Aggregation in Exigent Environment, Mount Everest

CHAN KA FAI 3035713802 THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE

ARCH7082 Design 12 OFIS Studio SEMESTER 2, 2019-20

Objective The reason of choosing this studio is based on the strong sense of calling as an architectural student (a future architect) to give attention to the severe weather and consider how it would increase the vulnerability of human habitation to natural surroundings.

Our purpose for this studio design is to explore the position of architecture between nature and human and how architecture could take the response to the instantaneous and unpredictable phenomena, such as strong winds, heavy snowfalls and extreme cold, and how architecture could help people to adapt the exigent climate.

The chosen site is on Mount Everest. It is because of the assumption of that if our prototype could be applied to the most exigent environment, then it might be also possible to be applied to the less exigent environment around the world.

Proposal People can only achieve the summit of Mount Everest during the window period, which is the 4-5 weeks between late April and May. In the 11 months of the rest of the year, it is too risky and dangerous for any human adventure on Mount Everest.

Since people only climb to the summit of Mount Everest in May each year, we want to propose a temporary structure that would only stay on the Mount Everest for one month, minimising the construction influence to the Mount Everest. The living modules would be carried by the helicopters to the 5 campsites along the climbing route.

For the rest of the 11 months, the modules would be aggregated on a larger scale to form a residential village near the base camp for the shepherds and the local people.

Accessibility People could firstly take the flight from Kathmandu to Lukla.

Then start trekking from Lukla to the base camp through eight checkpoints. It took two days from one checkpoint to the next checkpoint, a day of trekking and another day of resting.

It takes around 16 days before the window period for summit climbing.

Strategies Base on the site analysis, to investigate how architecture can help people adapt to the exigent environment, we focused on the three major environmental factors on Mount Everest and considered them as the design driving factors.

There are, 1) The wind 2) The snow 3) The slopes

Aggregation Cluster Village

Aggregation on Camp 1

Aggregation on Camp 4

https://youtu.be/gkNyCJS6tl0