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Chinese University of Hoong Kong and International Forum on Urbanism at Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism | Architecture Exhibition Re-Do New Town: Hung Shui Kiu 20th December 2013 E220 at Energizing Kowloon East Office (EKEO) The exhibition takes on the topic of future Hong Kong new towns with a contemporary look at Hung Shui Kiu, an area located in the northwest corner of New Territories, and a future site for a major urban development in Hong Kong. Today a dormant mixture of container yards, small industries and old villages, Hung Shui Kiu neighbors the towering suburb of Tin Shui Wai and looks toward the mainland across the Shenzhen Bay. Surprisingly, far more than the skyscrapers in the business districts, this plain “realness” and rural-like existence is the scene for many critical questions in Hong Kong urbanism today. The future planning of Hung Shui Kiu should challenge the previous attempts for a ready-made ideal communities and urban typologies and re-think the ideal city not as a utopian end-result, but a process allowing for multitude of voices, and even unplanned and unexpected results. |
香港中文大學与 国际城市化论坛基金会 港深城市 建築雙城雙年展 展区 再造新城: 洪水橋 2013年12月20日 E220起動九龍東辦事處 再造新城: 洪水橋: 這個展覽的話題是用現代的眼光來看待香港未來洪水橋新城的開發。洪水橋坐落於新界西北角，是將來香港的主要城市發展區。洪水橋的未來規劃應帶挑戰之前試圖建成一個現成的理想社區和城市類型的想法，並且重新思考作為一個一個理想的城市，雖然不必是一個烏托邦式結局，但是是一個允許多種聲音參與的過程，是一個甚至沒有特定規劃和預期結果的過程。 |
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Category Archives: urban space
The Real is the Ideal
The Square and the Big Tree in Lo Uk Tsuen Village
On 24 January 2013, I was standing under a big tree on a little square in Lo Uk Tsuen (羅屋村). Its trunk was protected by a small circular stone wall and in front of it, yet still under its crown, incense was burning in a small matching stone censer. A few kids were playing, a lady was doing her laundry, and several persons passed by. It looked like the heart of one of the villages or ‘tsuens’ of Hung Shui Kiu. It also acted as its entrance as it was positioned at its edge. The houses around were extended with all kinds of annexes and extra levels. On the streets, residents appropriated space with pot plants and a variety of other things. The density was clearly quite high and the urban space felt like a living room. An old-school figure ground analyses wouldn’t give us much open space. When I walked beyond the tree, street-like corridors led me to the next tsuen. Here in Tung Tau (東頭村), built structures and urban spaces more or less looked the same, but a small monumental temple place had adopted the communal role. People sitting under a line of trees aside looked at me with questioning eyes. They scanned who I was and why on earth my students and I were making pictures of this space. Walking out again, I faced huge piles of containers, rusty remaining relics of Modern society. At its backcloth the residential high-rise of Tin Shui Wai.
Hong Kong Biennale 2013
In its 5th edition, the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture (UABB) has baan the only biennial exhibition in the world to be based exclusively on the themes of urbanism and urbanization. The Biennale has been co-organized by Shenzhen and Hong Kong, two of the most intensely urban cities in the world, where political and economical contexts have shaped unique urban dynamics.
Colin Fournier, chief curator, states:
Beyond the edge of the city we know lies the city we dream of, the city we long for but never reach, the “ideal city”. At the edge, the old rules of the city loose their hold, allowing it to reinvent itself, redefine its values and create new forms. The edge is never far away: the city of our dreams might be here and now, close to us, nesting within the familiar confines of our towns, transforming them from the inside, a city within the city, the boundary between the known and the unknown being conceptual rather than physical. What do we most desire from our cities and from their architecture? What are our current interpretations of the ideal city? Is the question still relevant? Is Hong Kong an ideal city? If not, what would it take to become one? And for whom?
Hong Kong – Shenzhen | Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism Architecture 2013 港深城市|建築雙城雙年展
(2013 UABB*HK)
Re-Do New Town: The Square and the Big Tree in Lo Uk Tsuen Village
Hong Kong Institute of Architects 香港建築師學會
Sennett’s Interior Streets Set
The images in this gallery come from the archive of Richard Sennett. In his view they show “different strategies for moving people through urban space, and images of the urban forms which enable people to watch others”. It seems to build on the idea of the interior street as posed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, juxtaposed against my arcades study and concept of public interior space and interior urbanism (presented in 2007).
This gallery of images is found at Richard Sennett’s Interior Streets and Arcades Set
[www.richardsennett.com]
All of these images are down-loadable to borrow freely.
CSI Urban Space
Given the changing characteristics of public and private urban spaces, the lecture covers a wide range of city-related topics following a two-folded target. As urban space represents the interface of communication and urban investigations, it is crucial to bring participants nearer to the concept of it, including crossing boundaries. The second part of the lecture block will deal with the role of urban planning in shaping urban space following its redefinition. With this insight, participants would understand the role of urban space and the formal ways of planning it.
Design of Public Space
The design of the public space is one of the fundamental assignments for professionals involved in urban design and planning. Constructing and (re)forming the network of public space is even conditional for any kind of urbanity. It includes more than just the lay-out and beauty of spaces, as the design of public space has to be able to facilitate new kinds of usage, preconditioning any plausible development of multiple and complex use, and in general housing the dynamics for social change and exchange.
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Spatial Metro
On Routing and Orientation in City Centres
The chair of Urban Design at the TU Delft is participating in the Spatial Metro project on routing and orientation in city centres. This project focuses on the improvement of city centres. Other partners are the cities of Norwich, Bristol, Rouen and Koblenz, the University of East Anglia, the School of Environmental Sciences and the School of Computing Sciences, the University of Koblenz and the Swiss Pedestrian Association.
Interiors: Urbanism or Not?
The Department of Urban and Regional Planning of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya organized the second International Ph.D. Seminar on Urbanism and Urbanization in Barcelona, from June 27th-29th, 2005. Using the name of Urbanism and Urbanization, the seminar focused on the key epistemological issue of the interface between the ongoing processes transforming the contemporary city, the practice of “making the city” through urban design and urban planning, and the research on urbanism studying them. The presented papers showed the possible contributions that researches in urbanism can make in order to develop an urban knowledge (a set of concepts, models, devices, guidelines, design tools…) engaged with the transformation and improvement of the city and the urbanization processes. Public Interiors: Urbanism or Not? clarifies the urban design role next to the architectural design role concerning the design task of interior public space. From out of the viewpoint of public space, the design of public interiors is a dismissed task for urbanist. By systematic analysing different types of interior public spaces, such as the arcade and the mall, through time, the evolution of their different contemporary urban design tasks becomes clear. In general: If the position in the city and the urban context are highly relevant, the conclusion is that the urban design task is just as crucial. Although designing interiors is traditionally the task of architects, in the case of interior public space it is therefore high time to share that task with urbanists.
See:
Harteveld, M.G.A.D. (2005) Public Interiors: Urbanism or Not? In: Martí Casanovas, M., M. Corominas i Ayala, J. Sabaté Bel and A. Sotoca García (eds.), II PhD Seminar: Urbanism & Urbanization, Volume I. Barcelona: ETSAB, pp. 219-230
The framework of the Urbanism & Urbanization Seminars enabled PhD candidates to present either short papers (ten-minute presentations for starting researches) or full papers, like the above (twenty-minute presentations in a plenary session) in order to be discussed and refereed. The participation of academia from universities representing very different contexts contributed to rich debates. Different universities contributed to the seminar: MIT, TU Berlin, U Girona, Princeton, U Coruña, USB Venezuela, SAD Oslo, Aalborg U, U Newcastle, UCL, UR Montevideo, UPC, KU Leuven, IUAV and TU Delft.