Deep Spaces

lo yee cheung adrian 2005651426 THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE march ii studio tom verbes fall 2010

forgetting macau This studio will challenge the existing and unfinished development plan for Cotai, along with its associated types, tropes and patterns, through the design of alternative models of architecture and urbanism, which can critically reframe the city of the twenty-first century as socially, culturally and economically sustainable. The goal is to design a living city, and in doing, so, it may be necessary, yet again, to forget everything of the existing context, both of old Macau and Cotai, and to imagine an entirely new kind of urbanism. At a range of scales, from adaptive, time-based masterplanning, to prototypical architectural design, this studio will speculate on the notion of completeness through invesitgations of evolutionary design strategies.

content project 01 - site analysis project 02 - pattenerning project 03 - 3d parttern project 04 - 4d master plan project 05 - architectural work

Similar to Las Vegas, Cotai is also a fabricated form of urbanism, dedicated to tourism, yet limited to gambling, shopping, entertainment and leisure. Whereas Las Vegas grew out of the blankness of the desert, Cotai is reclaimed from the sea and has definite edges. Old Macau represents an aberration in the history of colonialism in Asia – a residual Mediterranean city at the mouth of the Pearl River. Discarded by the masterplanners and architects as the model of urbanism to replicate in Cotai, old Macau seems as innocuous a model for contemporary urbanisation to emulate, as Cotai is as vacuous a model to pursue.Cotai dismisses old Macau, only tenuously linkedgeographically, infrastructurally, and politically to the city it forgets in its making. Cotai’s developers, planners and architects also forgot to build a city. The street, plaza, promenade, and neighbourhood, along with countless other seemingly historical urban spatial tropes and types, were forgotten in the making of Cotai, or if they shape its urbanism, these spaces become wholly interiorised. The two main casino complexes of Cotai, The Venetian and City of Dreams, champion the ultimate form of interior urbanism vast, saturated suburban boxes where nearly all activities take place indoors, rendering exterior space as residual, interstitial, and void of life, serving a function to connect its tourists and service industry to airports, seaports, roads and bridges to elsewhere. The ultimate post-modernist simulacra, The Venetian recreates the motifs, spaces and atmospheres of Venice, yet substitutes its authenticity with casino interiors, retail malls and hotels. At the least, Cotai is questionable as a model of twentyfirst century urbanisation, and at most, it can be judged to be ideologically bankrupt.

Despite this apparent vacuum, this studio will endeavour to learn from what was forgotten, in charting the future of Cotai.

studio objective This studio will focus on the Cotai Strip in Macau as the context within which a critical engagement of urbanism and architecture will be pursued through new spatial paradigms and design methodologies. As a result of the 2008 global financial crisis, the development plan of Cotai, and several of its extra-large mixed-use casino developments, remain unfinished. The primary task of the studio is to complete the unfinished urbanism of Cotai, and to speculate upon the potential for architecture to evolve, rather than to be wholly planned.

site analysis In a first stage of work, the studio will work on a series of shared topics, on the analysis of various sites pertaining to Macau SAR, with the goal of producing a shared document upon which to base further design work. Students will use 2D and 3D diagrams, drawings, and models, along with photos and other visual media in this analytical exercise, seeking to define existing contextual patterns of the following territories and topics: Infrastructure, Programmes, Typologies / Form, Environment/Landscape

whole macau road system

road pattern comparison

casino layout study

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city patterning In 1965, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown and Steve Izenour conducted a studio at Yale University which focussed on an analysis of Las Vegas. The impact of their research unleashed new valorisation of the raw and unashamed reality of the contemporary American city, encapsulated in their seminal manifesto of pop urbanism, Learning From Las Vegas. Through its profound influence on a generation of architects across the world, Learning From Las Vegas is at once a cause and symptom of the disillusionment with modernism, and in turn, it helped to shape the moral code of post-modernism through its endorsement of the mid-twentieth American city, as unorthodox and undesirable as it was deemed by modernist architects.

cotai

las vegas

paris

galaxy developement

london

venetian developement

new york

hong kong

analysis outcome Internationalization of the urbanism (interior streets, spaces, etc‌) has been a key observation in the Venetian Development, that whole Venetianstyle fake building façade and canal-mimicking water feature is installed to convey the Venice experience. The whole idea of city / urban experience has been cramped into an interior space with conditioned climate and even the artificial sky!

Deep space is the dominating spatial arrangement in all of the Cotai developments, though each of them is differentiated through the planning layout and a spectrum of identity is created.

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STREET

DEEP

ROAD 

preception of form shifted inwards

interiorization of urban life

project 02 Architecture and urbanism can be defined by the organisation of legible, mathematically discernable spatial and temporal patterns. In this second stage of work, this studio will focus on developing a Parametric Pattern Book of computationally controlled complex patterns, generated from simple rules and relationships. We will emphasise non-repetitive organisational patterns which undergo dynamic processes of formation.

     

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     

project 03

This approach to morphological patterns develops iterative spatial logic, where complex yet coherent global order emerges from local rules. The media and methods to be used can include laser cut models, cnc-milling, 3d prints, along with more manually machined models. The goal of this stage of work is to generate new spatial models, typologies and structures, with which to carry out design proposals at both masterplanning and building scales in the proceeding design stages.

deep space Deep space is the dominating spatial arrangement in all of the Cotai developments, though each of them is differentiated through the planning layout and a spectrum of identity is created.

concept model spatial testing model with structural considerations. deep space is the issue illustrated in this set of physical models.

study models two physicaly model done in the 3d patterning stage, with wood and acrylic. relationship of surface and structure is explored.

project 04 In respond to this situation and this questionable master plan, as a team, we proposed an adaptive master plan, which will possible to reaction to different scenario. In each scenario density, coverage, landscape to building ratio, massing, and form will vary with time being considered. Here, the architectural project is a demonstration on how the master plan can be carry be individual architects to creating architecture with different expression with form and spaces, but inhered the coherent concept that is being developed in the master plan level.

swarm logic

growth

time

size

division foundamental

communal facilities

industrial

commercial

living

4D master plan Emphasising large scale architecture/urban design, the goal is also to develop variable urban masterplans, which partition the entire Cotai development plan region into smaller plots for design teams to develop individual building design proposals in the following stage of design work. Conventional discourses and practises of architecture and urbanism presume form to be highly stable and permanent. In this stage of work, teams of students will develop systemic, scenario-based and time-based 3-D masterplans, in which strategies for urban growth, change, and evolution over several years will be established.

4D master plan living casin commerindusliving communal famega-structure with casino development of original plan

20%

large

commerical casin commerindusliving communal fa-

medium

mega-structure with casino development of original plan

50%

small

entertainment 

open space

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 4d master layout plan of cotai

4d matrix

casin commerindusliving communal famega-structure with casino development of original plan

80%

master plan drawing In respond to this situation and this questionable master plan, as a team, we proposed an adaptive master plan, which will possible to reaction to different scenario. In each scenario density, coverage, landscape to building ratio, massing, and form will vary with time being considered. Here, the architectural project is a demonstration on how the master plan can be carry be individual architects to creating architecture with different expression with form and spaces, but inhered the coherent concept that is being developed in the master plan level.

origional 1:2000 on 2 A0

rendering 01

massing representation for area near existing casion development. vast area of land is covered by the mega structure with entertainment programme. pit-like open landscape is the left over of building mass.

rendering 02

massing representation for area close to boundary crossing facilities to mainland china, where commerical programme aggration is expected to happened. connected towers with mid-rise development will be the key feature.

rendering 03

massing representation for residential area with less mega structure development and a finer low rise neghbourhood fabric.

massing model exploring massing composition in the master plannign stage, with cut and fill operation being examined. white painted mdf with acrylic.

physical model concept testing model at master plannig stage, sectional model

intermission Would you trust yourself to say which is a ‘living’ form and which is not? What is it that encourages us to typecast some forms as those made by life, and others as the products of the non-living world?

A tree, a rabbit, a spider have little in common when considered as mere shapes - and yet we don’t hesitate to see them as examples of living morphology. Why? Perhaps we sense a kind of purpose, of design, in these forms? They are ‘complex’, certainly, but what does that mean? Even if we can’t say exactly what living form is, we’d like to think we know it when we see it. But do we?

Philip Ball, Nature’s Patterns: Shapes

architectural prototypes In the final project of the studio, each student will work individually to develop one single architectural proposal, for one of 12 sites in Cotai.

This stage of work will conclude with a more detailed and specific instrumental deployment of pattern book exercises, while deploying the concepts of adaptive masterplanning at a scale of archiecture.

menifasto The Cotai is situated on flat reclaimed land dissected by infrastructural divisions made by high speed roads, resulting in vast, segregated building plots. Each of these plots was planned to be occupied by separate, singular, unconnected casino development complexes.

A rather large portion of this land is un-built due to the economic down turn.

Internationalization of the urbanism (interior streets, spaces, etc‌) has been a

key observation in the Venetian Development, that whole Venetian-style fake building façade and canal-mimicking water feature is installed to convey the Venice experience. The whole idea of city / urban experience has been cramped into an interior space with conditioned climate and even the artificial sky!

Deep

space is the dominating spatial arrangement in all of the Cotai developments, though each of them is differentiated through the planning layout and a spectrum of identity is created.

The Architectural proposal is an exploration to put internationalization to an extreme with deep space planning technique to create an interiorized urbanism.

The continuous flow of deep space with discrete pockets of program, which is very commonly seen in Cotai developments is designed to echo the spatial continuity from neighbor casino complex to my design. Connected surfaces / slopes and atriums are used to enforce both circulation and visual connection of the spatial flow. In my project the deep space is designed to give a richer spatial occurrence compared to the spaces provided by the casino complexes. Each discrete program can be engaged by individual tenants, thought overall internal architectural scheme is unified by the deep space temporal and structural order. City within architecture and conditioned artificial natural is both being criticized and celebrated in this project.

deep . interiorization The Architectural proposal is an exploration to put internationalization to an extreme with deep space planning technique to create an interiorized urbanism. The continuous flow of deep space with discrete pockets of program, which is very commonly seen in Cotai developments is designed to echo the spatial continuity from neighbor casino complex to my design. Connected surfaces / slopes and atriums are used to enforce both circulation and visual connection of the spatial flow.

continous deep space

discrete program city of dreams

galaxy

venetian

deep . interiorization In my p roject the deep space is designed to give a richer spatial occurrence compared to the spaces provided by the casino complexes.

Each discrete program can be engaged by individual tenants, thought overall internal architectural scheme is unified by the deep space temporal and structural order. City within architecture and conditioned artificial natural is both being criticized and celebrated in this project.

01

casion entertainment shoppinga cafe

05 11

04 09

business 06

03

nature

02

10

08

circulation traffic

Programmatic - Space Control

P1

01

P1

P2 P3

07

foundamental

02

P1

P2

P3

P2

bridged

05

P2 P3 large space

P1 P2

P3 connected

P1

06 P3 visual depth

10

P1

P2 P3

P1

09

P2 P3 visual connection

all visually connected

P1 P2

P3

04

P1

08

horizontal split

03

P1

P1

P1

P2

P3 partial visually connected

P3 merged

programme distribution diagram

11

P3 merged & bridged

project 05 diagram diagram illustrate the flow of continuous space within the architecture. circulation diagram on the right. Projects should attain a comprehensive level of design development, describing a well articulated spatial organisation, fully programmed, structured design scheme, demonstrated at various scales, in plans, sections, elevations, systemic axonometrics and strategic renderings. The 12 schemes will be compiled together in a master model, produced earlier in the semester.

2/F

micro-climate contorl (tower as chimmy effect inducer)

1/F

structural system (load transfer diagram)

circulation diagram (traffiic and pedestrian)

Deep space

G/F

origional 1:500 on A0

1/F Plan

0m

origional 1:1000 on A0

100m

section

interior perspective view looking up from atrium of tower. even view from towe become interternalized. this echos the celebration of continuous deep space.

interior perspective the deep continuous spatial quality , with discrete programmes and an artifitial internal landscape

interior perspective auditorium space, one of the discrete programme space within the continuous space, articualted by structural elements which also served as space dividing system.

final model done in transparent and translucent acrylic. transparent part represented the continuous deep space connection to adjacent casino, where discrete programme pockets are indicated by translucent parts.

readings Stan Allen, ‘From Object to Field’, Architectural Design: After Geometry (Wiley Academy, London, 1995), pp. 24-31 Philip Ball, ‘City Limits’, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, (Arrow, London, 2004), pp. 183-192 Philip Ball, ‘On Growth and Form: The Emergence of Shape and Organisation’, Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, (Arrow, London, 2004), pp. 122-135 Philip Ball, ‘Pattern Formation in Nature’, Oxford University Press 1999, Patterns pp.1-15, Bubbles pp.17-49 Philip Ball, ‘The Shape of Things’, Shapes, (Oxford, 2009), pp. 1-32 Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, ‘1440: The Smooth and the Striated’, A Thousand Plateaus (London: 1987), pp, 474-500

Mark Garcia, ‘Prologue for a History, Theory & Future of Patterns of Architecture and Spatial Design’, AD Patterns in Architecture, (Wiley, London, 2009), pp. 6-17 Christopher C M. Lee, ‘Projective Series’, Topological Formations: Renewable Building Types and the City, (AA Publications, London, 2007), pp.

136.147 Benoit Mandelbrot, ‘Theme’ and ‘The Irregular and Fragmented in Nature’, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (New York, 1977), pp. 1-13.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, Steve Izenour, ‘Learning From Las Vegas’, (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1972) Tom Verebes, ‘Experiments in Associative Urbanism’, Architectural Design AD, Digital Cities issue (Neil Leach ed.), (Wiley-Academy, London), pp. 24-33

special thanks for: tom (words extracted from project brief) ryan & jeff (for group project contribution)