Interface Studio Architects shared with us their proposal for the Hong Kong Car Parc competition, which aims at romanticizing the car as an active urban object while simultaneously implementing sustainable strategies. In addition to including parking spaces in the rotational design, shopping, food and landscaping aspects are also included in the program. More images and architects’ description after the break. read more »
Courtesy of Hugon Kowalski, Adam Wiercinski, Borys Wrzeszcz
The main concept of the Alternative Car Park Tower, titled ‘Sky Street’, by Hugon Kowalski, Adam Wiercinski and Borys Wrzeszcz was to create parking spaces as an extension of the street. Typical city-street features with a traffic lane, parking spaces, sidewalk and tram was taken out which helped to shape their building form. More images and project description after the break. read more »
Check out this great video by SO-IL about their spatial facade for the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale. Referencing the 1980 Venice Bienale where 20 architects collaboratively designed a “facade” that challenged the notions of an individual and collective expression, SO-IL has taken a similar approach for their 2011 work. The firm, no doubt, is used to challenging the accepted norms of architects and architecture – case in point, their Pole Dance for MoMA PS1 - and this Biennale proposal marks a distinction between the facade as a flat symbolic representation, and the use of the facade to actually become a spatial and experiential element. “It is high time to revisit this canonical exhibition of post-modernism. 40 years after our predecessors expanded the territory of the architectural discipline into the experience of time, we continue to believe that growth and innovation are limitless if a new territory of spatiality can be defined,” says Jing Liu of SO-IL when reflecting on the intention this installation. With SO-IL’s prismatic paneled “colonnade” of marble tiles backed with mirrors, visitors can experience a changing depth of the installation and discover new spaces while wandering through it.
Courtesy of Rocco Design Architects
Architects: Rocco Design Architects Ltd
Location: 31 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong
Design Team: Rocco Yim, Bernard Hui, CM Chan, William Tam, Rebecca Chung, Lucia Cheung, Jackie Choi, Becky Luk
Design Date: 2005
Completion Date: 2011
Site Area: 1,059 sqm
Gross Floor Area: 16,541 sqm
Client: The Luk Hoi Tong Co. Ltd.
Photographs: Courtesy of Rocco Design Architects
Courtesy of Y Design Office
Under rapid housing developments in the past years, Hong Kong has benefited much in terms of economy. However, important values such as value in sense of community and individual identity were lost. This thesis hereby critically reviews current and past housing projects in Hong Kong and stating the notion of verticality as the only solution. The ambition of Y Design Office is a new alternative high-rise residential typology, in which its inhabitants are given unique units and allocations in accordance to specific zoning strategy within a tower structure, thus creating a phenomenal living experience through bonding and acquiring needs by each and every single individual. It is a re-interpretation of the balance between genericity and specificity aiming at formulating an extraordinary democratic living concept. More images and architects’ description after the break. read more »
Courtesy of Shenzhen Municipal Government
From December 8th to February 12th at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, the cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong are hosting the 7th Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture and this year, Finland will be participating in the biennale for the first time. Participants in the biennale include the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Design Forum Finland and the Newly Drawn project, which represents young Finnish architects.
The event takes a stand on modern phenomena in China, which is urbanising at an ever increasing pace. Running from December 2011 until February 2012, the biennale examines different aspects of urbanisation, including case studies of cities less than 60 years old, an exhibition on the development of urban public transport and current construction projects in Shenzhen. More information on the event after the break. read more »
street view 01
Mozhao Studio shared with us their first prize winning proposal for the Hong Kong Alternative Car Park Tower competition which was held by held by AC_CA. Their design integrates the Hong Kong City Hall, the second-floor pedestrian system and streets on the second-floor level, provid¬ing a convenient and enjoyable network of public spaces. Because of this strategy, the park tower presents the citizen¬ship, which relates and echoes to the Hong Kong City Hall nearby. More images and architects’ description after the break. read more »
Courtesy of Aedas
Architect: Aedas
Location: Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong, China
Size: 32,400 sq m (GFA)
Status: Completion 2010
Aedas shared with us their design for a 28-storey mixed-use building which includes housing, offices, retail spaces and a car park. A design with efficient office floor plates and a rational box were requested by the client. With the building located in a community with dense industrial blocks, instead of providing another office tower entirely wrapped in a coolly glazed skin, the design investigates the possibility of providing an environmentally sustainable design in such an industrial area. More images and architects’ description after the break. read more »
The Organizing Committee of the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale Of Urbanism\Architecture announced the program for the fourth edition of the Biennale, which takes place December 8 to February 18 and is organized by the Chief Curator of the 2011 Biennale Terence Riley.
Selected from an international call for proposals, Mr. Riley is the first non-Chinese curator for the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale Of Urbanism\Architecture. Riley is an architect and partner in the architectural firm K/R, and the former director of Miami Art Museum. As the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art New York, he played a key role in overseeing MoMA’s 2004 expansion project. More information on the event after the break. read more »
Courtesy of Adrain Lo
Adrian Lo, a budding architect, shared with us his first prize winning proposal for the Tropical Architecture Design Competition for Institutes of Higher Learning. His concept, “Architoptoe,” is defined as any architecture that is designed to fit a specific “social-urban-environmental biotope”. i.e. a design through understanding a city or a macro-area as a ecological system (a natural system evolved through a set of cultural, social, economical, historical and environmental rules.) Each archi-biotope is a small-scale zone with unique events and programs that are mixed and hybridized. More images and project description after the break. read more »
© Virgile Simon Bertrand
Architects: Duccio Grassi Architects
Location: IFC – Hong Kong, China
Client: Max Mara Fashion Group
Project Area: 157 sqm
Project Year: 2011
Photographer: Virgile Simon Bertrand
Courtesy of Kenneth To
Bifurcating Ecologies, designed by Kenneth To (under Design Advisor, Wendy W Fok, and Project Team, Dave Cheung, Marco Chan), is a developmental master planning proposal which traces through humanizing the accessibility of the Hong Kong Wanchai District Waterfront through proposing new branching open landscapes and bifurcation of programs, which introduces new innovative topological energy creation that regenerates and reconnects the community. More images and project description after the break.
Courtesy of IN&EDIT Architecture
IN&EDIT Architecture shared with us their proposal for the Passenger Terminal Building international competition which included four vehicular bridges across the Shenzhen River. The project aims to emulate how trees are organisms that stand by themselves, so their shape has an inherent, structural rationality. As a result, public flow through the trunk and roots will guide pedestrians from one riverside to the other. More images and architects’ description after the break. read more »
© John Gollings Photography, Hargreaves Associates
The Hargreaves Associates design for One Island East in Hong Kong creates an urban plaza that bridges the competing open space and circulation needs of a commercial office tower with 15,000 workers with adjacent high density residential housing of 50,000 residents. Hargreaves Associates created a flexible program that provides a range of open space within the landscape. A plaza with artesian fountain at the base of the new office tower serves the business needs of the commercial tower, and a park-like setting with cascade fountains provides for the residents of the towers. Large terraces create connections between the commercial and residential towers.
Landscape Architect: Hargreaves Associates, Inc.
Location: Hong Kong, China
Photographs: John Gollings Photography, Hargreaves Associates
Photo by Flickr user: nelson ebelt - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nelsonebelt/
Recent years have seen an influx of skyscrapers completed, nearing construction, or proposed in Asia. Stimulated by an exponentially growing population and, therefore, thriving economy, Asia has contributed more soaring buildings to the world’s Supertall list than any other continents combined. With the completion of the world’s tallest building at 828 meters tall, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, comes the proposition of progressively more structures which aim to surpass the prior and ascend to the number one status.
More on skyscraper-mania in Asia after the break.
Photo by Stephen Chipp - http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenchipp/
When commissioned to design the Bank of China Tower on an intricate inland site, I.M. Pei was requested to create an unavoidably tall unique headquarters in a typhoon-prone region that would represent the aspirations of the Chinese people yet also symbolize good will toward the British Colony. The solution assimilates architecture and engineering simultaneously, involving an asymmetrical tower that informs both skyline and street. The Bank of China Tower stands 70 stories tall, reaching a height of 1,209 feet. At the time of its opening in May 1990, it was the tallest building in Asia and still remains one of the tallest in Hong Kong.
Courtesy of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF)
International architecture firm, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) recently presented a selection of Chairman and Founder A. Eugene Kohn’s watercolours in Hong Kong this fall. The artists’ proceeds from the works sold were donated to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Cancer Research at the University of Michigan. The proceeds from a silent auction of several noteworthy pieces during the opening reception on October 3rd will also be donated to the Hong Kong Cancer Fund (HKCF). More images and a brief description of the exhibition after the break. read more »
daylight aerial view
AETER Architects shared with us their competition entry, titled Eco-Land, for the International Design Ideas Competition for Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai Boundary Control Point Passenger Terminal Building. Between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, the PTB (Passenger Terminal Building) is a transitional area interrupting the waterfront of the adjacent cities. The proposed PTB abandons its rights of the waterfront and becomes ‘in between’. More images and architects’ description after the break. read more »
Courtesy of AC-CA
The parking structure has captured the imagination of novelists, photographers and film-makers, and yet it remains peripheral to our culture – best understood as a forbidding fictional setting or often as an imposing silent building that we encounter along the way. Car parks are not very appreciated by users (too cold, too dark, too insecure etc.) and this competition hopes to offer a new take on this type of building that is far too quiet.
The aim of this international competition, hosted by [AC-CA], is to design an iconic and alternative car park tower in the heart of Hong Kong. The new tower will include several possibilities for events such as concerts, art exhibitions, fashion shows, ceremonies dinners, cinematic projections, etc. More competition information after the break. read more »
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