rocker-lange blog

Rocker Lange Architects have been recently featured in a video by the Wall Street Journal called “Architects Tackle Density in Hong Kong”

The creativity of architects and designers from around the world, applied to imagining a brighter, more efficient city, is on display at the Hong Kong architecture biennale. WSJ’s Diana Jou talks to chief curator Anderson Lee to get the scoop on some of the most fascinating projects.

Rocker-Lange Architects are participating in this year’s Hong Kong & Shenzhen Biennale with their research project entitled “Density & Openness Revisited: Recoding Building Bulk in Hong Kong”. The project will be on display until April 24th and is located in the Hong Kong Pavilion of the show.

Hong Kong’s cityscape is primarily shaped by the typology of the tower. While specifically in Hong Kong the tower is utilized as an extension of the urban programmatic user surface, the question of public space within this vertical urban fabric remains unaddressed.

The research project “Density & Openness Revisited: Recoding Building Bulk in Hong Kong” is the search for an alternative approach to think about open and public spaces in the context of the city. Instead of extruding the maximum boundary condition of a given site to determine the building mass, this model incorporates a ratio of open space in the design process.

At its core is a computational logic that calculates the amount of open space for each city plot. The rule-based model can adapt to different site and programmatic conditions and produces varying spaces and varying densities This approach offers the capacity to generate new forms of public space, semi public and private exterior and interior spaces.

The show is on view from July 17 till October 16, 2011.
For details please go to kunsthaus bregrenz

Rocker-Lange Architects work is currently on display in the exhibition “Quotidian Architectures – Venice Biennale Response Exhibition” in Hong Kong. Led by co-curators Juan Du and Chad McKee, Quotidian Architectures explores inventive ideas and responsible practices of architecture for everyday living. Quotidian Architectures was developed in response to the Venice Biennale 12th International Architecture exhibition’s central theme, “People Meet In Architecture” and invites general citizens, architects, artists, educators, and government agencies to come together and re-envision Hong Kong through the choices and spaces we encounter every day.

The Quotidian Architectures Venice Biennale Response Exhibition will be open to the public from 30th April, 2011 – 25th June 2011 at the Former Central Police Station Compound, 10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong. Opening hours from Tuesdays through Sundays will be 10am to 6pm (Mondays closed). Free Admission.

Rocker-Lange Architects are participating in this year’s Venice Biennale with their project entitled “Serial Architecture – Systems of Multiplicities”. The scheme on display is part of the exhibition “Quotidian Architectures” in the Hong Kong Pavilion.

Hong Kong housing is based predominantly on the typology of the tower. While this configuration allows for many different interpretations, the common approach to this design task is based on repetitive, reductive and profit driven ideas. The potential for innovation in form and organisation of this typology remains yet unbuilt.

This project interrogates these circumstances by investigating possible alternative design techniques that can result into a series of tower configurations that vary and possibly produce unique identities.

With the introduction of digital media and digital manufacturing processes, the conception of modularized architecture constructed out of nearly identical industrially mass-produced components has been challenged. Today, with the use of the computer and various open software packages, architecture can instead be realized as varying prototypes of a series. Within each series a variety of design versions can be realized. Each of these design versions is unique and yet also part of the series.

Rather than having a fixed form, this approach offers the ability to develop models that describe a flexible space that is based on a set of relationships of discrete elements. Hence, the designer is able to constantly redefine and alter the model, capable of producing many possible versions based on varying input data.

Christian J. Lange of Rocker-Lange Architects and Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong recently curated the presentation of the Department of Architecture of The University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Architecture at the 8th International Biennale of Architecture in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The show called Hong Kong Echoes included a broad selection of work pursued in design studios and seminars at HKU during the 2008-09 academic year.
Addressing the topic of Urban Echoes: Spatiality, Connectivity, Originality, Sustainability, the nine contributions demonstrate an intense investment into contemporary methedologies and discourses related to urbanism and architecture. The various components of this experimental body of work ranged from design research on technique-driven exercises in computation and fabrication, research in global urban history and theory, and region-specific urbanism and architecture, emphasised in studios and seminars at HKU.

Rocker-Lange Architects were invited to participate in the show “Parametric Prototypes: New Computational Paradigms in Architecture”, International Exhibition, Conference & Workshop. Xi’an, China, October 2009. The project on display investigates the role of versioning in contemporary theory and the practice of design.

The introduction of computation in architecture allowed for complex mathematical calculations and their visualization, which were for a long time simply too complex. Today, differential calculus – underlying most interactive 3D modeling software – has significantly informed the production and conceptualization of architecture. The upshot of this transformation is that we are now witnessing a shift from an architecture of modularity towards an architecture of seriality. The core idea of versioning exceeds simple variation between different parameterized design iterations; Versioning rather also operates at the micro-scale, within the structure and aesthetic of the digital design itself.

With the introduction of digital media, the conception of modularized architecture constructed out of nearly identical industrially mass-produced components, and thus Gropius’ thesis, that “The creation of [standardized] types […] is an effective tool to create better and cheaper with industrial production a new manifold of products,” has been challenged. Today, with the use of the computer and calculus-based software, architecture can instead be realized as parametric prototypes of a series. A series is a framework of parameters designed by the architect, within which a variety of design versions may be realized. Each of these design versions is unique and yet also part of the series. The parts assembling each of the series’ designs are no longer necessarily mass-produced but could rather be mass customized.

Our work furthermore calls for a critical assessment of differential calculus and its potential to challenge traditional modes of designing, producing, and constructing architecture and its milieu.

Rocker-Lange Architects were invited to participate in the exhibition Convergence 142 at the Ordos Museum of Art. The exhibition on architecture, urbanisation and globalisation will feature all 100 Villas for the Ordos 100 projects in Ordos, Inner Mongolia.