Inclusion: Industrial shell in Kwun Tong by ARCH2058

INCLUSION:

KWUN TONG

ARCH2058 Modern Architecture

ASSIGNMENT 3: GUIDEBOOK

| Fall 2021

Inclusion: Industrial shell in Kwun Tong Chan Chun Ngok Osten (3035696810) Hong Sum Ho (3035695696) Law Tsz Hin (3035729227)

Inclusion: ‘Industrial Shells’ in Kwun Tong

Next Station: Kwun Tong. What reminds you of Kwun Tong? The shopping mall, APM? The already demolished Yue Man Square? Or the industrial buildings situated along Hoi Yuen Road? In the 60s when Hong Kong was transitioning from a entrepôt to industrial production , Kwun Tong was the first industrial site. However, as the factories were moved to mainland China, these industrial buildings were cleared out, leaving their concrete shells. As you look out from the windows of the train, have you imagined what is hidden behind these industrial shells? This guidebook acts as a toolbox for visitors to experience Kwun Tong from its past to the future, as we hack into the cyberspace of Kwun Tong to understand its urban regeneration strategies, changing commercial and sociological ecologies, to its broader immaterial spatial experience in the age of information technology.

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1 YIP FAT FACTORY BUILDING Built in the 1978, Yip Fat Factory Building 2.9K could be one of the oldest sites 2.9K the trip is going to visit. Alongside the torn-down neighbour which is under reconstruction and produces a lot of noise, the entrance is dilapidated and ET TREET IPSTSRE forth 100K Y dusty which is unwelcoming. Visiting the P 100K INGYI SH ING floor, claustrophobic hallway ofSHsubdivided office units greets the visitors, opposite to a 1.4K pair of gray unremarkable, and undecorated 1.4K doors. A similar typology could be seen on the thirteenth whereas the floor was split into four rented spaces, with a “Online reservation for passcode“note taped next to one of the doors. 968 968

Nevertheless, the internet has became a better shop-front/facade in representing these shops and units. While most of floors are still occupied by logistics, trading and warehouses, which has relatively less cyber footprint on social platforms, Facebook pages of furniture malls and taekwondo workshops could still be found.

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1. 翁子忠., 鍾嘉慧., 李志剛., 翁子忠, 鍾嘉慧, 李志剛, and 香港電台. 電視部. 走過觀塘五十年 [electronic Resource]. 香港故事 ; [2010-0322]. 香港: 香港電台, 2010. AD RO TO NG HU

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Origianlly a factory for the production of oil paint, 10K the Camel Paint Building is one of the most successfully revitalised industrial buildings in Kwun Tong1. A browse on the Internet, various types of shops show up on the list. Ranging from restaurants, furniture ateliers, to crystal accessories workshops, the building is largely occupied by independent retailers. While the frieght elevators KI NG are located at the center, the service elevators YI P ST RE are located at the two ends of the building, sepET arating the served and servant circulations. The T concrete STstructure is supported by columns and REE YIP ING H slabs. Upon arrival, the corridor runs along the central axis, between the shops on both sides. The bright interiors and signages at shopfronts, light up the dim corridor, attracting customers to enter. Without the polished finishes, the concrete building is comparable to typical shopping mall layout. Yet, without direct accessibility from Kwun Tong station and its industrial setting, the corridor is rather empty. Therefore, retailers rely on social media to promote and gain attentions.

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3 UNION HING YIP FACTORY BLDG Union Hing Yip Factory Building was built in 1979, the 13-storeys building is intentionally planned for mixed commercial and industrial use. Due to the fading of the secondary sector of the economy, the entire building has been converted to noncommercial activities, mostly offices, except the first two floors transformed into a venue for Buddhist studies, and the fourth floor as an art gallery - Osage. For the art studio, information on the exhibition schedules is available only on the internet, primarily on its official Instagram and Facebook pages, as well as its wechat group.

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4 PANG KWONG BUILDING Pang Kwong Building was built in 1988, among five of the listed industrial buildings, it is the most distant one away from the MTR station. The site of the building is the smallest among the other five, hence each floor space has not been divided. The unique setting of having one unit per floor has significantly increased its privacy for the owners and workers, at the same time, it creates an ambiguous sensation for the visitors of stepping into the private areas. Some of the units have extended their territory to the lift lobby, for instance, Cafe and Furniture workshop 21 from 8, has transformed the lift lobby into a welcoming porch, at the same time as storage for raw materials. The vertically stacked spaces are comparable with the ‘Ginza-style’ commercial buildings in Japan with multiple commercial properties sharing one roof.

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Surprisingly, with only 30 years of building age (built 1991), Wah Shing Centre received an innovation at the guests lobby, which creates a bright welcoming ambience for visitors. Despite the more aged hallways on the thirteenth floors, with the floor dissected into 16 seperate flats, tenants refurbished their own entrances with more appealing shopfronts and stools for leaflets. Noteably, a prominence in creative and cultural uses of the flats, i.e. violin shop, vocal school, art studio etc., are observed. With a lot of units utilizing glass doors, the whole level is filled with the tension between the worndown ambience of the hallways and the ET bright lights coming out from the flats. ET REwarm TRE ST 100K P S G YIP100K IN

Diving into the cyberspace, these shops tend to span in internet footprints. Not only is it a norm for them to own a Facebook page, registered websites for online shopping and reservations could also be found.

Hoi Yuen Road TSZ HIN, LAW

Introduction Over the previous few decades, Hong Kong has experienced multiple tremendous political and economical restructurings. Its unique geographic position and colonial background have attracted millions of refugees arriving from the neighbouring areas, resulting in the rapid development in the secondary economic sector. The global economic reforms, internationalisation, and enhanced trading cooperation among countries, have triggered the migration of industrial enterprises and associated procedures to neighbouring countries and areas, thus resulting in the abandonment or transformation of the functionality of surplus spaces in industrial blocks. This article aims to reveal the post-industrial conversion of these spaces, to examine how the retail enterprises make use of these spaces apart from the conventional retail centres.

Industrial blocks in the post-industrial era Kwun Tong, a first-generation satellite new town, was proposed in the 1950s as a self-sufficient new town with industrial, residential, and commercial zones allocated rationally. Within the industrial area, the stacking of flatted factories spaces, the multi-storeys industrial buildings 1, a typology of urban planning for industrial developments, attributed to the scarcity of lands in urban areas are commonly seen.2 The fast-changing economic and political environments in the past few decades, largely affiliated with the political and economic reforms of neighbouring mainland China, especially the open-door policy in the 1980s, and the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, and the establishment of closer economic partnership arrangement after the handover, together with the rising rental expenditure, increasing labour costs, demand on greater spaces for industrial expansion, have led to the consequence of the relocation of manufacturing and associated supply-chain procedures to the Pearl River Delta in Mainland China. 3

Since the 1970s, the city’s position has then shifted to focusing on providing related services, as a bridge of trade between the international market and mainland China 3, id est the tertiary sector.4 Enormous amounts of manufacturing factories have lost their competitiveness since then closed down, industrial blocks went either abandoned or converted into other usages. Deindustrialisation has been encountered by various major cities in the world affiliated with the worldwide economic reform5, solutions on transformation of the functionality of existing industrial buildings in the international world were proposed by property owners, the development bureaus, scholars, users in the society including the desire of reconstruction, revitalisation, reconstruction 6 7 of the blocks with industrial concrete shells. However, in the context of Hong Kong, the implementation of the rational theories for a comprehensive revitalisation, is constrained by local ordinances and the fragmented ownership of properties in industrial buildings. 2 8

Scale of revitalisation To further investigate the clue of the fast redeveloping Kwun Tong, a site visit was carried out on an ordinary Monday morning. Commuters arriving from residential districts to the commercial business hub of Kowloon East. Congestion of human circulation was most significant near the Mass transit stations, particularly near the railway station, and the adjacent shopping centre - Kwun Tong Plaza. The nearby Yip Fat Industrial Building, first stop of the site visit trip, does not seem to be one of the beneficiaries in the Energising Kowloon East scheme promoted by the bureau9, the messiness, spiritless, generic environment are the valid reasons for its yet-to-be succeeded revitalisation, despite its proximity to the human flows. There are four units per floor in Yip Fat, sharing four lifts which are set up for both passenger usage and logistic purpose, some floors even have one enterprise owning the entire floor as its office, leaving the ownership of the lift lobby ambiguous. A similar layout applies to Block 1 & 2 Camel Paint Building complexes.

The Camel Paint Building Block Three has an intricate layout of the shops in comparison with the rationally laid out types of businesses clustered in specific corners or floors in the complex. Despite the orderless dispersion of shops and offices, the atmosphere inside is relatively more approachable, with signages, an uncommonly seen component of industrial building units, above the shops, as well as banners at respective lift lobbies on each floor for primary directory and promotion. Apart from human circulation, the circulation of raw materials has to be taken into account for the sustainability of workshops and factories. These facilities are hardly capable in the architecture of other types but the industrial blocks. It is believed that the wider and brighter corridors are fundamentally beneficial to the success of the transformation of Camel Paint Block 3, in contrast to the limited horizontal floor area of Camel Paint Block 1 and Yip Fat. To future verify the hypothesis that larger shared

floor space encourages human circulation, visits to Wah Shing Centre, Union Hing Yip Factory Building, Pang Kwong Building were performed on the same Monday afternoon. Union Hing Yip has two units per floor while there is only one per floor for Pang Kwong Building, which the entangling relationships of owner and visitor, has created a resistance on the willingness of accessing the spaces freely.10 Industrial buildings with limited floor space having their lift lobbies shared with one or two neighbouring units are more likely to be converted into art studios, workshops, and fabric laboratories without the need of attracting random consumers from the streets. For Wah Shing Centre, the low ceiling height and narrow corridor are discouraging to visitors for the fear of unfamiliar spaces. Technological advancement Navigation is a major issue for shoppers, researchers proposed that shopping is a time-consuming activity 12, the generalisation of the internet and mobile devices have precisely tackled such constraints, breaking

through the geographical, spatial, and time boundaries, forming an invisible dimension of “city” above our existing one, closely parallel to the idea of Constant’s New Babylon in the 1960s. 15 The longer the time spent on navigating, the lower the excitement of the shoppers. Shoppers of industrial buildings often rely on online maps or virtual directories of a specific category of products. The orientation of shopping became solely dependent on online categories, instead of a mix of shopping with an intention and shopping as a leisure activity. The internet acts as a strong pulling factor for the relocation of businesses moving into the blocks, as the necessity of physical shopping is eliminated, some enterprises converted just partially its premises to accommodate a front desk from existing warehouse nature, and have the remaining retail, marketing counterparts exclusively online, as executed by the cross-boundary purchasing/logistic agents.

Users are the architects As Jane Jacobs argues on the elites’ perspectives on Boston’s North End neighbourhood in the 1960s 13, the feasibility of a comprehensive rational revitalisation of a neighbourhood is questionable, and those fantastical ideals may not be the most sustainable solutions for the renewal of the area. The rationalists neglected and oversimplified the complexity of human interactions and lifestyles in diverse communities. 14 Take the Camel Paint Block 3 as an example, here we witness the vibrancy of industry spectrum within one single complex, with dried seafood enterprises having its retail and back offices on the same floor, light industry factories for food processing, carpenter studios, soap production, and tutorial workshops and so forth. It is to advocate that, conversion of abandoned factory spaces into mixed purposed use of units, creates an alternative medium as laboratories of small-medium enterprises, for the agglomeration of people with a specific interest, for instance, manga and

animation figure collection and exchange, pastries making, kick-boxing battles to set up a communal Bohemia without having a heavy rental burden. 15 16 Also, the sole ownership of conventional shopping arcade creates a centralised resistance for conversion from the owner, but the fragmented ownership, as reflected in industrial blocks, offers a degree of freedom of business ecology, hence the owner/ tenant-led revitalisation, splendor of business natures within individual industrial blocks. 17 The blossom of multiple retail enterprises on the same floor may enhance the shopping experience for random consumers. Also, the lower the availability of retail spaces on a particular floor, the greater the unwillingness of the shoppers to visit the shops 11, which the almost empty corridors in Wah Shing was witnessed in contrast to the vibrant pathways in Camel Paint Block 3. As researches suggest, a compact shopping environment can be accomplished by the segregation of retail and non-retail functions, to concentrate the retail, the necessity of a convenient

shopping venue is influenced by the long working hours and increased leisure orientation of shopping. 12 It is also worth noting that, the lower the proximity of the flats from the lift lobbies, the less likely it is to be converted into retail space, which is a reflection of the least effort phenomenon 10 11 18 19 and the bid rent theory. 20 The book “Architecture without Architects” from the 1960s by Bernard Rudofsky 21 revealed the significance of non-pedigreed architecture or known as vernacular architecture. The users are the rulers to construct the most suitable dwellings for inhibition concerning the site condition, climate constraints, the availability of construction materials et cetera. Apart from the industrial shells, users of the industrial building units, with the same principle, are the architects of their respective units in the context of Kwun Tong, as long as it complies with the regulations and ordinances per fire and structural safety concerns. There we see the site limitation is the concrete blocks, users adopt the topology of the site,

move in and set up their businesses in an organic form, closely parallel to the formation of an organically clustered shopping strip 13 and the evolution of Kasbah of Alger in Algeria. 21 Brief summary The local land policy regarding land use segregation has created a significant land value discrepancy, in addition to the relocation of Hong Kong industries, the generalisation of the internet, which have led to the rapid development of creative industry, and e-commerce, accelerated the user-oriented revitalisation of the ex-industrial town. The consonance of the mixed-use development and revitalisation within the concrete structures with an industrial outlook, as the realisation of the spirit of metabolism, is worth learning from for the bureau and private sectors who are involved in urban renewal projects.

Notes

1. Shi Xian and Huiwei Chen, “Revitalisation of industrial buildings in Hong Kong: New measures, new constraints?.” Habitat International 47 (2015): 298-306. 2. Barrie Shelton, Justyna Karakiewicz and Thomas Kvan, The making of Hong Kong: from vertical to volumetric (London: Routledge, 2013), 89-94.scelerisque nulla. Donec eu magna mollis, bibendum 3. Victor FS Sit and Chun Yang, “Foreign-investmentinduced exo-urbanisation in the Pearl River Delta, China.” Urban Studies 34, no. 4 (1997): 647-677. 4. Irene Eng, “The rise of manufacturing towns: externally driven industrialization and urban development in the Pearl River Delta of China.” International journal of urban and regional research 21.4 (1997): 554-568. 5. Richard Marshall, Waterfronts in post-industrial cities (Taylor & Francis, 2001), 117-134. 6. Takehiro Kamo, “Reinventing Tokyo: Renewing city image, built environment, and governance system towards the 21st century.” In International Conference on Re-inventing Global Cities, Hong Kong. Proceedings of the International Conference on Re-inventing Global Cities. Retrieved from http://hub. hku. hk/ bitstream/10722/54774/2/31801327/. pdf on, vol. 9. 2014. 7. Bo-sin Tang and Winky KO Ho, “Cross-sectoral influence, planning policy, and industrial property market in a high-density city: a Hong Kong study 1978–2012.” Environment and Planning A 46.12 (2014): 2915-2931.

8. Bo-sin Tang and Roger MH Tang, “Industrial property, market initiative and planning policy: Restructuring obsolete industrial properties in Hong Kong.” Property management (1999). 9. Tris Kee, “Innovation in sustainable development: Sustainable place-making strategies in Hong Kong.” The 19th International Conference on Innovation and Sustainable Development Conference Proceedings. (2017) 10. Stephen Brown, “Retailers and micro-retail location: a perceptual perspective.” International Journal of Retailing 2, no. 3 (1987): 3-21.” 11. R.J. Johnston and C.C. Kissling, “Establishment use patterns within central places.” Australian Geographical Studies 9, no. 2 (1971): 116-132. 12. Vaughan Reimers and Val Clulow, “Retail concentration: a comparison of spatial convenience in shopping strips and shopping centres.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer services 11, no. 4 (2004): 207-221. 13. Jane Jacobs, The death and life of great American cities (New York: Random House, 1961) 14. ibid, 372. 15. Constant Nieuwenhuys and Laura Stamps, New Babylon. To Us, Liberty (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2016): 68-89. 16. HKSAR Rating and Valuation Department, Hong Kong Property Review 2020 (Hong Kong: RVD, 2020), 54-57. 17. Ming Wai Chow et al., “Sino Centre: Shopping Mall as a Cultural Space.” City University of Hong Kong, CityU Institutional Repository (2016) 18. Richard W Longstreth, City center to regional mall: architecture, the automobile, and retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (Los Angeles: MIT Press, 1998).

19. Raymond E Murphy et al., “Internal Structure of the CBD.” Economic Geography 31, no. 1 (1955): 21-46. 20. Harry Ward Richardson, Urban economics (Dryden Press, 1978). 21. Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without architects (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1964): Preface.

New BabylonatatKwun Kwun Tong New Babylon Tong -

Implications of the Relationship between Industrial Implications of the Relationship Industrial Buildings, Cyber-space… and a between Playful Utopia? Buildings, Cyber-space… and a Playful Utopia?

Chun Ngok Osten,Osten, Chan Chun Ngok Chan From Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse to the Metabolists’ megastructural post-war Tokyo, most of these modernist attempts in urban masterplans were left far from actualization. Henceforth, it is virtually impossible to draw resonances between one of the even more utopian, expansive, and anticapitalist urban notions, with one of the most spatially dense and economically driven cities in Asia like Hong Kong… or is it?

New Babylon, materialized by a wide range of media including drawings, texts, collages, films and models, is a futuristic urban project Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys have worked on from 1956 to 1974 for almost two decades. With structures on a planetary scale floating above the pre-existing urban fabric, the inhabitants, or Homo Ludens, “man the player”1, are liberated from burden

and free to play and create their own spaces through the substitution of automation and technology for labour and work. In this essay, revitalized inhabitation of the industrial buildings in Kwun Tong would be investigated under the conceptual framework of Constant’s New Babylon. Through this unconventional interpretation on one of the oldest “New Towns” in Hong Kong, by looking into the socio-economic background, physical fabrication, and role of technology (including the internet and social media) in the present-day usage, it is aimed at uncovering this contemporary invisible agent of spatial mediation in the urban fabric, explore potentials of the overall urban process in facilitating local cultural production, thus provoke a new understanding in the pursue of an inclusive contemporary city. Predominantly, at the urban scale, it is vital to understand the socio-economic

background behind the New Babylon and revitalized Kwun Tong in order to justify, or at least contextualize, their comparison. The discussion of New Babylon is virtually impossible without mentioning Constant Nieuwenhuys’ origins of interest in architecture. It happened in 1951 at Frankfurt, where Constant walked his son through war-torn cityscape of ruins to school every day, that has sparked his attention to the notion of city rebuilding and its subsequent influence on people’s lives.2 Sooner in 1956, his witness to the undesirable habitation conditions of the gypsies in Alba, Italy has further stimulated Constant’s conception of the temporary encampment scheme for nomads that constantly remodels in living area, and unintendedly became the very origins and first work of the New Babylon series.3 From such, the New Babylon project was heavily inspired and influenced by the post-war social conditions of Europe in the 1950s, thus its foundation is could be encapsulated by the

keywords “reconstruction” and “flexibility”. Despite the geographical and temporal distance, these two notions are echoed in the backdrop of the heavily revitalized Kwun Tong nowadays. Owing to the drastic changes in Hong Kong’s manufacturing-based economy in the 1980s-1990s4, industrial buildings are dropping in land value due to the lack of industrial land demand. Thus, the government encouraged wholesale conversion of industrial units to not only internally rebuild the economic structure supporting the integrity of these infrastructure, but also deliver a relatively flexible renewal that delivers shortterm feedbacks to immediate economic and social needs.5 With the prevailing focus of reconstruction (economy and social wise) and flexibility (logical and temporal wise) setting the background of present-day Kwun Tong’s revitalization typology, owing to the similarities with the socio-economic context of Constant’s post-war Europe, it is henceforth validated to further analyse

these two urban situations in parallel. At the building scale, it would be rudimentary to compare New Babylon and Kwun Tong from their immediate physical or visual representations. One of the noticeable similarities between the two would be at the notion of overlays. Amid the dialogue of the New Babylon, it is easy to come in mind with the aesthetics of the “Gründriss New Babylon (Ground Plan of New Babylon)” drawings whereas city maps are overlayed with dynamic-coloured geometries, conceptually aligning with the Situationist’s interest in fabrication of new situations in creating alternate life experiences.6 Nonetheless, resemblances of such motif are observed at the industrial buildings, where LED advertisements and pull-out banners are seen hiding outdated steel directories and abandoned indoor crane shafts respectively, revealing the tension between the delivery of a guest-welcoming ambience versus the

deliberate concealment of the industrial past. Another parallel between the two subjects would be the both-prominent idea of verticality. Within the context of creating a “playful” fabric, New Babylon is found plentiful in vertical connection through ladders, as represented by models and sketches like the Ladderlabyrinth (Ladder Labyrinth) and Ode ä l’Odéon (Tribute to Odeon), which grants Homo Ludens playful access to dynamic spaces. While on a more pragmatic premise, yet a substantial advantage over the conventional office or commercial high-rise typology, the abundance of guest and heavy-duty cargo elevators in industrial buildings could support a more versatile logistics capability,7 thus supporting a greater dynamicity in shop type variations, for instance allowing furniture workshops or piano studios to be situated on high floors. Furthermore, the dissemination of hierarchy is evident in both physical embodiments.

New Babylon Amsterdam (special commission of 1968) ink on map 200x300 cm Image from ‘Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-architecture of Desire’ by Mark Wigley, Constant Niewenhuys (1998)

Ground plan on New Babylon over The Hague 1964 Image from ‘Constant - New Babylon’ by Rem Koolhaas (2005)

Pull-out advertisement banners covering an abandoned indoor crane in Camel Paint 3 Photos taken during field trip, by Osten Chan

LED signs over steel directory outside Camel Paint 3 Photo: Osten Chan

Conforming to the Situationist antagonization of controlling architecture and urban designs, where each line drawn represents a mean of violence and segregation, Constant’s take on drawing the New Babylon would utilize the repetition of lines where one would undo the other, or where each connection made by individuals would dissolve the preceding ones.8 In Kwun Tong’s industrial buildings like the Camel Paint Building Block 3, the minimal presence of top-down management, thus the lack of shop type categorization would constitute the chaotic contestation for visual appeal of individual shop units, henceforth the unsorted variety in façade decorations and interior designs, which effectively dissolves any shop’s hierarchical presence over the other. Needless to say, with the low cost wrapping of pre-existing infrastructure and insignificant top-down management, alongside the vertical accessibility and the dissolving of shop hierarchy among fellow unit tenants, the

consequent lower rent9 plus greater versatility in space usage has unshackled a lot of cultural industry entrepreneurs from the high land rents economic burden in Hong Kong, in pursue of the relatively less economically efficient but more “playful“ adaptations of shop spaces for cultural productions, i.e. conversions into art studio, music studio or singing schools. Yet still, such inclusive utilization of space would still be far from actualization, if not due to the additional factor… At the regional scale, New Babylon and Kwun Tong would be analysed comparatively from the perspective of technology. In New Babylon, Telecommunication in particular was highlighted of its crucial role in the regulation of spaces and inhabitants, due to the anticipated fluctuation of community yet a shared goal for collective creation in the city of play, such that it could establish the needed interpersonal contact over the spatial migrations.10

Ladderlabyrinth (Ladder Labyrinth) / brass, plexiglass, wood / 71.5 x 96.5 x 86cm Image from ‘Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-architecture of Desire’

Ode ä l’Odéon (Tribute to Odeon) / oil and aluminum paint on canvas / 19 0 x 20 0 cm Image from ‘Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-architecture of Desire’

Sector /dry point etching / 5.5 x 12cm Image from ‘Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-architecture of Desire’

Corridor perspective of Camel Paint 3. Photo: Osten Chan

Comparably, with a minimal intervention in business categorizations and agglomerations among floors of industrial buildings, looking for the desired shop type along the levels of disarrayed units would virtually be looking for a needle in the haystack, if the regulation from telecommunications were not present. Revoking the stroll and shop typology, customers are now induced in movement by the collective data contributed to the popularity of the businesses instead, represented by the received likes or followers of their business accounts on the social media, where actual directions would then be supplemented via the information from account pages. In such, telecommunications, especially the contemporary incarnation of social media, has taken on an intangible yet significant role of spatial regulation of Kwun Tong via its influences on circulation. Additionally, in light of the experimental collectivism proposed by Constant, it was intriguing to notice traces of collective

space-making and creative production lifestyle in New Babylon demonstrated in the present-day through the digital medium of online social platforms. From Constant’s writing, it was descriptive over each person’s power in actively shaping spaces through elements such as brightness, acoustics or even forms, materials and colours.11 In line with the notion of unitary urbanism from the Situationist International, whereas passive digestion of the urban spatial experience was revolted against,12 social media nowadays could demonstrate a similar rigor of active participation, whereas impressions of spaces would be crafted online through every posts of their physical guests. Via the visual representation through the phone camera and the textual reflections under the fingertips, spatial impressions and ambiences of shops are fabricated online for potential visitors way before they enter the industrial building. A semi-fictional, cyber-copy of Kwun Tong would be found across multitude of social

platforms and online media, fabricated from posts of photos, films and text, accumulatively constructed each and every day in different creative subjective manners, while at the same time translating such space vastly across the internet, reaching at a planetary scale to the other ends of the globe, like the New Babylon. Furthermore, the easy subjective creation of aesthetic representations through social media such as Instagram’s film effects and photo filters would also resonate New Babylon’s anti-art statement, whereas Homo Ludens would not need deliberate art forms when art could be curated into any daily objects and spaces.13 Anyhow, such phenomenon which involves far more than the Kwun Tong context would leave to be discussed in another enquiry dedicated to New Babylon at the social media or the cyberspace. To sum up, this paper discussed how spaces of inclusion and non-hierarchical in access are

created in both the New Babylon and Kwun Tong, with the underlying socio-economic urge for reconstruction and flexibility; via physical means of wrapping of pre-existing, vertical connections and dissemination of hierarchy; and alongside technology’s assistance in spatial and circulation regulation and allowing users’ active participation in space making. Notably, existing constraints for both industrial buildings and the social media shall not be overlooked before the bold verdict of Kwun Tong being an all-inclusive, “Playful Utopia” was made. For instance, congestion at guest elevators, dilapidation and safety concerns of physical amenities, as well as authenticity or even biased interpretations of onlineportrayed spaces are problematic yet realistic conditions that are still to be confronted. Although Kwun Tong is still far from, or even opposite to the Situationist dream of independence from the market economy. Nevertheless, with Kwun Tong’s revitalization

that has allowed the infantile inclusion of cultural production into the dense and competitive urban fabric of Hong Kong, maybe it is one step closer in understanding what Constant Nieuwenhuys has once replied his sceptical audience,14 “New Babylon is not a future city. New Babylon exists now!”

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

This term was first coined by Dutch cultural theorist and historian Johan Huizinga in book “Homo Ludens“, which Constant was heavily inspired after reading his work, consequently and partly constituting the basis of New Babylon. Fondation Constant / Stichting Constant, 2021. “Situationist International 1958-1960.” Accessed 22 December 2021. https://stichtingconstant. nl/situationist-international-1958-1960. Constant Nieuwenhuys, “Constant by Linda Boersma,” Interview by Linda Boersma, BOMB, April 1, 2005, Issue #91 Constant Nieuwenhuys, “New Babylon” (Haags Gemeetenmuseum, The Hague, 1974) HKSAR Census and Statistics Department, Structural Changes in Hong Kong’s Manufacturing Industries, 1986 – 1996, December 23, 1998. HKSAR Development Bureau, “Revitalisation of Industrial Buildings – An Update.” PowerPoint slides, March 12, 2011 “Situationism was about the creation of situations: le création des situations. We discussed other ways of living, and from there the discussion soon turned to living environments.” Nieuwenhuys, interview. For instance, Camel Paint Building Block 3, being one of the most busy and visited industrial building in Kwun Tong, has a total number of 2 guest lifts and 6 cargo lifts, supporting its high logistical load, and the possibility of furniture malls and retail businesses to proliferate on higher floors. Ludo van Halem, Mark Wigley. “Constant’s New Babylon,” moderated by Hans den Hartog Jager. Art Basel, Salon,

Architect Talk, June 18, 2015, video, 13:25-16:05. Data from Midland IC&I shows that solely within Kwun Tong, industrial building unit rents on average ranges from HKD12-20 per square foot, while that of street side shop spaces ranges from HKD75 to up to 280 per square foot. Midland IC&I, accessed December 21, 2021, https://www.midlandici.com.hk/ics/property/home/ 10. “In a fluctuating community, without a fixed base, contacts can only be maintained by intensive telecommunications. Each sector will be provided with the latest equipment, accessible to everyone, whose use, we should note, is never strictly functional“ Constant Nieuwenhuys, “Technology,“ in “New Babylon” (Haags Gemeetenmuseum, The Hague, 1974) 11. “In New Babylon, each person can at any moment, in any place, alter the ambiance by adjusting the sound volume, the brightness of the light, the olfactive ambiance or the temperature. Should a small group enter a space, then the ordering of that space can become something else. By articulating many small spaces, one can create a space of more ample dimensions, or vice versa. One can also change the form of a space with new entrances, or by blocking the old ones; by adding or removing stairs, bridges, ladders, ramps, etc. With a minimum of effort, one can arrive at any desired modification. Moreover, one has at hand a varied range of partitions of different materials, textures and colors; different too in their thermo-acoustic qualities. The stairs, bridges and pipes are themselves of varied construction and form.” Quoted from Nieuwenhuys, “Technology,“ in “New Babylon”. 12. Constant Nieuwenhuys, “Unitary Urbanism at the end of the 1950s” in Internationale Situationniste, December 1959, #3 9.

13. 07:10, Halem, Wigley, Art Basel. 14. Question: “When we are freed of the ‘tyranny of labor’, of obligation, will it be possible to play a game?” Response: “…New Babylon is not a future city. New Babylon exists now! In every creative deed, in every artwork, in the lives of many free people, in thoughts and imaginations.” Quote Constant Nieuwenhuys, “New Babylon,” Lecture, Delft University of Technology of Technology, Dutch, February 6, 1961.

Reflecting inclusion: experience, maps and representations Sum Ho, Hong

What is the experience of space in the digital age? In post-industrial Kwun Tong, the place witnessed a paradigm shift from an active industrial site in the 60s to a site with vacant industrial buildings in the 90s as factories and productions moved to mainland China. Since the start of the Industrial building revitalization measures from April 2010 to March 2016, a new life was given to industrial buildings to transition from industrial sites to businesses of diverse industries, ranging from restaurants, leathercraft workshops, to furniture ateliers and trading offices.1 In the process of transitioning, these retailers gain exposures amid the rising popularity of social media. The advent of the Internet has arguably opened an inclusive stage, where independent retailers can participate through online and offline promotions. This essay attempts to reflect Kwun Tong as a site of increasing inclusivity through

the lens of digital mapping and speculate the future spatial experience from material to immaterial, through the examples illustrated. Kwun Tong is arguably a site with increasing inclusivity. A person, who has not visited the place before, will first Google the related shops, or see reposts from Instagram and Facebook. As he or she gets off the train, walks across the bridges, the façade fails to inform anything about the interior. Unlike the glass towers nearby, filled with vibrant signages visible from the outside, the plastered, painted façade of the industrial building will lead the customers to the retailers to enjoy the service with the help of Google map for directions. The world is shrunk into the infinite plane, framed by the glowing picture plane. From the screen, we receive information of the history, images, services and ratings of the shop. The transition from the station to the retailers relies heavily on the use of the digital, creating such increasing accessibility to the anonymous sites in Kwun Tong.

Figure 1 Kazimir Malevich. Dynamic Suprematism. 1950. Source: Tate

In digital space, lines construct geometries, construct positions and space. The experience through the digital interface can be compared to the works by Russian Suprematists, Kazimir Malevich and his acquaintances. Squares, circles, rectangles, and triangles, situate and orient on the canvas, coated in colors. As Malevich wrote, “The visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling.” (Malevich, 1959) the geometries as objects become meaningful as the spectators consider geometries as related and relevant to each other.2 Thus, they form a “cosmic relationship” (Canizares, 2019) with one another, defined by their proximities and misalignments.3 Whether they are arranged on the same or different planes, it depends on your perceptions. The open interpretations can be described by El Lissitzky, “Irrational space”. As he wrote in “A. and Pangeometry”, “Suprematist space may be formed not only forward from the plan but also backward in depth.” (Harrison and Wood, 1993), sug-

gests that if the position of the picture plane is located at level 0, the direction in depth will either be described as + (positive) and – (negative), in forward or backward directions.4 The irrational space where the foreground and background no long are distinguishable and therefore take form as illusions, lies in the infinity of the solid and void. The works make use of the canvas as the interface to communicate the boundless yet abstract thoughts to spectators. What is within the canvas, is therefore a framed picture plane by the artists. If so, the digital screen is comparatively the interface between the users and the immaterial, infinite digital space where the positions of points, lines, and geometries will be defined by coordinates on the X, Y, Z axes. Despite the open interpretations in works of the Suprematists, and digital space have allowed, information grounds the vastness of the spatial experience to the measurable and quantifiable parameters, translated from data of the physical world. By defining the material

into the immaterial, the experience of physical space migrates from three-dimensional, to two-dimensional, abstracting what is important to mere data points. From the vehicular noise to the bustling street, the journey of walking from one place to another is reduced to a navigation of “from” and “to”. As the unimportant is filtered, the perception of space is reduced to information, in which architectural experiences, such as materiality, are unnoticed, or removed. The singularity resulted from such abstraction and reduction is arguably problematic. What are deemed as unimportant architectural information? When asked about the effect of altered notion of form, from static to constantly changing by data, on architecture, French philosopher Paul Virilio says, the influx of information will change the traditional understanding of architecture, stone façade into digital screens.5 (Virilio and Ruby, 1993) Perhaps an environment filled with information, architecture may as well reflect and map out what’s inside and what’s outside instantaneously.

While the process of abstraction may reduce the built environment to blocks and geometries, how does the process of addition and exaggeration influence the experience of digital urban spaces, or even our ways of perceiving the city? The advent of new computer technologies enables the reconstruction of the physical world, translating the real-life experience into virtual simulation. From reality to surreality, RMB City: A Second Life, created by Chinese artist Cao Fei, visualizes the heterotopic scenery in the rapid urbanization of China, experienced through the lens of virtual avatars. As Foucault writes, while utopia is constructed, perfect idea that is “fundamentally unreal”, heterotopia exists in reality, a state which reality is “represented, contested and inverted”6 (Foucault, 1967). Considered as a “condensed incarnation of contemporary Chinese cities” (Cao, 2007), the virtual city is where avatars, or your virtual selves, will attend happenings, inaugurations in the reconstruction Chinese developing cities.7 In RMB City: A

Figure 2 Built environment of RMB City: A Second Life Planning, 2007. Source: Artsy

Figure 3 China Tracy (Avatar of Cao Fei) in RMB City, 2007. Source: China Tracy: i.Mirror part 1 by ChinaTracy/CaoFei on Youtube

Second Life Planning, objects and elements from the reality are appropriated to neither a mere faithful presentation of the reality, nor the utopian visualisation of a dream state. Instead, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, with pink inflated balloons, sits in a slanted orientation, above the rusted Beijing Olympic Stadium stranded on the ocean, whereas the Bank of China Tower is duplicated multiple times, rendered as glass tower, and extruded red banknotes. Water gushes through Tiananmen Square, runs through the Three-Gorges Dam and the city. Above all, the swinging CCTV tower is swinging mid-air with a stuffed panda tied to the crane. Despite the surreal and seemingly glorious replications, the drifting of the avatar, China Tracy (or Cao Fei, the artist herself), witnesses the gory side of the development, as she sits at the sewage ducts and landfills where pollutants and industrial waste are expelled.8 (Cao, 2007) The expansive virtual reality is a commentary that reflects the bright and dark sides in

the country’s rapid development. Through the eyes of the avatar, players are projecting themselves in the reality that replicates perspectival visions in our naked eyes. Instead of navigating with a map, we, as the avatars, are witnessing the virtual through our eyes. Between the material and immaterial, the reappearance and disappearance of matters provoke players to rethink and consider the mundane as shocking through the immersive experience. As the iconographies of modern China, such as the CCTV Tower designed by Rem Koolhaas and Beijing National Stadium designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the state of disrepair and instability is projecting the artists’ anxieties to the aftermath of such development.9 The information of each building contains, grounds our perceptions to the reality and mapped out with new juxtapositions, until we consider the happenings next to the other objects are impossible and, therefore, surreal. As we are witnessing the movements of China Tracy and the other avatars, we are equally witnessing the re-

ality of our ever-evolving urban environment. Representing the physical world into the two-dimensional picture plane equals translating the material into immaterial, separated by the interface or the screen. From the works of the Suprematists and RMB City: A Second Life, by Cao Fei, they provide valuable lessons to the limitations and possibilities in the representations of the reality through abstractions and digital space. While the purist distils and codifies the abstract into geometries and the latter juxtaposes and exaggerates, the results of dealing with the information objects embody, from their physical and climatic conditions to their social promise to local communities and global icon, reflect the production of architecture is no longer static, but a constant analysis and interpretations of data and information. In the process of mapping, what kind of information is amplified, or reduced? As landscape architect James Corner argues mapping as “agency lies in neither reproduction nor imposition but rather in uncovering

realities previous unseen or unimagined, even across seemingly exhausted grounds.” (Corner, 2002), the results of mapping vary as we interpret data from different perspectives and with different parameters.10 Instead of a rigid answer, the act of mapping and representations is an open-ended question, revealing unseen truth. However, on Google Map, the act of sorting items and places into a certain programmes and categories, such as “Services”, “Shopping”, “Food & Drink”, oversimplifies and condenses the experience of the city into consumption. What is considered as irrelevant, from the infrastructure of the city, real-time weather reports, to the patterns of population in each district, is eliminated. In Kwun Tong, even though the use of digital maps increases the accessibility and popularity of retailers in industrial buildings, and therefore arguably creates inclusions, the representations of the retailers and the environment, as discussed, reduce the experience to mere flat imageries and reviews. In the

analysis of data, the issues discovered in the studies are addressed through the art and design disciplines.11 As recently Meta and other technology companies are promoting the concept of metaverse and immersive experience through augmented reality and virtual reality, the spatial experience in the future might be an in-between the physical and virtual, material and immaterial. In the age of information, architecture will be understood and experienced in a different way, as French philosopher Paul Virilio puts it, “Any kind of matter is about to vanish in favour of information... The same happens with architecture: it will continue to exist, but in the state of disappearance.”12 (Virilio and Ruby, 1993)

Notes

1. 翁子忠., 鍾嘉慧., 李志剛., 翁子忠, 鍾嘉慧, 李志剛, and 香港電台. 電視部. 走過觀塘五十年 [electronic Resource]. 香港故事 ; [2010-0322]. 香港: 香港電台, 2010. 2. Kasimir Malevich, The non-objective world, (Chicago: Paul Theobald and Company, 1959), 67 3. Galo Canizares, “Notes on Hashtag Architecture” in Digital fabrications: designer stories for a software-based planet, (New York: Applied Research & Design, 2019), 140 4. El Lissitzky, “A. and Pangeometry,” in Art in Theory 1900-1990, an Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood , (Cambridge: Wiley Blackwell, 1993), 303. 5. Paul Virilio and Andreas Ruby, “Architecture in the Age of Its Virtual Disappearance: an interview with Paul Virilio by Andreas Ruby. Paris, 15 October 1993” in The Virtual Dimension : Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, ed. John Beckmann (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.), 181 6. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias.” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité no. 5, 1984, 46-49. 7. Cao Fei, “RMB City: Online Urbanization”. Cao Fei. Accessed 21 Dec 2021. http://www. caofei.com/works.aspx?wtid=3&year=2007 8. Cao Fei, “China Tracy: i.Mirror part 1.” Filmed June 2007 at RMB City: A Second Life. Video, 28:00. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vcR7OkzHkI&t=533s 9. Chris Berry, “Cao Fei’s Magical Metropolises” in Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China, ed. Minna Valjakka and Meiqin Wang (Amsterdam:

Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 210-236 10. James Corner, “The agency of mapping” in Mappings ed. Denis Cosgrove, (London: Reaktion, 2002), 213-252 11. Anastasia Karandinou, “Data and the experience of place: the use of data in contemporary spatial and cultural studies” in Data, Architecture and the Experience of Place, (Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge, 2019) 1-17. 12. Paul Virilio and Andreas Ruby, “Architecture in the Age of Its Virtual Disappearance: an interview with Paul Virilio by Andreas Ruby. Paris, 15 October 1993” in The Virtual Dimension : Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, ed. John Beckmann (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.), 187

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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.