2011年12月27日星期二

Development of housing forms in SSP

50s~60s
1.Tong Lau with Arcade before World War Two

Tong Lau is essentially a balcony-type tenement building for residential and commercial use. The ground floor portion is reserved for commercial use, mostly by small businesses like food vendors. The upper floors were for residential use.Most of the exsiting Tang lau locate in SSP,a special view of old HK.
2.Squatter Village

After the war,thousands of  refugees came to HK and most of who cannot afford the rent of a room in the building,so they use wood and iron sheet to build squatters,and the Squatter Village in SSP was made up of thousands of them,but it was destroyed in the big fire in 1953.
60s~70s
3.Public Housing

Public Housing Project started after the big fire,the first Mei-Ho House was built in 1954 ,after that more public housing with better conditions were built,like the So Uk Estate.
Mei Ho House
So Uk Estate

70s~80s
4.Private Housing for middle class 

Bigger and better private housing were desiged for middle class,like Mei Foo Sun Chuen which was the first private housing estate  in Hong Kong and at the time of completion, the 99 tower complex was considered the largest private housing development in the world,accommodating some 70,000 - 80,000 people in 13,500 apartments.
Mei Foo Sun Chuen(Mei Foo Estate)

5.Rooftop Slums

Poor residents or new immigrants built rooftop slums,because the special community cannot afford a appartment,most of the slums were built on the Tang Lau

 80s~00s
 6.Luxury Private Housing

There were many private estates be built after the Mei Foo Estate,more supporting facilities were included like private club or gardens,much better living conditions than the public housing,but also,more expensive rent,only for upper and middle classes,and low income families still live in rooftop slums and old Tang Lau.

URP in HK

Hong kong's building stock is ageing rapidly.There are at present about 4000 buildings aged 50 years or above in HK,and the number will increase by 500 per yaer over the next decade,the condition of those buildings remain unsatisfactory and posing threats to public safety.
(a five-storey old building in Hung Hom collapsed in 2010 ,3 people were killed)

To address the problem of urban decay and to improve the living conditions of residents in dilapidated urban areas,the Urban Renewal Authority Ordiannce(URAO) was enacted in July 2000,which provides a new institutional framework for carrying out urban renewal,and the URA was established on 1 May 2001.
(official site of the URA)

The government strategy is the 4R which are Redevelopment,Rehabilitation,Revitalisation and Preservation,and they are supposed be carried out by the "People first,District-based and Public participatory"approach.

Strategy sounds reasonable,but has it really be pratically carried out as the government said ,as far as I know,most residents show a strong opposition.
(a video of gathering residents in Sham Shui Po for a walking tour)

After the crit,I continue working on  how the URP influenced people's life in Sham Shui Po,and I found out that the URP was an "slash and burn" process for those residents especially the lower income class which is the main part of the community.They expect a better living condition but cannot afford the new replacements.They are now facing the problem that going to be torn up from the neighborhood they love and be thrown to an unfamiliar circumstance,which would also bring the lovely community of SSP into a dead conner.

I downloaded a pamphlet of the URP,which mentioned the objectives of urban renewal,one of them said"preserving as far as praticable the social networks of the local community",it's a little bit satiric,I guess the community they are going to save is more valuable ones for the government,the poor one in SSP is out of the range.

SSP has a really good position and traffic condition that show a higher  economical protential to be developed in those old areas,that's maybe why the lower income class  would not find a place for them in the future and going to be replaced by the middle class.But one crucial thing the government forget is the disappearance of the local community would be a super loss for this district.

Jane Jacobs said in her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"that "These networks are a city's irreplaceable social capital.Whenever the capital is lost,from whatever cause,the income from it dissappears,never to return until and unless new capital is slowly and chancily accumulated".I totally agree with the definition she gave to the networks,the "irreplacable social capital" and now which of SSP are facing being amputated and biscected.

So I redefine the forgotten corner of SSP as the "The invisible & irreplaceable social capital of this district which is the forged neighbourhood network".



2011年11月27日星期日

under the bridges

space under the bridges are always interesting
some are no man's land
some are prosperous
⋯⋯
full of surprising activities












2011年11月21日星期一

curiosities of the city

High line park ——survival of the old rail track

The elevated 1930s railroad track in New York City has been transformed into an innovative and contemporary public park.




City with water still feel thirsty,maybe there is a solution for waterfront problems,also for HK?

Urban reclaiming the shore
 
Taller 301 was awarded First Prize in the International Architecture Competition Urban Landscaping in Kyiv for Euro-2012. The project entitled Reclaiming the Shore consists of 413 hectares between the Dnieper River and the City Center.
 
Problem: The highway acts as a barrier between the city and the river.
Solution: Reconnect the city and the river through landbridges.





Vertical& space under the bridge ——both possible solutions for high density

Vertical villages for European Snowbirds

The Solar Park South International design competition awarded French firms OFF architecture,PR Architect & Samuel Nageotte for their entry called Verical Villages in Calabria, Italy. The competition played with the theme of a ‘Solar Highway’, re-using sections of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway soon to be decommissioned by the Italian Highways Authority.
 
The inspired form for the “Vertical Village” arose out of the viaducts morphology, particularly the piles of the struction. The deck therefore becomes the reinforcement of these residential areas through commercial spaces, equipment, medical centres and leisure spaces.


A conceptual project in my hometown where is called city of hills

Magic mountains

The urban concept for the GCBD reinstates the mountainous feeling deep into the very dense and urbanized areas of Chongqing. The new skyline consists of a composition of inhabited mountains. The mountain peaks match the high-density centres; the lower reaches of the mountains resemble areas built with low density, whereas the valleys are green open spaces.








Grahame Shane Workshop

West end 
mapping different routes for tourist and local


Reversal

City is like a drawing made up of canvas and patterns,site is the canvas while the artificial buildings are the patterns,most of the existing cities' patterns are designed isolated,few connections can be found.
Reverse the figure-ground relation,see what will happen

good start

Study in Bartlett started whth London research,a good try for us to do a video about london typology.
vision VS acoustic