The thesis questions the role of architectural preservation when it encounters with post war mass-housing, which is at the risk of extinction. By contextualizing the research in the last remaining 1960s generation resettlement housing in Hong Kong, Shek Lei, it is found that these sites have housed specific livelihoods in the past yet unable to be traced from the nearly abandoned concrete structure. Extending the building life through any mean of program injection or spatial intervention on the generic structure would not help to preserve the essential chapter of urban history.
It results in the design of controlled disassembly as sequenced farewell events, and reveals separated architectural elements of the mass housing into sight before the building is fully erased. Instead of restoring depicted narration of site history, the design serves as a platform to evoke old inhabitants to imagine their past livelihood by the subtracted and incomplete space, and thereby allowing them to react and exchange their me