essay

Essay

Current Situation of The Refugee Housing

During the trip to Athens,I visited the site three times as well as the neighbourhood,this area is very close to the center of Athens，the main buildings surrounded including two hospitals,a stadium,the police headquarter, the court of justice and a bank with several clocks on the facade all show a strong contrast between themselves and the abandoned refugee housing,both in scale and facade.

The “refugee” neighbourhood at Alexandras avenue, situated at a nodal point within the network of the city, occupies in total a site of 14.323 m2, comprises 8 three floors apartment blocks, 228 flats (each about 45 m2 in area), and covers a built total surface of 13.620 m2.

This area is mostly be occupied by multi-storey residential houses except for those public buildings I mentioned above.The modern multi-storey buildings have a totally different typology with continous balconies and sunshades.

section of the difference btween the refugee housing and the multi-storey residential building

typology of the multi-storey residential buildings

 

No physical connections between the "old" and the "new" except the hanging lamps in-between,below is an interesting view of the open space in between with the glass and concrete facade of the distant Court of Justice.

Alexandras Avenue Refugee Building Complex

Background

1.1922

After the "Asia minor disaster",a treaty was signed specifying a large-scale population exchange.Some 1,2000,000 Greeks,mostly from cities on Turkey's Aegean coast,had to leave their homes and be transported to Greece,deprived of all their possessions,while Turks from Greek mainland,mainly peasants,had to follow the opposite route.

2.Shanty Towns

Greece's government keep almost half population of the refugees around the major cities,so as to control them and to "integrate" them into the local economy.The other half who were allowed to stay in Athens had to build their houses on empty public lots mainly outside the city by whatever materials they could find.Shanty towns with no roads and living facilities had appeared since then around Athens and Piraeus.

The country showed a strong hostile to those uprooted people,they are demonized as invaders who would destroy the city's public life,and those shanty towns were spatially and socially formed as ghettoes.

3.The refugee housing complex

Almost ten years after the Asia Minor,a slum clearance project produced a series of model settlements.The Alexandras complex was built during the years 1934-35,which was distinctive in its abundance of open space between the buildings.

All these residential apartments are small but offer air and light from both sides,  consist of a sitting room, a bedroom, a small kitchen and a tiny toilet. And it's one of the earliest examples of the modern movement in Greece.

Balconies as boxes(1943)

Be treated like "others"

Socially the buildings were a place where the refugees were to be secluded.No care was taken for the remaining open space,no initiatives were established for the complexes to be incorporated into the city.Those complexes were both physically and symbolically set apart from the city,surrounded as they were by amorous public space easily read as separating zone.Residents had to face a unfrendly environment.

Self-organized public place

Nevertheless,an evolving comman life burst out of the buildings thanks to the loose spaces with no defined uses in between. Residents transformed outdoor space into an ambiguous network of small courtyards,pavements,tree-shaded areas,improvised playgrounds and meeting points.

The outdoor space was not marked by absolute boundaries, the staircases were not simply used to cross but noisy play areas especially in winter,the laundry room became the living room for women,most of the basement flat were extended into small courtyards.

Decay

Since the late 1960s,the complex have been the focus of the governments who promised a park in place of a degrated housing area.The pressure produced a precarious situation for the residents who were hesitant to spend money for housing maintenance.The fomer public places like the staircases,the laundry rooms and the pavements started crumbling.Also this ares became a large informal parking lot for people using the nearby hospitals or stadium.

Most of the owners sold their apartments,while others abandoned their houses or have rented them to comtemporary immigrants or low income people.The buildings appeared to be almost abandoned.

During the Athens 2004 Olympic games, a huge cloth with Acopolis printed on it was used to cover the facade of the building facing the Alexandras Avenue.

 

However,some  public events like exhibitions or festivals were orgnized by volunteers and those who resist the demolition,they attended to regenerate the former vivid public place,and tried to show that the history of the buildings has transformed them to protential sites of an osmotic public life.

Wonderland

The scale of SSP is very interesting .On the street level, original buildings were built in human scale whilst new private estates look like giants who ate the "EAT ME" cake from the "Alice in Wonderland" story and grew to such a tremendous size. The exaggerated contrast between the old and new makes SSP looks like Alice's wonderland.

SSP is famous for the vivid street life,however,the "new giants” cover the sky，and seems like alien to the neighborhood.Some blocks in Cheung Sha Wan has already be replaced by those "modern giants",and the street market has been moved to business buildings in the  podium.

See the  spatial difference I illustrated below:

original street of SSP  V.S.  street occupied by the giants

The street view in the second illustration is just the status quo in some blocks in Cheung Sha Wan,and may be the future of central SSP.No more attractive street markets,only a few pedestrians walking by in a rush and the sidewalk turned from an active outdoor place into an aisleway carrying pedestrians and wheeled traffic.

This contrast remind me Jane Jacob's view about the relationship between  streets and the city“If a city's streets look interesting,the city looks interesting;if they look dull,the city looks dull."

market in the business building V.S. market on the street

Besides,SSP is a wonderland for skilled craftsmen and small traders because there is a lot of tiny stalls or shops although the shopkeepers are continuously struggling against spatial and temporal constraints.These shops and stalls are nexus of social and econimic networks and hubs of community memory,sth that is becoming rare in other new districts.

 

Start from the last day in SSP

Last day in SSP, I continue to explore the area where URP is about to take place,a few blocks to the southwest of the SSP station,followed the route I searched online:Yen Chow St.----Tai Nan St.---Yee Kuk St.---Haitan St.---Tung Chau St.

The Yen Chow St. Hawker Bazaar impressed me most, it's like a squatter fabric market and you can find almost any fabric you want with a good price.I tried interview the stall owners but they seemed to be Cantonese speaker and hate to be bothered,after be refused unfriendly several times,I was really embarrased,but fortunately，I successed to get an interview with an elderly owner even he didn't want to be in the camera that I only recorded our conversation.He told me they used to run their bussness in the underground mall where locates the tube satation now,and the government moved the market to where they were right now in order to make room for the station constraction, and they were promised to  stay here temporarily，but they have been there for 32 yrs since the promise from the government, and they don't know how much longer they have to wait for the promise to be achieved.

I never doubt the URP would give a better living conditions to the residents and  bussnessmen,but temporary placements seems to be a problem, especially for those lower income class.

the location of this market

 

And I found another replacement market under the West Kowloon Corrador, but this one is much better that at least they are phisical buildings.

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".