MEGASTRUCTURE:
KOWLOON
九龍 ARCH2058 Modern Architecture ASSIGNMENT 3: GUIDEBOOK
| Fall 2021
Megastructure: Urban Islands in West Kowloon Chan Chun Hei (3035697096) Lai See Long (3035699393) Li Hing Fung (3035701586)
The Residential Island: Kowloon Station Cover
The Shopping Island: Elements Mall
The Transit Island 1: Kowloon Station
Axonometric of the Megastructure as Islands
The Transit Island 2: West Kowloon Terminus
The Residential Island: Kowloon Station Cover
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The Shopping Island: Elements Mall
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The Transit Island 1: Kowloon Station
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Plan and the route of the tour
The Transit Island 2: West Kowloon Terminus
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Megastructure as islands Kowloon Station and its attached properties could be seen as a megastructure, composed of a series of transit, residential, and shopping islands that are connected via elevated walkways and escalators. The first transit island located underground houses MTR interchange for the Tung Chung Line and Airport Express, while the second transit island located on ground level, namely the West Kowloon terminus, houses the Express Rail Link (XRL) as a gateway to the mainland. The residential island, situated 18m above ground, is a common terrace podium serving the high-rises atop. Lastly, the shopping island, also known as the ELEMENTS, is sandwiched between the podium and the MTR station to provide retail and entertainment space for visitors. Overall, the station could be understood as a 3-dimensional complex with diverse yet highly organized programs, interacting in a rigorous and efficient manner as a
megastructure. This tour is organized into a loop tour of 4 spots, with each spot being the transition parts between the islands. 1. The visit sequence is as follow: 2. Kowloon Station, the first transit island 3. Civic Square Podium, the residential island 4. Elements, the shopping island 5. West Kowloon Terminus, the second transit Island You will eventually be guided back to the starting point to complete the tour. It is hoped that you can have a better understanding of the spatial organization, circulation, and interaction between the islands, and how they tightly connects to function as a megastrucutre.
1 The First Transit Island: Kowloon Station Developed as a vital node of the Hong Kong Airport Core Programme in the early 1990s, the Kowloon station is an integrated transport interchange that bridges the airport to the CBD1. Being the biggest station on both the Airport Express Line and Tung Chung Line, the design purpose was to ‘bring the airport back to the city’, bringing the level of convenience that the precedent Kai Tak Airport has2. The express train and check-in facilities bring passengers to the terminals in just 23 mins3. Also, the station itself has an unusual design: instead of a central giant plaza for collecting passengers from all directions, the station is organized into multilayers and separated paid zones to maximize efficiency 4. Top: Transition spot from (1) the first transit island to (2) the residential island Middle: Tung Chung Line platform Bottom: In-town check-in facility
2 The Residential Island: Civic Square Podium The uppermost island of the Kowloon station is dedicated to residential use. The residential island is a podium covering an area of 700,000 square feet, with communal facilities like a park, gardens, fountains, basketball courts, tennis courts, playgrounds, and an international kindergarten9. These facilities are enjoyed by the residents of the above residential building complexes, the Waterfront, Sorrento, the Harbourside, the Arch and the Cullinan. There are a total of 21 high-rises, 18 being residential, 2 being mixed-use and 1 being commercial (International Commerce Centre). Together they provide 5866 apartments, one luxury hotel and one serviced apartment. Top: Transition spot from (2) the residential island to (3) the shopping island Bottom: Civic square podium plan (Source: Union Square)
3 The Shopping Island: Elements mall Sandwiched between the residential podium and the Kowloon Station is the shopping island, also known as the ELEMENTS shopping mall. Covering a total floor area of 1,570,000 square feet, the 4-story mall has more than 220 shops, an ice rink, and the largest cinema complex in the city7. The mall is divided into 5 zones based on the concept of the five elements of Nature, namely Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth8. Each zones have a distinctive interior architectural theme that responds to the element, public art is also employed to enhance the respective theme. The mall exhibits the typical Hong Kong transit-commercial building typology as an MTR shopping mall, similar to Maritime Square of Tsing Yi Station and Telford Plaza of Kowloon Bay Station. Top: Transition spot from (3) the shopping island to (4) the second transit island Bottom: Elements Mall exterior
4 The Second Transit Island: West Kowloon Terminus Opened in 2018, the West Kowloon Terminus is a cross-border railway station that connects Hong Kong to mainland China through a dedicated tunnel and the XRL. Designed by AEDAS, the station has a total of 15 platforms for both long and shortdistance train services to major cities of the mainland5. The station includes a Mainland Port Area as a border control point where the laws of mainland China are enforced and is operated by mainland police6. The terminus is connected to the Kowloon Station, Austin Station and the West Kowloon Cultural District via footbridges and tunnels, allowing mainland incomers to access the CBD by Tung Chung Line or other means of transport. Top: Transition spot from (4) the second island to (4) the first transit island Bottom: West Kowloon Terminus interior
The Position of the Kowloon Station Project Looking Through the History of “Megastructure” Hing Fung, Li
Abstract In light of the West Kowloon development, the Kowloon station project is constructed along with residential and commercial islands, interconnected by integrating into the existing transportation. This entire construction is considered as a megastructure. Through the study of the definition of megastructure, from its origin, to one of the most significant movements of megastructure in modern days (Kenzo Tange, Tokyo Bay project) and other related proposals throughout the history, this essay aims to examine how the Kowloon station project adapt to different megastructure concepts and establish its unique adaptation in modern Hong Kong.
Introduction The word ‘megastructure’ can be easily understood as evidence of massive projects that possess a strong relationship with modern building technology, or a single structure that can be used as a frame to store the majority of functions of a city, district, such as infrastructure, housing units, and commercial units1. The Kowloon station project in Hong Kong could be seen as a megastructure with its attached residential properties, a comprehensive urban transit system, and a shopping island that are interconnected with elevated walkways and escalators. Kowloon station, the largest station on Tung Chung Line was constructed as the pivotal core of the structure. It connects with the railway system underground that could provide easy access from the airport to the city and integrate it with other transportation2. Extending it to the ground level, it houses the Express Rail Link (XRL) as a gateway to the mainland. Above the two transit islands, it connects
with the shopping island, ELEMENTS which it serves for the service apartments, offices, hotels, and community facilities through a podium, Civic Square, forming a levitating urban island in West Kowloon. It may seem that ‘megastructure’ is something inseparable from modern technology as such enormous structures often require cuttingedge technology. In fact, this term has been around the world for almost five centuries. First appearance of “Megastructure” At first, megastructures are conceived as structures, constructions that are in superhuman scale, leading to an imaginative scenario and surreal speculation. In 1563, Pieter Bruegel painted the Tower of Babel, illustrating a religious story of King Nimrod and his people in Babylon to build a tower that could reach heaven3. From the painting, Bruegel imagined the tower as a high-rise complex with Roman Islamic architectural style, with the appearance reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum and
the Spiral Minaret in the Great Mosque Samarra4. The interpretation of Bruegel’s painting introduces the idea of developing a city in verticality with different programs embedded into the structure, also becoming the first sign of the emerging idea of “megastructure”. Comparing the Kowloon Station Project with the modern definitions of “Megastructure” Into the 20th century, the well-known architect, Le Corbusier has his vision of megastructure in the form of city planning. In 1925, the le Plan Voison of Paris envisioned to have 2 new traffic arteries penetrating across the city, Paris, and also linking the capital to the four corners of the country5. At the same time, a matrix of high-rise and skyscrapers are constructed to replace the historical center of Paris. Learning from urban design in La Defense in Paris, the towers for inhabitants in the city are organized efficiently in which allows for
rapid intercommunication and accessible transportation down to the street, public facilities, and even airport2. In 1931, Le Corbusier’s urban planning for Algiers, Fort L’Empereur plan was his culmination of urban design of his 1920s, including La Defense, le Plan Voison. This is where the concept of “a permanent and dominating frame containing subordinate and transient accommodations” emerges6. Following the idea of a frame containing functions like dwellings from Le Corbusier and the rapid urbanization in Japan in the 1960s, Japanese architects started to reimagine new urban topology and architectural form in search of new solutions. During that period, the rise of industrialization and modernization gave rise to the increase in the urban population in a finite land like Japan. In response to this situation, different ideal city plan starts to emerge, which is the start of Japanese Metabolism. In 1964, Fumihiko Maki
proposed Investigation in Collective Form, which he explained ‘megastructure’ as “a large frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a city are housed. It has been made possible by present-day technology. In a sense, it is a man-made feature of a landscape. It is like the great hill on which Italian towns were built.”7 Examples of the trend of metabolism would be Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay project. He is also the professor who inspired Maki’s statement. Tange mentioned, “the movement that the automobile introduced into urban life had changed peoples’ perception of space and that this required a new spatial order for the city in the form of the megastructure, not merely a continuation of the radial zoning status quo”8. Therefore, he created a linear arrangement of loops interlocking together, which consists of highways, subways, and units for the skyrocketing population in Tokyo. His means by decentralizing Tokyo into a linear development is to in one way allow urban structures, programs to expand
more easily in an automotive-oriented city. At the same time, this open organization acts as an organic unity since the city is always in progress and grows simultaneously with the city’s development. In 1962, Arata Isozaki proposed a vision on the metamorphosis of a city, “City in the Air”. The structures in the project are modular megastructures that allow expansion and transformation to reflect the real-world situation9. Similar situation in Hong Kong, the rise of the population within a scarce city makes the concept of megastructure suitable for its urban development. With nearly 7.5 million people in the city10, the urban population density reaches 26,000 people per square kilometer11, Hong Kong architecture emphasizes the efficient use of space by offering multiple uses and vertical development of buildings. This explains that the megastructure in the Kowloon station project to have islands as a shopping mall, a public space, transportation hub, and a podium for vertical high-rises at the same
time. Inspired by metabolism and megastructure concepts from the past, and especially Japan’s, Archigram proposed Plug-in City in 1963 to be a city with flexibility and enable people to choose how they want to construct their living12. With the help of prefabrication, clients can customize their dwellings in different sizes, designs with modular pieces to provide an array of variety to clients’ living styles and cityscapes. These capsules are then “stick up a megastructure that contains the access system, diagonal lifts, and the servicing elements that bring up food and water and take out rubbish and so on.”12 Archigram also mentioned that their vision of megastructure is 3-dimensional, as every floor is different, rather than extruding the ground floor plan vertically as seen in existing buildings12. The 3-dimensionality of the structure inspired the Kowloon station project but in different ways. Archigram illustrated this
by freely allowing people to insert a variety of modules into different floors which naturally create a “randomization” to the structure. In the Kowloon station project, it was designed to contain different functions expanding towards different islands without disturbing the traffic circulation on the ground floor. With the advancement in modern technology, the exterior and interior of the megastructure appear to be different systems, while all programs are connected through multiple vertical connections like elevators, escalators, walkways, and centralized air-conditioning, forming a micro-scale city within the structure. Same but the adapted idea is applied into the case of the Kowloon station project where connections become the center core of the megastructure, then different construction such as transit system, residential blocks are “sticked” into the core by varies developers’ investment as the “capsules” in Plug-in City. The programs are also floating above the ground in both projects. The only difference
is once they are integrated into the core, they are less likely to modify flexibly due to their scale of construction to cater to the dense urban environment in Hong Kong. As a result, the additions after the megastructure possess the same significance as the center core that consists of building service and circulation, different from what Maki was imagining where the large frame is merely a container to store all functions of the city, instead of seamless integration of 2 structures. With all the topics and projects about megastructures evoked in similar periods, Ralph Wilcoxon’s book published in 1968 concluded and defined his understanding of “Megastructure”, emphasizing megastructure’s adaptability and modularity by saying “megastructure as a grouping of modular units which could be built upon and expanded nearly indefinitely”13. Ralph agreed to architects and groups like Arata Isozaki and Archigram of a city with
megastructures that they should be able to expand whenever people need and adapt to the change of city, opposed to the interpretation of adaptability in the Kowloon station project where the megastructure itself is a one-off manner at the time it was constructed2. At the same time, it complies with the idea of “a large frame with all functions of the city” from Fumihiko Maki7. However, with so many proposals carried out in the 1960s, there is an aspect that they never mentioned, stated in Reyner Banham’s book, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past in 1976. “ It is noticeable, alarming even, how few of them actually offer any nut-and-bolt proposals as to how the transient elements should be secured to the megaform”6. This expressed the difficulty of building such massive structures in reality, which made a majority of the proposals be merely visionaries, rather than actual projects. Looking at the West Kowloon development project, they adapted
different definitions of “megastructure” into a project that is more pragmatic. Conclusion Therefore, gathering different understandings of the concept of megastructure from the earliest period in 1563 to the modern days, the Kowloon station project could be concluded to be an improved and adapted megastructure through its connection to the local context and embodiment of efficiency and practicality. The project took inspiration from Maki’s idea of a huge structure that contains all necessary programs within, a 3-dimensional structure that includes horizontal and vertical connections to every tower nearby and its consideration of local constraints, for example, the unique compactness and accessibility of the whole system sculpted by market competitiveness, accompanied with the creation of an iconic skyline for Hong Kong.
Notes 1. “Megastructure.” Megastructure - Designing Buildings, November 30, 2020. https://www.designingbuildings. co.uk/wiki/Megastructure. 2. Xue, Charlie Q, Hailin Zhai, and Joshua Roberts. “An Urban Island Floating on the MTR Station: A Case Study of the West Kowloon Development in Hong Kong.” URBAN DESIGN International 15, no. 4 (2010): 191–207. https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2010.21. 3. Heiser, Michael S. “The Tower of Babel Story: What Really Happened?” The Logos Blog, October 4, 2021. https://blog.logos.com/really-happened-tower-babel/. 4. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Samarra Archaeological City.” UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Accessed December 20, 2021. https://whc.unesco.org/ en/list/276/. 5. “Plan Voisin.” Architectuul, April 23, 2020. http://architectuul.com/architecture/plan-voisin. 6. Paletta, Anthony. “With the Reissue of Reyner Banham’s Classic, Tracing the Megastructural Moment.” Metropolis, June 17, 2021. https://metropolismag. com/viewpoints/reyner-banham-megastructure/. 7. Maki, Fumihiko, and Peter (ed.) MacKeith. Investigations in Collective Form. St. Louis, United States: Washington University, 2004. 8. “A plan for Tokyo 1960, Kenzo Tange” in ArchEyes, January 26, 2016, https://archeyes.com/plan-tokyo1960-kenzo-tange/. 9. González, María Francisca. “The City in the Air by Arata Isozaki.” ArchDaily. ArchDaily, March 8, 2019.
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https://www.archdaily.com/912738/the-city-in-the-airby-arata-isozaki. Mid-year population for 2021. The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, August 12, 2021. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202108/12/ P2021081200387.htm. Cox, Wendell. “The Evolving Urban Form: Hong Kong.” The Evolving Urban Form: Hong Kong | Newgeography.com, July 3, 2021. https://www.newgeography.com/content/002708-the-evolving-urban-formhong-kong. Hobson, Benedict. “Archigram’s Plug-in City Shows That ‘Pre-Fabrication Doesn’t Have to Be Boring’ Says Peter Cook.” Dezeen, May 12, 2020. https://www. dezeen.com/2020/05/12/archigram-plug-in-city-petercook-dennis-crompton-video-interview-vdf/. The early representation of Urban future. Accessed December 20, 2021. https://www.tboake.com/manipulation/comi/pag3.html.
Hong Kong Adaptation of Reclamation and Megastructure across Scales: West Kowloon Development in the Scope of Tokyo Bay Plan and Actualization See Long, Lai
Abstract In the West Kowloon Reclamation as one of the “Ten Core Projects” of the Hong Kong Airport Core Programme centred around the construction of the new airport, scholars had revealed projects in the reclamation with properties of megastructure, including the Kowloon station urban island. This article compares and examines the Hong Kong adaptation of megastructure in the scale of the plan (West Kowloon Reclamation) and project (Kowloon Station Development) with Tokyo Bay, arguably the origin of the megastructure movement. The original
Tokyo Bay Plan by Kenzo Tange (1960) and the selected built mega-project of Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 (MM21) are selected as the Japanese counterparts in the comparison. Introduction The West Kowloon Reclamation is part of the Ten Core Project of Hong Kong Airport Core Programme centred on the development of Hong Kong International Airport to replace the old Kai Tak International Airport. The reclamation as an extension to the west of Kowloon Peninsula was tightly coupled with the Airport Express Railway and West Kowloon Expressway to tackle the challenge of limited buildable land and rapidly increasing population especially in the saturated district of Yau Tsim Mong and Tai Kok Tsui, and with the vision of urbanizing the airport. This transit-oriented development model based on railways gave birth to dislocated development blocks including the Kowloon Station and the Olympic Station development. The projects
are often described as having properties of megastructure, for instance, the urban island of Kowloon Station1. The concept of megastructure has evolved remarkably since the term “megastructure” was coined by the Metabolist group in the early 1960s and several ideal models for megastructure were proposed by metabolists. Despite being unbuilt, these utopian visions have driven a global wave of mega-projects that begin in the 1980s, in which the unprecedented scale triggered a new systemic approach to spatial planning2. To study the adaptation of megastructure in the West Kowloon Development, this article studies the traces of megastructure left in the development by directly examining it with the scope of Tokyo Bay Plan (1960) by Kenzo Tange and following mega-projects in the area. This comparison subject was selected for its significance on the development of
megastructure. Being recognized as one of the first comprehensive attempts to reclaim the Tokyo Bay, its significance propelled the development of this frontier in the next decades, involving more than $84 billion of investment in mega-projects built in the Bay, accounting for a total area of 634 hectares2. Kenzo Tange was also regarded as the mentor of the Metabolist architects, tutoring architects such as Fumihiko Maki and Arata Isozaki. While these architects continued to contribute to megastructure proposals, Kenzo’s influence on the Metabolist movement was undoubted2. The comparison bypasses the complex evolution and actualization of megastructure across the globe by examining the West Kowloon Development in the scope of the origin of megastructure, aiming to search for traces of application of the most genuine and original idea of megastructure. The context of development is also similar between Tokyo Bay and Hong Kong. In the view of Kenzo Tange, Tokyo had entered
a state of confusion and paralysis as the physical structure of the city had grown too old to cope with the rate of expansion. Especially in the 60s when the economy of Tokyo was going through the transition from primary and secondary sectors to the tertiary sector2. This is similar to Hong Kong where the earliest developed area of Yau Tsim Mong in the Kowloon Peninsula has been the most crowded area in Hong Kong since the early twentieth century, structures have also aged and became obsolete for their low plot ratio and paralyzed in redevelopment3. Reclamation was considered the direct expansion of this old district. Although the scale is different in which Tokyo faced a cityscale crisis, they were comparable in terms of their fabric. The definition of the term megastructure coined by Fumihiko Maki in 1964 would be considered in this study. According to him, the megastructure is “a large frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a city are housed”4. Apart from the Kowloon
Station, the whole Airport Core Programme (ACP) will be considered as a greater megastructure in this comparison with the Tokyo Bay Plan, the frame, in this case, is in the form of the transportation system of the Tung Chung Line and Expressways built in the programme, where stations are nodes where the functions are housed. Comparing West Kowloon Reclamation with Tokyo Bay Plan Linkage Type West Kowloon Reclamation as part of the Airport Core Programme (ACP), is heavily based on the transit-oriented model, with Tung Chung Line as the frame for development, this property could be found in Tange’s plan. The sites in the area were described as “rail + property” or transit villages3. Almost every development of a new station is linked to a property project in the vicinity, if not directly above. This
development model could be traced back to the 1960s when the government introduced the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) to connect remote new towns like Sha Tin. It also emphasized speed, with the slogan “from airport to city in 23 minutes”5. Similarly, Tange emphasized the importance of a communication system within the city and argued that it was the physical foundation of the city’s operation. He pointed out the city could not be understood as a composition of separate functional zones, but an open complex linked by high mobility6. This led to the Tokyo Bay Plan where Tange proposed an urban structure featuring a central spine carrying a complex highway system of interlocking loops extending out to the sea. Both projects embraced human mobility in transportation with the difference being underground and above ground, both led to a similar disconnection on the pedestrian level between the nodes, accounting for the drastic change of urban structure, from a traditional mat-like street-block in Yau Tsim
Mong, and the radial structure of Tokyo, into isolated islands connected only by transportation network.
Fig.1 Tokyo Bay Plan (1960), Kenzo Tange2 Fig.2 Hong Kong Airport Core Programme (1989), Blake1 Directionality and Orientation The linear directionality of the West Kowloon Development as in the Tung Chung Line could also be traced back to Tange’s plan. The development of ACP centred on the new airport took a linear form connecting the north of Lantau Island to the west of Kowloon Peninsula, with the expressway
and railway being the spine. This is similar to the way Tange planned the new urban structure as a linear city across the bay, both the linear axes are foundations for nodes to develop. The ACP did not take a completely straight form extending outwards as in Tange’s plan, instead, it outlines the island and peninsula, using land as support. This adaptation could be the crucial factor for it being a feasible plan. The Tokyo Bay Plan remained a visionary dream for its technical and socio-political constraint, the frame extending out to the bay is not flexible for future development, it required an extremely powerful authority and enormous financial resource which did not exist in Japan postwar political and economical environment2. While having ecological downfalls, the Ten Core Projects collectively forms a frame for development, allowing the projects to be actualized progressively. The two projects also differ in their development direction. The ACP project originates from the new airport, aiming to
urbanize it with high mobility and bring the airport to the city with the stations being peripheral terminals. The result in Kowloon station is the absence of freely-accessible open-air space, creating an impression of an airport without planes5. While Tange’s plan envisions to pull out city functions to the Bay, extending the existing centre of Tokyo. Despite the confusion of “airportizing” the city, connecting the new airport could be a more definite and urgent task than extending the city centre, hence leading to its realization. Comparing Kowloon Station Development with Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 (MM21) Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 was initiated by the municipal government in 1981 to revitalize Yokohama’s port area and promote its decentralized business function away from central Tokyo, it occupies 465 acres of waterfront land with 190 acres built on landfill2. Although not directly related to the
Tange’s linear frame, with the chief planner Masato Otaka being one of the founding members of the Metabolist group, it was one of the mega-projects in the Tokyo Bay riding the wave of megastructure started by Tange’s Plan. As an adaptation of megastructure in Tokyo Bay where the movement started, it is selected to examine the adaptation in Hong Kong. Directionality The development direction of these nodes is the decisive difference between the local adaptation in Japan and the Hong Kong adaptation. The Kowloon and Olympic station development project took the vertical form as the primary development model. In Kowloon station, 1.7 million square meters of buildings was planned in the 13.5 ha land area, with the plot ratio that reaches 12:11, the ground was elevated to accommodate circulation of vehicles and pedestrians. This model could be regarded as a floating island on top of the MTR
station, composed of layers with different functions including transportation, shopping, living and commercial. This organization in the vertical plane is contrasted with the horizontal expansion in MM21. The skeleton of the MM21 plan consists of 3 city axes, two of which start from the Yokohama Central Railway Station and Sakuragicho Railway Station, directing people flows from the station to the seashore. These two axes are two malls linking several large commercial spaces and diversified land use zone respectively2. Functions are connected horizontally with the two axes in MM21 while vertically in Kowloon Station Project. This is the result of insufficient land in Hong Kong where it is not possible to occupy such a wide plot by the sea, the Hong Kong adaptation have preferred vertical organization in developing megastructure.
Fig.3 3 axes, Yokohama Minato Mirai 212 Fig.4 Layers of Functions, Kowloon Station Development1 Treatment on Context In reaction to the old street-block urban structure of the Yau Tsim Mong district, the Kowloon station development was isolated from the original block, this is different to the MM21 approach towards the old port structure. The Kowloon station was planned as a superblock, abandoning the traditional development order where the streets were
first laid out1. The mat-like urban structure found in Yau Tsim Mong was disconnected in the reclaimed area of Kowloon station, disregarding the old urban structure like how Tange’s plan disregarded the radial city of Tokyo by proposing the linear form. However, in MM21, the street grid was adopted, this adaptation is based on the original layout of the Yokohama Port, with additions like new boulevards and landfills to push out the seashore2. Many of the old structure was redeveloped such as the Mitsumishi Dock renovated in a sunken plaza. The project is positioned as a tourism and commercial development embracing the history of Yokohama as a port2, by respecting the layout of the port. The Hong Kong treatment considering old Yau Tsim Mong as an obsolete model is arguably more similar to Tange’s view than the adapted Japanese project of MM21. The spatial experience of Kowloon Station Development is more like the Airport than the nearby old district in terms of its large interior space and
separation on the pedestrian level. Showing the Hong Kong preference of abandoning the obsolete. Conclusion Even though radical proposals by the metabolists architects remained to be visionary, the influence was long-lasting, and the effect was global. The enthusiasm in the proposal especially Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Plan had inspired large scale planning and reclamation projects for decades to come. The actualization of megastructure across scales took different forms adapting to the socio-political and geographical constraints of the site. In Hong Kong’s case, the Airport Core Programme, West Kowloon Reclamation and Kowloon Station Projects all share properties of megastructure vision proposed by the metabolist and continued to redefine megastructure in its realization.
Notes 1. Xue, Charlie Q.L., Hailin Zhai, and Joshua Roberts. “An Urban Island Floating on the MTR Station: A Case Study of the West Kowloon Development in Hong Kong,” August 18, 2010. 2. Lin, Zhong-Jie. “From Megastructure to Megalopolis: Formation and Transformation of Mega-Projects in Tokyo Bay.” Journal of Urban Design, June 21, 2007. 3. Xue, Charlie Q.L. “Rail Village and Mega-Structure.” Essay. In Hong Kong Architecture 1945-2015, n.d. 4. Maki, Fumihiko. Investigations in Collective Form. Schoool of Architecture, Washington University, 1964. 5. Roseau, Nathalie. “The Shape of Things to Come, Hong Kong’s Infrastructural City Fabric: 1989–2020.” Planning Perspectives, November 22, 2021. 6. Cho, Hyunjung. “Kenzō Tange’s a Plan for Tokyo, 1960: A Plan for Urban Mobility.” Architectural Research Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2018): 139–50.
How did the local urban development context shape the Kowloon Station as a megastructure? Chun Hei, Chan
In contrast to the urban block building mode of the nearby Yau Tsim Mong context, or the superblock development of the Hong Kong Station, the Kowloon Station and its peripheral development could be seen as a unique, single megastructure composed of interconnected islands of transportation nodes, retail spaces and housing. This essay examines the historical development of Kowloon Station and its attached properties in the form of a megastructure. It begins with the process of creating the megastructure project, from local urban development background, planning of the site, formation of the architectural concept, up till its final realization, will be studied. Through the parallel study of the local urban
development context and the megastructure project itself, this essay aim to assess the impact of the project in vitalizing the city, and to establish the criteria by which to critique the megastructure architectural typology in an urban development context of modern Hong Kong. The Initiator: Hong Kong Airport Core Programme The notion of the large-scale development in the West Kowloon stems from the Hong Kong Airport Core Programme (ACP) organized by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government. Proposed in the early 1990s, the programme was a series of infrastructural projects centered on the new Hong Kong International Airport (Fig 1), which are linked by the 34-kilometre road and rail transport corridor to the Central business district on Hong Kong Island1 2. The particular West Kowloon development project plays a
significant role as four of the other 9 projects of ACP are tightly connected or directly integrated to it, namely the West Kowloon reclamation, the new Airport railway and stations, the West Kowloon Expressway and the Western Harbour Crossing. This presents an unprecedented design and planning challenge as multiple programs has to be fulfilled and integrated within the limited reclaimed land.
Fig. 1: Locations of the 10 projects of ACP
The Influences, Roles and Development typologies of the Developers The Airport Express along with the Tung Chung Line was one of the earliest core projects in the ACP. The Mass Transit
Railway Corporation (MTRC), the local metro company, was the initiator and project owner, whereas the the UK architectural firm Terry Farrell & Partners (TFP) was the prime contractor3. MTRC has a portfolio of experience in realizing several projects with comparable concepts of a megastructure regarding sheer size and complexity, in which some are concurrent to the West Kowloon development. This includes Taikoo Shing (1986), Pacific Place in Admiralty (1987), and Plaza Hollywood in Diamond Hill (1997)4. These examples, together with the Kowloon Station development, have demonstrated high integration of metro network with local commercial centers, public facilities, and residential blocks5, which according to the essay ‘The City and the Megastructure’, are solid examples of a megastructure6 7. Meanwhile, TFP has published the book ‘Kowloon: Transport Super City’ prior to the inauguration of the Airport Express and present the Kowloon Station complex, manifesting the ultimate
objective of the project is to ‘create a transport super city’, ‘urbanize the airport’ and ‘bring airport back to the city. This shows that the station is clearly intended to be developed as a first-of-its-kind, fully integrated interchange with in-town check-in facilities for incomers, and all the necessary infrastructure of a city: transit system, offices, community facilities and housing8. Megastructure vs infrastructure: comparison with the superblock development around Hong Kong station Before the Kowloon Station development completed in 2010, the Hong Kong Station development centered around the IFC completed in 2003, shares similar development typology but has a very different role in serving and anchoring itself in the city. By studying the earlier project, traces that make up the Kowloon Station as a megastructure can be found.
In terms of similarity, the Hong Kong Station superblock was built on six hectares of reclaimed land. It comprises an eight-meterhigh podium topped by two skyscrapers (IFCs). It was described as ‘a complex matrix of transport, public and commercial functions that is in itself a mini-city within a city’ by the design architect Rocco Yim9. The Kowloon Station superblock is even larger. It was built on a fourteen-hectare site and consists of an eighteen-meter-high podium, sandwiched with the Elements shopping mall, and topped with a residential complex of sixteen buildings and the ICC10. In terms of the differences, according to Greg Pearce, an architect with the architectural firm of the project ARUP, the Hong Kong Station development was described as ‘room’ that would function as one of the city’s vital lungs, ‘a large, multistorey room, which in its context strands its ground and commands the entire site’11. This shows that the architects have attempted
to mitigate the risk of isolation from the city by designing the station as the ‘heart’ of the city, and carefully establishing the relationship with different urban ground levels, worked by ‘generators’ and ‘receivers’ as described by Pearce. On the contrary, the Kowloon Station development is designed to be a rather self-contained city. Islands of different programs are enclosed in the shell of the malls and stations, with little connection to the periphery. Inside the megastructure you are either a passerby or a habitant of the islands. There is no freely accessible public space here, unlike the IFC mall where the roof space is dedicated for the people, mostly Filipino workers, for social gatherings12. This is because the project was developed as an interchange hub that ‘brings the airport back into the city’ and a three-dimensional complex that is a ‘self-sufficient community’13 14. As a result, it took a more insular form that would only accommodate the needs of the incomers.
Megastructure vs Urban Blocks: comparison with the Yau Tsim Mong development The Yau Tsim Mong District, located in the heart of the Kowloon Peninsula is one of the earliest developed areas of Hong Kong along the Victoria Harbour. Therefore, areas like Mong Kok, Yau Ma Tei and Tsim Sha Tsui have been the most densely populated areas since the early twentieth century. The ever-growing population have caused land shortage and traffic capacity issues for future urban development. Among the key projects of the ACP, the West Kowloon reclamation has a direct aim to address the issue by providing the needed land with an area up to 334 hectares, which is one-third of the original Kowloon Peninsula15. The MTRC, as aforementioned, played a crucial role in directing the entire development as the major developer. It represented the government’s realm, constructed the metro
lines as the fundamental infrastructure for the attached project, and then coordinated and participated in the developments connected to the stations16. With that being said, the development on the new land has been led by the metro lines, and therefore also by the distribution of stations. For example, the Tung Chung Station, Olympic Station, Tsing Yi Station, and Kowloon Station are all planned to be a new community with a certain density and program diversity that serve the community. These places were either undeveloped or scarcely populated before the introduction of the metro station. Therefore, this type of new metro-centric urban development typology created a new form of urban connection and spatial structure that is vastly different from the continuous grid-like urban blocks of the older Yau Tsim Mong area. First, the traffic network of people and vehicle is organized into distinct layers for
more efficient transport, regardless of the relations between or within the blocks17. Housing and commercial buildings are distributed around the metro line, and are directly accessible via the stations and interconnected by elevated pedestrian bridges. Consequently, the ground level is often left exclusively for vehicular use, eliminating congested traffic in the old towns. Second, the ACP is a departure from the traditional, discrete urban block development. The programme was wellpublicized with slogans like ‘10 projects that changed the shape and size of Hong Kong’, ‘the world of Chek Lap Kok’, that often emphasize the sheer scale of the project and how such scale made the whole airport development possible18 19. The change in scale was perfectly illustrated in ‘The new Airport in Central’ photomontage captured in 2000 (Fig 2). The composition is a juxtaposition of the oblique view of the
new airport, frontal view of the future Central business superblock and the superimposed Airport Express. As the traditional streetblock building typology has been replaced by a superblock-megastructure typology, the high-rise buildings are left freely standing atop the podium, with little to no respect to the distribution of roads at ground level20. Therefore, the new megastructure, as an integrated infrastructure of the city, is effective in providing a framework for future evolution.
Fig. 2: ‘The New Airport in Central’ photomontage Third, the order and dimensionality of urban development has been redefined. Unlike the traditional two-dimensional development
order in which the street traffic network is first laid out, then the building blocks are constructed; the Kowloon Station was simultaneously designed and constructed together with the entire urban superblock. The boundary between different realms: residential, retail, commercial and different forms of transportation, has therefore been blurred. Instead, these realms evolved into a three-dimensional, interconnected islands. They are designed to interact so seamlessly in a self-sufficient way that no longer rely on other urban blocks. This once again remind us of Fumihiko Maki’s 1964 definition of a megastructure: ‘a frame in which all the functions of a city or part of a city are housed. It has been made possible by present day technology’21. Conclusion After the parallel study of the Kowloon Station development with the Hong Kong station and Yau Tsim Mong District
Development, it is evident that the megastructure typology is a product of the developers’ expertise, the need to urbanize the airport and the future vision to expand the city. While the megastructure is an obvious departure from the older streetblock building typology, it is a milestone of Hong Kong infrastructure-driven transformation since the handover, and will be the propelling force in turning Hong Kong into a global city.
Notes 1.
2. 3. 4.
5. 6.
7.
8. 9.
New Airport Projects Co-ordination Office. 1998. Airport Core Programme (ACP). Hong Kong: New Airport Projects Co-ordination Office, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Weisel, James A. 1995. Hong Kong Airport Core Programme. Elmsford: Elseview Ltd. doi: 10.1016/S07485751(97)00012-2. “Airport Core Program projects in West Kowloon”. Source HKUL, 1993. Xue, C. Q. L., H. Zhai, and Roberts J. 2010. “An urban island floating on the MTR station: A case study of the West Kowloon development in Hong Kong.” URBAN DESIGN International, 191-207. doi:10.1057/ udi.2010.21. Ibid, 4 Karakiewicz, Justyna. 2005. “The City and the Megastructure.” In Future Forms and Design For Sustainable Cities, by Mike Jenks and Nicola Dempsey, 16. London: Routledge. In the essay ‘The City and the Megastructure’ by Karakiewicz, different types of megastructures are demonstrated ‘in the form of extremely tall towers, on the top of podiums which include club-houses, leisure and sports facilities, car parking, shops and transportation’. Terry Farrell & Partners. 1998. Kowloon Transport Super City. Hong Kong: Pace Publishing. Yim, Rocco. 2002. “Hong Kong Station and Development.” In In The City in Architecture, Recent Works of Rocco Design, by Rocco Design Limited, 120-137.
Hong Kong: Images Publishing. 10. Ibid, 8 11. Pearce, Greg. 2001. “Hong Kong station: Bringing the airport in the city.” Arup, Hong Kong Station (Edition Axel Menges) 6-20. 12. Nathalie, Roseau. 2021. “The shape of things to come, Hong Kong’s infrastructural city fabric: 1989–2020.” Planning Perspectives. 13. Ibid, 1 14. Ibid, 8 15. Civil Engineering and Development Department. (2019, June 30). S1 West Kowloon Reclamation. https://www.cedd.gov.hk/eng/about-us/achievements/ land/regional-development/s1-west-kowloon-reclamation/index.html 16. Ibid, 4 17. Ibid, 4 18. Government Logistics Department, HKSAR. 1999-2000. The airport core programme : 10 projects that changed the shape and size of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Printing Division, Government Logistics Department;. 19. Ibid, 12 20. Ibid, 4 21. Maki, Fuhimiko. 1964. Investigations in Collective Form. St. Louis: School of Architecture, Washington University. Fig. 1: New Airport Projects Co-ordination Office, Government Secretariat, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Fig. 2: Map Office (Laurent Guttierez, Valérie Portefaix), ‘The new Airport in Central’, 2000.
Bibliography 1. 2.
3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Terry Farrell & Partners. 1998. Kowloon Transport Super City. Hong Kong: Pace Publishing. Xue, Charlie Q, Hailin Zhai, and Joshua Roberts. “An Urban Island Floating on the MTR Station: A Case Study of the West Kowloon Development in Hong Kong.” URBAN DESIGN International 15, no. 4 (2010): 191–207. https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2010.21. Davis, Chris (18 December 1997). “Rail “rocket” set to whisk passengers in comfort”. South China Morning Post. p. 26. Ibid, 1 Express Rail Link West Kowloon Terminus Hong Kong Archived 23 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine Aedas Pomfret, James (4 September 2018). “Unscheduled Departure: China’s Legal Reach Extends to Hong Kong Rail Station”. Reuters. MTR Corporation Limited. “Elements .” ELEMENTS, 2021. http://www.elementshk.com/. Ibid Ibid, 1
Images without credit are taken by ourselves.
The Modern Architecture Guidebook Hong Kong’s built environment represents a unique site of inquiry in the global history of the Modern Movement. The Modern Architecture guidebook series draw from an inter-disciplinary toolkit of knowledge, references, and field studies to understand the processes at work in the built environment. Each walking tour in the series begins with one of the 98 MTR stations in Hong Kong as the meeting point. First opened in 1979, this modernist infrastructure has produced a city rationalized around transportoriented development. Organized around key themes (industrialization, colonization, environment, internationalization, migration, decolonization, counterculture, and globalization), the guidebooks present a critical yet open perspective towards the implications of large-scale modernist schemes on the environment and community.
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