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.

Our project for the Busan opera house is an interior/exterior plaza for the arts, in which the public may engage with various art programs during the daytime and nighttime, in settings ranging from an opera to a public plaza. The design is an extended landscape intended for display and for being displayed, for engaging with the arts. Much of the scheme is a sloped ground, designed for seating and viewing. The interlocking of the urban fabric, the land, and the water in a single design creates a stage for the city, as much as it re-frames the city as stage. Public life, high-arts performances and exhibitions, as well as the beauty of Busan’s natural surrounding are equally on display. The exterior strategies for the design are continued inside, where the scheme promotes a continuity of the landscape in the public plaza beneath and surrounding the theaters and the opera. The public realm ‘folds up’ as a large landscape-like staircase in order to reach the large, suspended auditorium spaces inside and the viewing terrace on the roof outside.

The design enables the public to participate in cultural events in and nearby the new Busan Performing Arts Center. The building’s public space is accessible throughout the day and night. The design of interior and exterior public space is suggested as a space and place of performances, of enactments informed through relationships as they unfold in time. The design is structured to stimulate and care for relationships, for the spaces in between. Upon arrival, different paths disclose the sites of performance on the sloped architectural-landscape inside and outside the building. The stages that may hereby be encountered are both fixed and temporal, as the performances energize them with life. Changing events, pattern’s of life’s activity, are anticipated rather than determined through the design.

Located on a peninsula in direct proximity to the Busan Port, and the city center of Busan, our project aims to offer to Busan citizens a public interior and exterior space that is equally engaging the water as well as the park and the city scape. The opera is designed as a landmark, in the literal sense of the word, it is marking the land, marking the new cultural scape of Busan at the same time it is an icon for Busan. The overall structure of the opera is designed as a large habitable ground that slowly ramps from the water and the park up to become an architecture that allows the viewer to link to both the water and the city. The building becomes a stage located in the water, as it also stages the beautiful bay, the ocean on one side and the lively city and its skyline on the other side.

The research seminar On the Bri(n)ck II: Architectural Envelope traces the historical development of a debate about the architectural envelope that began at the end of the 19th century. It was a critical period in the industrial revolution when new materials and technologies became available and started to inform architectural design and debate. Architects began to question the role that mass-production should play in architecture, and also questioned the influence that new notation and construction-techniques had on the architects’ work. Today these and similar questions are resurfacing as the digital medium literally informs the conceptualization and production of architecture.

In the beginning of the 20^th century brick became the dominant local material, embodying the socially and politically motivated expansions of rapidly growing European cities. Brick was particularly favored in the urban centers of the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. Today the role of brick has evolved, though solid and capable of bearing great loads, it is now mostly used as cladding. On the Bri(n)ck II focused consequently on the changing role and materiality of brick today.

The project engaged several teams to develop architectural envelopes that were constituted from either mass-produced or mass-customized load bearing brick units, or alternatively mass-produced or mass-customized non-structural brick cladding. In addition to the research on different discretization techniques and structural properties of surfaces, the research-seminar also sought to identify alternative brick materials that were widely available, sustainable, light and inexpensive. On the Bri(n)ck II (1:1) project employed several hundred cardboard brick units to form the geometry of a Limaçon surface. This is a continuous geometry that inscribes an interior space with a single surface. The openings of the brick-units along with the units adapt in size, geometry and width to the surface’s geometry. At the same time the overall surface geometry is challenged through the discretization techniques generating the bricks. Using a 2-dimensional material to create a 3-dimensional brick unit was challenging. Research had to overcome obstacles such as the geometric construction of the unit, its ability to unfold and resourceful use of the material. Working with chipboard also required a very precise study of the units’ geometry in relation to their structural stability. Much attention was paid to the units, their seams and the ease in which one was able to assemble and disassemble them. A chipboard rib further stabilized the unit connections.

The project was designed and built using the CAD/CAM facilities at the GSD. Overall the design and building process brought up questions regarding mass-production and mass-customization. The project explored the limits of a mass-customization process; examining how the same procedure can lead to an array of possible results.

Credits:

Instructor:
Ingeborg M. Rocker, Ph.D.

Research Collaborator:
Hiroshi Jacobs (MDES)

Core Team: Mais Al Azab, William Choi, Hernan Garcia, Casey Hughes, John Jakubiec, Lesley McTague, Marta Nowak, and Mark Pomarico

Team: Harvard GSD Students

Drawings: Hiroshi Jacobs + Casey Hughes
Renderings: Will Choi

Funding:  Junior Faculty Grant from the Department of Architecture, Harvard University, GSD

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.

Architecture Studio Shanghai is a three-week program held at The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Architecture Study Centre in Shanghai. Taught by professors from The University of Hong Kong, as well as architects and scholars from Shanghai, the course offers participants a design studio experience within Asia’s most vibrant and fastest growing city. A fundamental element of the course is to introduce students to architectural issues and design practices, in contemporary China. The studio topic is embedded in the context of Shanghai and addresses contemporary issues in architecture and urbanism.

The structure of the studio course is coordinated around a design project accompanied by short lecture courses covering issues in Chinese architectural history, architectural theory and computational technology.  The program is taught in English.  The HKU Study Centre provides state-of-the-art studio space in the heart of Shanghai. Field trips to significant architectural sites and visits to local and international design firms will provide participants with a broad view of contemporary Chinese culture, architecture and urbanism.  Students work closely with the teaching staff, using the dynamic city of Shanghai as a context for understanding architecture’s role in the built environment.

Dates:
The program will take place at the Shanghai Study Centre from June 12 to July 1, 2011. Students should arrive no later than June 11.

Enrollment:
Applicants who are interested to enroll should have completed at least two undergraduate or graduate level design studios in, or be a recent graduate of, an accredited school of architecture. Enrollment is limited. The comprehensive course is designed to augment participants’ architectural studies at home with a rigorous international experience.

Fees:
The registration fee for the summer program is US$2,950. The early registration fee is US$2,700.  Fees cover the cost of the program in Shanghai (field trips, admissions, etc). Fees do not include flights or accommodation. Accommodation can be arranged at a reasonably priced hotel adjacent to the Shanghai Study Centre.

Registration:
Deadline for registration and payment is June 1, 2011. The early registration payment deadline is May 1, 2011. Online registration is required.
Please go to http://fac.arch.hku.hk/summer/sh/as for details and forms.
Questions may be sent via email to: asprog@arch.hku.hk

What has happened to architectural beauty? It used to be the fundamental value of architectural theory and practice, the touchstone of every conceivable achievement for a discipline that considered itself primarily as an art. Today, the word is seldom pronounced by theorists and professionals, at least in public. Even critics and historians tend to avoid the loaded term.

Its eclipse is all the more surprising given that architectural aesthetics is everywhere. The architectural star-system is to a large extent based on signature forms that herald the originality of their authors. The so-called “Guggenheim effect” has fundamentally to do with the visual seduction exerted by Frank Gehry’s project on a large public, from connoisseurs to simple passers-by. It has paved the way for all sorts of prestigious architectural commissions, often linked to the cultural sector, museums, libraries, opera houses requiring visually striking answers that can be appreciated by a broad audience. Usually entrusted to a relatively small cohort of elite architects, these commissions nevertheless contribute to define the tone of contemporary architectural debate. Even if the term beauty is rarely invoked to characterize their power of seduction, the aesthetic dimension plays a determining role.

Conference

» 12:00 PM – 04:00 PM 03/28/2011

Rm 112 (Stubbins), Gund Hall

This event is free and open to the public.

The GSD Technology Platform is a transdisciplinary initiative that fosters discussions about the interface of digital technologies and design. The aim is to uncover and explore how the digital medium is transforming the agency of design through contemporary technological innovation, project experimentation, social media and interdisciplinary collaboration. The Technology Platform provides a forum for transdisciplinary discussions and will host colloquia on a regular basis. The first colloquium “Visualizations : Realizations” focuses on the role data management and data visualization play in our daily material and perceptual realizations.

With the further advancement of digital technologies during the past two decades, new methods of design and realization have begun to emerge involving the selection, management and visualization of data, in order to map, analyze, construct and reconstruct reality’s complexities and dynamics. Instrumental for this development are advanced forms of data imaging, open systems and information exchanges that transcend disciplinary boundaries and open new forms of collaboration and practice.

The first colloquium will offer a forum to present current research on selected topics in 20-minute lectures, followed by a panel discussion with the invited guests and the audience. Questions regarding the selection, generation, evaluation, motivation, visualization of data and the repercussions thereof for the comprehension of nature and culture will be discussed.

The sessions will be moderated by Ingeborg M. Rocker and Pierre Belanger.

Schedule:
12:00 / Welcome Martin Bechthold
12:10 / Introduction 1: Ingeborg M. Rocker
12:20 – 12:40 / Hans-Peter Pfister & Mirah Meyer, “Visualizing Biology”
12:40 – 12:50 / Q|A
12:50 – 01:10 / R Gerard Pietrusko, “Ground-Truthing: Visualization as Narrative”
01:10 – 01:20 / Q|A
01:30 – 01:50 / Panagiotis Michalatos, “Intuition / Rigour: Architect as Users”
01:50 – 02:00 / Q|A
02:00 – 02:20 / Panel 1 discussion

2:30 – 2:40 / Introduction 2: Pierre Belanger
2:40 – 3:00 / Eduardo Rico & Enriqueta Llabres, “Territorialism: Relational Urban Strategies for the Design of Cities”
3:00 – 3:10 / Q|A
3:10 – 3:30 / David Mah & Leire Asensio Villoria, “BAKED GOODS”
3:30 – 3:40 / Q|A
3:40 – 4:00 / Panel 2 discussion with all participants