the street.mall an alternative model for transit-malls in Hong Kong
THESIS REPORT .
jason-so M.ARCH II
SO TZE SHUN JASON 2005109851 The University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture Supervisor | EUNICE SENG
thesis report
the street.mall an alternative model for transit-malls in Hong Kong
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Introduction
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Research Work
the street.Mall
an alternate to transit-malls in Hong Kong as non-junkspaces
This thesis aims to demonstrate the intent to evolve such generic transitconnected retail facility into one that could counteract the proneness towards Generic City in Hong Kong. The project attempts to redefine continuous interior and the ‘street’, and aims to blend the global generic content with local contextual cultures while offering public spaces for various events and activities more than merely shopping in response to the chosen testing site context, as a statement against the growth of generic catalytic retail containers and the promotion of consumerism as the major culture in Hong Kong that turns it into a generic city.
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Design Development
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Final Presentation Materials
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Bibliography and Acknowledgements
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Introduction
‘The City is no longer.’ - Rem Koolhaas
‘Reality is increasingly immaterial, and our modes of travel become static terminal transmissions.’ Christine Boyer, Cybercities
Under the capitalistic and commercial atmosphere in Hong Kong, global entrepreneurs and developers have been establishing a growing numbers of large scale shopping malls that are directly connected to the rapid transit as an integrated typology, taking advantage of the convenience and efficiency offered by the MTR. This creates a ‘continuous interior’ that drives people into those retail and entertainment containers which began to pervade as the most common places for the public in the city.
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Such shopping mall cultures have already been an issue for long that has transformed citizens’ living and leisure habits. Street activities / Street Life, which has been one of the most significant urban cultures since the past, is being challenged by the ‘new public spaces’. Major transit-malls are so foreign, exotic or universal, that have not at all respected the existing district cultures and life, but rather swallowed them.
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Not only promoting a culture of consumption and consumerism as the major leisure mode and living habit for the people, such malls have been acting as a catalyst of generic city and Junkspace, with respect to Koolhaas’ statement, as the architecture of malls in Hong Kong are always introverted and internalized containers of homogenous global brands and chain shops, with similar architectural, spatial elements and programmatic organizations.
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On top of that, these containers began to intangibly displace other local cultures and the original sense of place at their locations, as the continuous interior has isolated people from the surrounding context within their clear and solid boundaries that chop off visitors from the site context. In one sense, urban cultures and city identity is fading, being invaded by global cultures and identity that might exist in any other place in the world. The Generic City should not be the ultimate aim as city and people loses their unique characters.
‘We divert our eyes to project ourselves from the tyranny of constant visualization. Our sense of sight is dulled by this hyper-imageability that makes everything appear familiar and already known. And the reliance on stereotypical images erases the complexity and the nuances of the physical form of the lived city. Christine Boyer, Cybercities
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This thesis aims to demonstrate the intent to evolve such generic transitconnected retail facility into one that could counteract the proneness towards Generic City in Hong Kong. The project attempts to redefine continuous interior and the ‘street’, and aims to blend the global generic content with local contextual cultures while offering public spaces for various events and activities more than merely shopping in response to the chosen testing site context, as a statement against the growth of generic catalytic retail containers and the promotion of consumerism as the major culture in Hong Kong that turns it into a generic city.
‘We already use the streets and buildings to create a physical fiction of our common original, now we need to tap deeper into the aesthetic of new beginnings that inspires our emotions.’ - Sharon Zukin
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Research Work
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The significance of the MTR / Rapid Transit The research begins with a looking toward the development of the transportation mode in Hong Kong. Since its operation in 1979, MTR has becoming the major transportation mean by the city-dwellers. The passenger numbers grow from year to year, projecting a fact that people in the city is relying on its convenience and efficiency more as the traffic on the ground gets more and more saturated.
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MTR and its related property development Along with the extension and establishment of different lines, the MTR cooperates with several entrepreneurs to develop various properties ranging from residential to commercial mixed use developments, which are integrated with the stations as a new kind of typology in the city. The major sake of that is because of profit inevitably. Most of these developments are shopping malls that are directly connected to the exits of the stations.
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The MTR-Malls time line This timeline demonstrates the examples of transit-malls developed throughout the timeline of the MTR development. All of these malls are continuously grown out from the underground / aboveground transit spaces of the stations, generating an experience of continuous interior from node to node in the city. City-dwellers do not have to get out from the interior space while they can get to places from places to the malls which possess all-in-one entertainment and retail facilitiies.
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Mall Analysis 8 of the recent transitmalls are chosen to analyse in terms of their spatial, architectural and programmatic arrangements. Most of them can be concluded in various components exploded in such representation,.
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Design Development
Unfolding the mall to streets.
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Site Choice I have chosen Mongkok as a testing site, which is located near the most busiest area of Mongkok. The site itself is a well-known commercial retail district with saturated commercial activities on the ground level, with several ‘generic’ shopping malls in the area, such as Langham Place. In my proposal, there is a major site in between the three streets and the Mongkok East Station entrance on the south side of Argyle Street, while I expected my design scheme would exceed that site and weave through the existing fabric.
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It can be seen that the pedestrian flow and density gradually decreases from the major Nathan Road with MTR Mongkok station to the potential site through Sai Yeung Choi Street South, Tung Choi Street and Fa Yuen Street. The chosen site is a redeveloping area with least pedestrian flow perhaps because of its lack of character and attraction. This result in a weak connection between the two MTR stations in comparison to the other side of Argyle Street with an extensive bridge connection closely located to an MTR exit. The site has a potential to act as a new node that connects the two train station and become a new hub for public with the pedestrian flow.
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Site Context #1 The site has two unique contexts; first one is that having lots of upstairs hidden shops within the old tenement buildings such as book shops, café, boutiques and galleries. This distinguishes itself as a local culture of the area. Those small retails are somehow ‘squeezed’ onto upper levels as the ground level is so much saturated with global chain shops.
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Site Context #2 The other site character is the street performances existed along the major street, such as music and drama performances. However, the artists and performers have always been prohibited as they interrupted the pedestrian walkway. The street is too busy for such kind of cultural activities to take place. There’s a potency for the design scheme to offer a better place for such kind of activities to sustain and nurture.
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Model mapping out the shops Those upstairs shops are mapped out in this 1 to 500 model. Serveral colours represent different shops at different levels. It can be seen that the plot farther away from the major street while closer to the major site has less shops on the upper levels of the old tenement buildings.
The design approach comes from the ideas from the ‘Street’.
The intent is to dissolve the building boundary and the highly internalized conditions. Instead of creating another solid mass or block growing up from the transit, the continuous interior is maintained while being unfolded to create more exterior or partly exterior spaces and platforms. Those platforms would become public open spaces and spaces for public activities in response to the site demands. Conventional exterior street and the activities are getting challenged by the interior street of the malls. Redefinement of the ‘streetscape’ is explored in this thesis as a design concept so as to blend the generic mall programme with the local contextual characters. Most of the malls especially the more recent vertical malls have similar programmatic configurations having clear horizontal zonings and centralized functions.
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Final Presentation Materials
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The design begins with the ‘entrance’ at the most busiest street, the Sai Yeung Choi street, with the expansion of the underground spaces, an elevated street is created through the old fabrics to the major site. It rises up gradually to connect the upper levels of the old tenement buildings which activate them as small shops with new frontages with signages on those buildings, and this elevated street begins to introduce the street activities and experience into the major site. Spaces below such elevated street become already the retail spaces of my streetmall. The underground continuity and intricacy is mapped onto the aboveground and hopefully it would activate the surrounding street retail activities with the pedestrian flow.
Such interior street begins to weave and juxtapose with the exterior streetscape at the major site to allow ambiguous experience and flexible circulation between interior and exterior. The streets are weaving around several programmatic cores, which are one of the key concept in the design. In response to the conventional strategy of horizontal layerings of programmatic zonings, such as having the F&B, anchor book store and shops at one level, the vertical programmatic cores allow still centralized and direct connections within same types of programmes, while when the streets are being unfolded, an experience of a ‘streetscape’ with more random confrontation of different types of shops are offered.
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The above unfolded plan intends to demonstrate the journey through the spatial and programmatic arrangements. Different colours of the cores represent different major zonings of the shops. Moreover, the four cores with specific programmatic zonings are having defined relationship with the site context : boutiques core is connected to the lower elevated street with more general smaller boutiques shops and cafĂŠ, while the anchor book store core is connected to the upper street for more book shops to grow targeting specific target group of visitors.
Besides, the folding and pleated form of the streets due to expansion of various internal programmes generates landscapes and stage spaces on upper level for hawkers activities, street performances and as parks and reading spaces (Section and renderings). The streets then continue to weave back through the old fabric to activate the units of upper levels for the local small shops to grow organicly, due to the provision of pedestrian flow and connection visually and circulatory, and transform the surrounding elevations and facades that further enhance the existing streetscape textures. The journey goes back to the starting point down to the ground and underground level and completes as a looping circulation.
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Model and Presentation Photos
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Bibliography and Acknowledgements
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Acknowledgements Supervisor
Eunice Seng
Colleagues Choi Kit Wang Chan Stephen To Derrick Helpers Dennis Cheung Janice Lau Cheng Mau Yuen Veronica Cheung Evelyn Fung Joey Au Yeung Carmen Lee Vivian Lau Jeckie Chan Heron Cheung Eugene Kiang Bonix Chung
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Bibliography 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961 Sharon Zukin, Naked city : the death and life of authentic urban places Sharon Zukin, The culture of Cities Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong : Culture and the Politics of Disappearance Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory Christine Boyer, Cybercities Marc Auge, Non-places Joe Moran, Reading The Everyday Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City”, S, M, L, and XL, 1995 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1994) Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Introducing a Concept and its History”, Mutations, 2000 David Harvey, “Right to the City”, New Left Review, 2008 Richard Sennett, “Capitalism and the City”, Future City, 2005 Kim Dovey, Becoming places : urbanism/architecture/identity/power Hans Ibelings , Supermodernism : architecture in the age of globalization Simon Anholt, Places : Identity, Image and Reputations
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