rocker-lange blog

The Cities of Repetition project, a collaboration between Christian J. Lange and Jason F. Carlow is on show in the exhibit Rural-Urban Re-Inventions: Bridging The Gap between China’s Cities and Countryside. The exhibition is curated by Cliff Pearson and Gary Paige and will take place at the Shenzhen Public Art Center, Block A, Shenzhen Sculpture Academy, No.8 Zhongkang Road. The opening of the show will be on July 29th 2016 @ 18:00.

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Christian J. Lange will participate and present recent work in the AA Visiting School symposium in Shanghai. Speakers include this year Stefan AL, Duangrit BUNNAG, Anthony BURKE, Eva CASTRO, Thomas DANIELL, Matias DEL CAMPO, Tarsha FINNEY, GAO Yan, Yosuke HAYANO, Sand HELSEL, Alvin HUANG, Garett HWANG, Hina JAMELLE, Holger KEHNE, Jerry KU, Christian J. LANGE, Neil LEACH , Anderson LEE, Sandra MANNINGER, Neville MARS, Yusuke, Satoshi OHASHI, Christopher PIERCE, Ali RAHIM, Francois ROCHE, Daan ROGGEVEEN, Patrik SCHUMACHER, Michael SORKIN, SU Yunsheng, Philip VERNON Richard Wei-Tse WANG & Stephen W. WANG The event will be moderated by Tom Verebes. The event will take place on July 19th & 20th at the Shanghai Study Centre.

Christian J. Lange of Rocker-Lange Architects and his colleague at the University of Hong Kong Jason F. Carlow are presenting their research work entitled “Cities of Repetition” at the Shanghai Study Centre in Shanghai, China.

2015.7.16-2015.8.9 @ Shanghai Study Centre

The Cities of Repetition exhibition at the Shanghai Study Centre provides a comprehensive graphic documentation and analysis of the ten largest Hong Kong housing estates built by private developers from the late 1960’s through the 2000’s. The original drawings and diagrams in this exhibition illustrate the ultra-dense, mass produced, highly repetitive built environments in which hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents live.

Drawings, photographs and models not only display the immense scale of the housing estates within the city, but present the hundreds of similarly planned housing blocks and their subtle differences. A detailed graphical analysis compares statistical information to show how the planning of these massive estates has evolved over the past decades to efficiently conform to building regulations and produce huge profits. The project reveals the spatial realities of living in some of the most densely populated, urban environments ever built.

Exhibitors & Curators:
Christian J. Lange
Jason F. Carlow

Research and Production Team:

Ngan Ching Ying
Jan Henao
Benjamin Hollberg
Low Ee Harn
Cherene Hui
Diamond Chan
Peony Tang
Joel Wong
Garkay Wong
Lisa J Lai

Exhibition Assistant:
Kelsi Su

Organizer:
Shanghai Study Center,
The HKU Faculty of Architecture,
The University of Hong Kong

Special Thanks to
The HKU Faculty of Architecture
The HKU Department of Architecture
Dean Chris Webster
Prof. Weijen Wang
Anderson Lee
Tom Verebes
David Erdman
Carolin Fong
TM System Co. Ltd.

ADDRESS:
Shanghai Study Centre
298, North Suzhou Road, Hongkou District,
Shanghai, China

Christian J. Lange of Rocker-Lange Architects teamed up with Jason Carlow, Assistant Professor at HKU, Ramon van der Heijden and Alan Tai from Front Inc Hong Kong, and Gustav Fagerström from Buro Happold New York for this years Smart Geometry Conference in Hong Kong.

The results of the workshop entitled HK_SmarTowers were on display during the two day conference on July 18th & 19th at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The project that was developed during the four days looked at how data informs tower massing strategies, structure and organization. Addressing the issue of repetition, standardization, mass production and customization the project utilized intelligent digital design systems to arrive at a set of unique tower structures that were based on different figure ground strategies and ultimately built with a ready made system of kit of parts.

Thanks a lot to all Cluster Collaborators for the great work: Marco Juliani, Megan Ng, Oliver Thomas, Piotr Baszynski, Luca Maccarinelli, Binsun Hu, Amos Chan, Vincent Ip, Albert Lo, Riyad Joucka, Mariane de Souza, Alison Li, Xinliu Huang

Rocker-Lange Architects are participating in this year’s Hong Kong & Shenzhen Biennale with their research project entitled “The Ideal City of refigured Civic Space”. The project will be on display until February 28th and is located in the Kwung Tong Pier.

The project “The ideal City of refigured Civic Space” is a reevaluation and extension of the urban space, the space in which politics take place, and in which boundaries are set up and upset continuously. The project presents an inquiry in the relations between architecture and the city with a focus on urban edges and civic space.

The Ideal City of refigured Civic Space establishes a new logic for civic space: Instead of limiting civic space to streets and plazas the project incorporates a ratio of open space into architecture. A new terrain for civic space occurs. The Ideal city of refigured civic space is based on rules and codes rethinking building and zoning codes in order to arrive at a civic space that reveals the complexities and contradictions of existing urban rules, typologies and life. The ideal city reflects critical on Hong Kong’s current urbanization strategies and the efficient and literal interpretation of zoning and building codes.

The new spaces are distributed and networked throughout the buildings with the consequence of a continuous vertical organization that works as civic spaces. In order to activate the public domain in each building, cores are broken into strategic segments with the implication that users will have to transfer through a layer of public programs to get to their destination. The resulting nature of “The Ideal City of refigured Civic Space” is a vast horizontal and vertical network in which the responsibilities and benefits of citizenship are fostered and executed. It is a space that is publicly accessible at all times. It is a space that is more than the agglomeration of streets, parks, urban structures and buildings; it is a space of boundaries, of demarcations and differentiations, of connections, and opportunities for civic life to take place.

For more information please visit: http://uabb.hk/

The winner of this year’s Woman in design Urban interventions Competition by the BSA, Associated Professor Ingeborg M. Rocker and her partner Christian J. Lange ere exhibited at the BSA in Boston.

“Featuring built and unbuilt projects led by women in the fields of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and urban design, this juried exhibition will showcase work created by some of Boston’s leading female designers. Based on the premise that architecture is both a reflection of technical achievements and an echo of social priorities and values, the exhibition will highlight alternate design approaches being pioneered by the current and upcoming generation of female design talent in the city.” BSA

The exhibit opening will be held on

Friday, October 4th at 6pm
BSA Space,
290 Congress Street,
Boston.

For more information please visit: www.bsaspace.org

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

The show is on view from June 22 till September 29, 2013.
For details please go to Galleria Continua

Rocker-Lange Architects were awarded a honorable mention in the international design competition for a new bench design for the Kowloon East district in Hong Kong. The competition was held in conjunction with the 13th Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition, Hong Kong Response Exhibition.

The redevelopment of Kowloon East will have a diverse array of spatial conditions, from new, open public waterfront parks to tightly planned former industrial areas. Traditionally urban furniture consists of repeatable standardized elements while being installed in various conditions. The problem with repeatable elements is that they don’t adapt necessarily very well to the specificity of each site condition. The key concept of the “Urban Adapter HK 2.0” project is to establish a system that can address the explicit conditions of each site, and to blend each bench with a variety of programs. The specific design methodology and the computer aided construction and assembly process allows making every bench unique while creating a distinctive family of urban street furniture that creates a merging identity for Kowloon East.

This project with its unique user surfaces will have the capacity to place the user in a new position with the urban reality and its ecologies as much it may reposition the urban reality all together. Not only will it improve the quality of the public realm, it will also establish a new framework for use and for seeing and being seen in the urban streetscape of Kowloon East.

The material for this street furniture will be wooden slats making it a positive sustainable contribution. The finish of the bench is made of climbing rope or rubber band finish. Each bench will have a distinct color out of a specific color family making each bench identifiable. The wooden slats are CNC cut, making sure that each bench can be precisely assembled.

Rocker-Lange Architects work is on show in the exhibit “Collective Visions” @ KK Leung Concourse, The University of Hong Kong.

Presented in parallel with the HKU Department of Architecture symposium, 2020:Housing China, this exhibition contains a collection of projects by local and international researchers, designers and architecture firms related to housing in Hong Kong, China and greater Asia. The work presented is a combination of academic research, actual built projects and speculative ideas for the future of housing in an increasingly dense and urbanized China. Projects exhibited are designed for an array of contexts from urban, to suburban, to rural and range in scope from single detached houses to urban scale developments. Projects explore a range of housing topics including the formulation of architecture around specific social issues, new construction methodologies, adaptive reuse of existing buildings, innovative connections to infrastructure, new opportunities provided by digital technology and the historical development of housing over recent decades. Overall, the exhibition seeks to re-frame the development of mass housing over the course of the twentieth century and offers important models for a new century of Chinese growth.

Sponsored by:
Dennis Lau and Associates
Curated by:
Jason Carlow, Assistant Professor in Architecture
The University of Hong Kong

Collective Visions
10-20 May 2013
Opening Reception: May 10th, 18:30
KK Leung Concourse, The University of Hong Kong

The show is on view from October 27 till February 16, 2013.
For details please go to Galleria Continua