Constructing Celebratory Spaces

Kenny Kinugasa- Tsui and  Justin C K Lau

Students

Joseph Chilvers , Juliet Elizabeth Burch , Matthew Joseph Gibbs , Qendrim Gjata , Helena Esther Howard , Huda Jaber , Chiok-Junn Li , Stiliyana Ilieva Minkosk, Konstantinos Papaoikonomou , Matthew Sawyer , Daniel Sweeting , Jonathan Michael Wilson , Amy Shun Ting Wong, Sarish Younis , Rodriguez Rodolfo , Oliver Beros, Eugenie Bliah , Paul Boldeanu , Elliott Cohen , Joess Avelino Gourgel Dos Santos , U Ieong To, Stephanie Forbes , Lauren Fresle , Harry John Grocott , Elizabeth Mary, Johnson , Christos Markides , David Monk Chipman Stephen , Hannah Kate Pells 

The digital experimentation of unit E focuses on a digital design methodology that is driven by the spatial, poetic and scientific investigations of botany; an ‘organic’ computational design process that is constantly fluctuating to engage with human input of personalities and designer’s emotions. The desire to flourish, manifest, festive, tribute, honour, and celebrate; creates a fertile condition for lifting spirits and constructing optimism in architecture.

‘Constructing Celebratory Spaces’ investigates the extent human beings could go to celebrate an event, and the subsequent architectural creation that facilitates such powerful forces that can ephemerally transform the city on an urban scale.

The brief aimed to define and construct spaces that reflect the incidents relating to a celebration, encouraging designed spaces for optimism, humour, colours and opulence. From these qualities emerge a fertile condition to celebrate and assemble developmental directions for human environments.
Unit E made a study trip to Venice to experience the celebratory event of the Architecture Biennale. Students were asked to analyze the way the exhibition spaces were accommodated in Giardini, Arsenale, Arsenale Corderie, and the Pavilions. Students also drew personal interpretations and stories in the city, and defined their individual sites in Venice for the main design project.

Enriched by the historical and cultural context of Venice, the main project is to design a building that would accommodate long-term spaces to house permanent inhabitation of exhibits, as well as flexible spaces to house temporary exhibitions. A primary technological concept would explore relationships formed by the cultural activities in flux, with the historical references to trading, production and scientific development to include bio-sciences, greeneries, food production, climatic ecologies, and bio-diversity, as a hybridized cross programming element to the Great Celebratory Building.

Poetic Landscape 如詩,如畫

Author:  Justin C.K. Lau in collaboration with Jimmy Hung and Mark Ng

Globalization creates standardized and indistinguishable cities. Globalization also diminishes cultural and historical values which we must protect for our future generations. The vision is aimed to transform the 2km2 of Jiangnan, a rich plain topography with long established history and heritage into a dynamic mixed use development. It would not only generate a welcoming destination for live, work, learn and play, but also to create a place with a strong sense of cultural and architectural identity, which will embrace the misty beauty of Qing Pu.

Concept – Chinese watercolour landscape painting

We see the master plan of Qing Pu as a traditional Chinese landscape painting where water, mist, clouds and mountains merge to become a beautiful depiction of China’s nature. The form of expression abstracts nature to create a sense of peace and harmony. The proposal is conceived as an integrated design consisting of a well balanced mix of commercial, retail, residential, education, leisure and cultural venues to form a highly sustainable and ecological urban space. Our vision is to create a truly harmonized area where live work learn and play would blend into each other just as the mountains, the clouds, the forest and the water would merge on a Chinese watercolor painting. The existing master-plan zonings are characterized by the nature into four primary elements.

Mountain: work

Bamboo: live 

Cloud/River: learn,play

The Master-plan incorporates with the current master plan which is divided by a major highway with a strong east-west axis. We proposed one minor change by relocating small portion of residential units as low rise town houses along the river-front as a continuous ribbon to blend in with luscious landscape. The reason is to preserve its local character where some existing low rise houses with merit should be considered to be retained as heritage. Shards of shear rocks, the commercial premises of the site sits on the southern side stoically upon flowing banks of rivers, lush vegetation and ponds form the backdrop to compliment the rivers of Qing Pu. Mid-rise residential towers scatter in and out of the Clouds, where cultural and entertainment activities take place. Designated retail opportunities (e.g. tea houses, fish market, souvenir shops, art galleries, restaurants) are travel destinations along the river front, linked by water buses, cycle paths and pedestrian walkways which form a romantic promenade. This encourages a pollution free leisure route that leads to a large public piazza, surrounded by civic activities such as indoor and outdoor galleries, amphitheatre and a public library which is shared with the educational facilities. It creates a destination for the people to meet and allow tourists to orientate themselves along the region.Various open spaces are located on the southern and northern part of the master-plan to encourage social interactions and to promote outdoor recreational activities. Educational facilities and sports grounds are located at the quiet corner on the West. A designated running path threads through the sports grounds, cultural zone and residential areas  to create an exercising path that promotes a healthy lifestyle. Other functional areas on the site are tied together by meandering routes which encourages pedestrian and cycle access.

• Compliment the water front view of the region with a backdrop of artificial mountains
• Take full consideration of the site’s cultural background and its historical context
• Develop a urban space topology and featured urban identity whilst connecting with neighboring sites
• Create a unique landscape to reflect the culture of Qing Pu
• To interact the greens, water and ecology with urban activities
• To make use of water for transport and cooling

Moulin Rouge / Curve-linear choreography

Author: Tobias Klein and Justin C.K Lau

The main concept for the design of the Moulin Rouge is to transform and utilize the iconic windmill silhouette while creating a fluid choregrophed space that allow the encounter between visitor and dancer, displays and narrative history of the place and three dimensionally explores it. Two main points are very important in the design.

The Choregraphed circulation is a gentle meandering path that climbs through the building and ending in an impressive suspended walkway that becomes even part of the auditorium. The core pathpay is centred around a void space that penetrates the entire building, and acts as a view corridor as well as naturally ventilates the building. The height of this dynamic vertical form creates a stack effect to allow air travels from ground to the roof level. It encourages stale air to rise out of the ground and pulling through cooler external air.

The Constant interaction between visitor and dancer (public and private) is key to the organisation and the design. We expressed this relationship by multitude of view glimpses and a dramatic insertion within the fluid ceiling from over the ground-floor. The public program has been considerately choreographed into a breathtaking spatial and historical experience which reflects the exciting history of the Moulin Rouge

Both design concepts together form a narrative infrastucture/journey that inform the organization and expression of the building in every detail and spatial experience.

Viewing Elegance  explores the architectural subversions of an organic circulation that is not limited by the conventional physical parameters, but one that excels in incorporating bodily sensibilities related to historical and cultural traditions fused with advanced technological constructions. The result is a new architectural typology where light and space is revisited with the multiplicity of seeing, viewing and framing which spatially and formally constructs a rolling fabric that can wrap and unwrap itself in the urban environment.

Viewing Elegance I

Viewing Elegance  explores the architectural subversions of an organic circulation that is not limited by the conventional physical parameters, but one that excels in incorporating bodily sensibilities related to historical and cultural traditions fused with advanced technological constructions. The result is a new architectural typology where light and space is revisited with the multiplicity of seeing, viewing and framing which spatially and formally constructs a rolling fabric that can wrap and unwrap itself in the urban environment.