Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture 2009

www.crisisfronts.org/hksz

The primary site of inquiry for the project is the Closed Area interstitial border zone immediately opposite the boundary between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, a zone that is at once largely empty and traversed by thousands of people every day through a vast and intricate managerial flow. It is a zone that is fluxual and intensely managed by infrastructure. In the context of the increasing inter-connectivity of the two cities and the transition from Special Administrative status in 2046. It is also a political and territorial gray area, a region that is at once part of a geographic center of a combined or linked regional metropolis, and at the same time a zone of shared and overlapping peripheries.

Perhaps even more so than the iconic and exploding skylines of Hong Kong and Shenzhen, the border is the true emblem of the broader metropolitan region. But its architecture is diffuse, its protocols rigid, and its contrasts of scale, speed, and time extreme. It is an amalgam of contrasts: a territory of agreement, coupled with an infrastructure of quarantine and separation, aquaculture and wetlands with duty free shopping. Already the site of dense development catering to transients and frequent commuters, the border has also proven to be a zone subject to great expansion as well as one with a tremendous gravity and attraction – a space more than a line.

These are conditions that provide the basis for a series of protocols and logics sampled from the border area. Our proposal suggests that the border might be thought to be increasingly populated and densified while at the same time devising mechanisms to preserve and redistribute existing land uses and practices within the border zones which are themselves fragile and ecologically necessary.

The project itself is a loose parametric infrastructural and organizational framework. Our aim to find opportunities to seed the landscape and the infrastructure with new urban protocols for the border region having to do with leisure, agriculture, water purification and remediation, energy harvesting, and civic exchange. The proposed infrastructure is generated based on initial organizational and relational protocols and will evolve over the duration of the Biennale as visitors respond and add information to inflect it.

Visitors are encouraged to sample from the printed souvenir postcards, which are printed with portions of an online questionnaire querying practices with respect to travel and communication between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The intent here is to forecast possible urban infrastructural arrangements based on the sampling of a population’s latent attitude towards the uncertainty of a future collective identity.  This intersection is fertile ground to accommodate the imminent demands of various boundary transformations of the near future.

One possible scenario of this begins with the expansion and proliferation of the zones of delay that occur along existing transit corridors and border crossing points. These are already zones programmed with commerce and could become the core around which new pockets of time and territory will percolate and coalesce. The proposed infrastructural framework is implemented to ease the displacement of vital wetland and agricultural territories as the zones of delay are extended into the surrounding landscape. This displacement constitutes a dynamic front -  a turbulent region that is interspersed with a collection of agricultural patches that fluctuate between wet and dry on a seasonal basis and are connected by a series of circulatory linkages that promote a more extended duration of occupation.

As visitor data is added the infrastructure will grow and further differentiate as it acquires and remixes protocols and practices sampled from the Crisis Fronts studio.

Project Team: Michael Chen, Jason Lee, Cole Reynolds, Tai Li Lee, Roy Zhuang

Fabrication: Edwin Shum, Model-Tech (HK) Ltd.

Web Interface: Bob Holling, Studio Holling

Support is provided by Pratt Institute School of Architecture and the Pratt Institute Faculty Development Fund.

Events:

Biennale Opening Forum “Cultural Education / Bi-City Exchange”, December 4th, 2:00 – 3:00pm, at the Main Pavilion.

BYOB x DETOUR Pecha Kucha Night, a crossover event between the Biennale and DETOUR 2009 (organized by Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design), December 5, 5:00-7:00pm, at the Police Married Quarters, Hollywood Road

Additional images by:

Jose Blanco, Joanna Cheung, Andres Correa, Ivan Delgado, Nick Garrate, Allison Hoffman, Heidi Jandris, Kamilla Litvinov, Sebastian Misiurek, Jeos Oreamuno Jun Pak, Anna Perelman, Cole Reynolds, Bradley Rothenberg, John Seward, Jintana Tantinirundr

A live-work space for a professional photographer in a former manufacturing building on the Lower East Side. Spatial flexibility is required as the loft is regularly used for photo shoots and editing, presentations, and events in addition to serving as the owner’s primary residence. To maximimize open space, storage components and thickened storage zones within walls are used exclusively to delineate spaces. The existing nineteenth century shell of tin ceilings and rough paster walls is retained and a series of back and gloss white inserts are introduced to define spatial zones and serve as clothing, work, and media storage and display units. The largest of these units contains a series of pull-out closet units a library  in the bedroom and display shelving and projection surface in the living area as well as two large custom sliding doors. A second unit consists of office storage and  equipment zone in the study and a headboard in the bedroom. Ambient lighting is contained with the cabinetry pieces and gallery lighting is added along long walls for rotating displays.

FSC certified woods from local sources is used, as well as reclaimed timber from St Lawrence Bay. Finishes are all sustainable.

Photos by Alan Tansey

New York, NY. Completed 2007

Bigger than furniture; smaller than architecture. A renovation of a 450 square foot studio in Manhattan. The challenge is to incorporate all of the aspects of a larger space for work and entertaining within a compact studio apartment. The strategy is one of extreme density. A single oversized custom cabinetry piece is inserted along one wall. The cabinet is packed with all of the functional components of a larger apartment including a bed, a nightstand, a closet, a home office, a library, kitchen storage, and most of the lighting for the room. An endlessly reconfigurable series of doors and panels can be opened and closed to create the spaces of the apartment. The project includes a new kitchen and new bathroom.

Featured in The New York Times | Dwell Magazine | Treehugger

Photos by Alan Tansey

New York, NY. Completed 2007

Green but not crunchy. The project is a combination and renovation of two adjoining apartments in a prewar building for a professional couple and their young children. Sustainability is a top priority for the clients and they were looking not only for sustainable materials but ecological design strategies that would encourage sustainable practices and lifestyles. A strategic set of cuts and insertions along with a series of custom fabricated sliding panels are used to generate a flexible floor plan that affords a range of privacy and openness while promoting the transmission of natural light and natural air flow. The family is able to go without air conditioning through then whole summer.

Sustainably harvested wood from managed local forests, recycled resin, and energy efficient appliances are used. In addition, demolition is kept to an absolute minimum and materials are reclaimed and recycled. The majority of new insertions take the form of custom cabinetry pieces in local walnut and strand woven bamboo. These make up the kitchen volume and storage elements. Inexpensive and efficient fluorescent strips are used as lighting throughout and are located in coves, cabinetry pockets, or are diffused by resin panels to create a warm glow.

The plan can be configured to create a loft like space with a high degree of visual porosity that affords a view from one end of the apartment to the other, and can alternately be closed off to create more private regions. The organization of the plan is such that the apartment is also dividable into a parents’ apartment to the east and a children’s apartment to the west with the kitchen in between.

Featured in Dwell Magazine

Photos by Alan Tansey

Existing Plan

New Plan

Wall-hung shelving unit and organizer in laser cut and bent lacquered steel. A wide range of permutations are available based on strategic alignments of the creases. Only 45 degree cuts and folds are used, keeping fabrication costs low.

]]> http://www.normalprojects.com/?feed=rss2&p=286 0 http://www.normalprojects.com/?p=284 http://www.normalprojects.com/?p=284#comments Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:04:50 +0000 normalprojects http://www.normalprojects.com/?p=284 A collaboration with tentwenty

Description to come….

A prototype family health center and clinic for sites in Rwanda. A phased expansion logic is organized under a long span space frame truss system supporting a canopy roof. A basic structural unit comprised of X frame with tension rod is arrayed with graduated densities that afford control of pitch and openings.

PROJECT TEAM

Michael Chen, Jason Lee, Jun Pak, Cole Reynolds, Nick Scalone

A renovation and interior design of a single family house in Northern California. The project is a gut renovation of an existing 1970s split-level ranch house with outdated finishes. A series of relatively dark and undistinguished formal spaces is transformed by substantially reconfiguring the existing ceilings within the existing roof lines. Previously discontinuous spaces are clustered together beneath the new ceilings and separated with lighting and subtle transitions in floor level and material. Previously choppy formal and family spaces are blended for ease of entertaining. The project includes custom cabinetry and stone work and new furnishings throughout.