This shift calls for a fundamental rethinking of some of our most commonly used tools and techniques. The project, taking Detroit as an experimental ground accustomed to digital mediation, collapses distinctions between physical and digital, and turns visualization tools into generative approach of design. The project, developing as a digital boutique hotel and gallery, evolves through superimposing images to objects and spaces within a scanned virtual isolated context. Manipulated images as texture maps on various entities scatter at the virtual environment and speculate multiple spatial experiences. A virtual reality experience of the digital design in Detroit and a portfolio of images and videos are compiled to showcase the post-digital journey and research.
PILGRIMS & THE MISSING BISHOP
The group film and collage piece explore the narrative methodology of approaching architecture design. The project is set at Lincoln where a group of Pilgrims is within a journey of finding a missing Bishop. The Bishop is hidden in an unknown dimension because cathedral members think his acts of finding truth and scientific knowledge stop people from worshiping God. This is a story of pilgrims beginning the move on knowledge because of tracing the history of missing Bishop. Stepping from the medieval old time to a whole new dimension of future and a mysterious fantasy.
SOUTH ESSEX NAVAL ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL
South Essex Naval Architecture School is set with a newly proposed dry dock next to the Tilbury Port of London in Essex. The port operation as the major business of the area is isolated from the people in the town. The site at the threshold and intersection of the town and the port is to develop schemes that act as the catalyst to bond the connection. River Thames and ships are the mutual elements that characterize Grays and Tilbury Port. A naval architecture school that offers long term impacts on education and job opportunities can perfectly fulfill the linkage that is not present in the current situation. The skills of ship design and technology could boost the identity of the area.
POST-INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION
Located at East Tilbury where BATA shoe factory was established previously in 1932-2005 for over 70 years, the new housing development responds to the vast expansion of London capital. The design of housing units emphasises the sense of community with prefabrication considerations and linkages to the industrial past.