Thesis @Harvard GSD

Harvard University Graduate School of Design Master in Architecture I Thesis SU Chang advised by Eric Hรถweler

Inhabit, Imagine

I.

the Corbusian dream and its Hong Kong reality

II.

the Koolhaas Problem and its Hong Kong lesson

III. the Hong Kong method and some design speculations

IV.

my (anti)thesis as manifesto

provocation collage, Villa Savoye Unfold Villa Savoye’s generic column grid suggested by the domino system constantly contains, conforms or even contests the sense of “wander-through” of its promenade

I.

the Corbusian dream and its Hong Kong reality

aerial photo, Taikoo, Hong Kong, 1990s

model photo, Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier, 1930

photo, Choi Hung Estate, Hong Kong, 1979

perspective, Ville Contemporaine, Le Corbusier, 1922

When Le Corbusier said that a house is a machine à habiter, he reveals the intrinsic nature of a housing prototype as a manifested synthesis between individual inhabitation and the society’s technological development. Housing is therefore the relational status between our personal biography and the broader social history, and the creation of housing should be understood as a process to materialize a form of imagination between our selves and the social whole.

To Inhabit is thus to imagine.

climbing formwork, Hong Kong

prefab facade, Hong Kong

zoning map, Kai Tak Redevelopment, Hong Kong, 2015

system map, Hong Kong MTR, 2017

My thesis revisits the ontological understanding of housing as the convergence between the act of building as collective and the way of living as individuals, by using Hong Kong as the model city for investigation - a hyper-dense metropolis, I would argue, that best realized many of Le Corbusier’s dreams about housing and the city. Hong Kong’s absolute efficiency is shaped by two forces: the technological efficiency promised by the integration of in-situ climbing formwork and prefab components, and the social efficiency supported by the highly-specific zoning regulations and extensive infrastructural network.

plan and interior, subdivided flat, Hong Kong, 2012

plan and interior, WeWork co-working space, Hong Kong, 2015

Yet the quality of such efficiency is increasingly challenged, as we more often than ever live in the same space (and time) as we produce: our lifestyle has become more precarious, plural and no longer containable within the rigid typologies of modernist housing and offices. The emergence of subdivided units and co-working spaces signifies the paradoxical tendency between the ruthless shrinkage of live space and the generous domestication of work space. It is therefore necessary to rethink housing both technologically and socially in order to resume its agency as a form of imagination between the self and the society.

two prevailing spatial paradigms of Hong Kong left: specific rooms of residential tower typical plan, Harmony-I public housing model, Hong Kong, 1990s right: generic landscape plan of office tower typical plan, International Commerce Center, Hong Kong, 2010

Bigness or the problem of Large S,M L XL, Rem Koolhaas, 1995

II.

the Koolhaas Problem and its Hong Kong lesson

The Arch, Sung Hung Kai Properties / P&T / Ove Arup, Hong Kong, 2006

Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, 1972

In his 1995 essay, Bigness, Rem Koolhaas announced that technological inventions in building industry has problematized the agency of architecture by separating how we occupy architectural interior and how we construct and conceive buildings from the outside.

This is particular the case in Hong Kong housing, as we increasingly find ourselves becoming “voluntary prisoners� in big residential buildings.

cathedral + convent + condo + school + shops + hotel + community center + lower-middle class housing

Caine Road, Mid-levels, Hong Kong

chapel + condo + school + shops + serviced aparment

Robinson Road, Mid-levels, Hong Kong

chapel + convent + condo + school + shops + hotel + hospital + serviced aparment + lower-middle class housing

Caroline Hill Road, Causeway Bay, Hong

Yet there is another side of Hong Kong that can offer lessons to the city itself. An unruly, opportunistic, and pluralistic Hong Kong: housings, offices, churches, hotels, schools, gymnasiums, shopping malls, wet markets, libraries, galleries - programs that don’t usually come together now stack, overlap and merge into each other. The relationship between leisure and work becomes blurry in these urban situations, and space for living and space for production re-integrate in an unplanned manner.

House on top of a Factory - a Hong Kong Businessman’s Villa, Dongguan China, 2016

Perhaps there is no better provocation for us to rethink the status of contemporary housing than this house on top of a factory: with the factory as a part of the industrial fabric; the house as a domestic retreat in the air; and the space in-between as the transition between the two domains inviting nature into the worklive hybrid.

walled villages plan / field system / photo Kat Hing Wai walled village, Hong Kong, 19C

shophouses plan / section / street plan / photo Chinese tenement house

industrial settlement estates plan / aerial / street photo Mark-I settlement housing and industrial estates Shek Kip Mei, Hong Kong, 1960

In fact, space for living and space for production in Hong Kong’s dwelling typologies are always related - primitive clusters, walled villages, merchant shophouses, industrial communes - each presents a particular construction-lifestyle relationship embodying its social situation. The paradigmatic nature of these housing models also promises their capacity to construct specific forms of urban fabric, social relationship, and, most importantly, new subjectivities with particular ideas of space and notion of time. Therefore, the ontological quest for inhabitation as imagination requires an epistemological shift from housing as provision and commodity to housing as production of subjectivity for its contemporary society.

The Arch, Sung Hung Kai Properties / P&T / Ove Arup, Hong Kong, 2006

III. the Hong Kong method and some design speculations

housing estates in Hong Kong with transfer plate structurally connecting podium and tower

If Koolhaas’s New York delirium is promised by the popularization of elevator, the unruliness of Hong Kong is made possible by a unique invention of the city: the transfer plate.

Transfer plate is the duplicated ground in the air, allowing any types of architecture to stack on top of each other. From the outside, transfer plate appears to be a total anonymity, an urban whiteout in section; from the inside, it is the structural promise of programmatic hybridity. Fundamentally, a transfer plate is a gridded system of beams transferring loads between structures with different spans. Each beam consists of several precast sub-beams which are then connected and casted in-situ with concrete blocks as infill.

Column - Platform - In-stu Casting - Parallel Construction transfer plate construction at Olympian City, MTR + Sino Land, Kowloon, 2005

internal structure of transfer plate

CORB MEETS CORB Unité d’Habitation, 1952 Harvard Carpenter Center, 1963

MIES MEETS MIES 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, 1950 IIT Crown Hall, 1956

PAUL MEETS PAUL The Colonnade, 1980 Yale Art and Architecture Building, 1963

collage exercise re-inventing modernist housing and space for knowledge production with transfer plate as device

If Bruno Latour is correct that design is only ever re-design, it is worthwhile to evaluate the unsung structural and spatial potential of transfer plate for the re-invention of hybrid housing prototype.

model house of continuous interior, or, house with access from within, or, house of the son of voluntary prisoners

Perhaps we could imagine a house of continuous interior - two structural volumes intersect with each other creating an atmospheric continuity with spatial definition only by sectional datum. The intersection therefore becomes a transfer space for both the house’s circulation and structure - a convergent point synthesizing how the house should be occupied and how it would be built. Perhaps we should call it a house with access from within, as the only possibility to “enter” into the house is through the transfer space at the center of the house; or, the house of the son of voluntary prisoners, since the only way of being in the house is to be inside at the very beginning.

model, sections, plans, house of continuous interior, or, house with access from within, or, house of the son of voluntary prisoners

This house design exercise offers prototypical materials for further investigation: first, the vertical succession of intersecting structural volumes in alternating directions as the construction technique; second, the continuity of spaces suggesting a form of fluid occupancy; and third, the dweller as the accommodated subject that can only be produced with the creation of the house.

SHEUNG WAN, HONG KONG 0

40

80

200

When it comes to the scale of housing, it is necessary to understand the previous prototype as an open system that can find its way to situate itself in the city.

The Hong Kong transfer plate could be then scaled into a three-dimensional system of structural walls, casted in-situ with prefab building services like elevators, stairs, bathrooms and kitchens. The alternating succession of structural tubes subsequently generates an alphabet of floor plans typologies.

study models: massing - volumnes - walls - tubes - programs - subtraction

ALPHABET OF PLANS

floor plan alphabet

open-air landscape

covered work-station

indoor program

Inside the tubes houses three types of work space: the open-air landscape, the semi-indoor work-station, and the indoor programs. The alternate intersection creates the double functioning of the spaces: in summer, the horizontal tubes allow cross ventilation and provide deep shading; in winter, the spaces can be compartmentalized for local conditioning and utilize stack effect for environmental comfort.

interior, Work Space

SECTION - 1 0

2

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the mat

the bridge

the mini-tower

Meanwhile, three types of live space occupy the space in-between these transfer structure: the mat, the bridge and the mini-tower, each with specific degrees of privacy, durations of occupancy and types of ownership, representing different ideas of space, notions of time, and forms of subjectivity:

The Mat Half-Room Hourly Occupancy

The Mat offers the model of half-room for hourly occupancy. The hourly dweller works as he/she travels in the city. They never need more than a bed for biological basics. During the day (and perhaps the night, too) you will see them talking, typing or contemplating in the cafe the same floor where he/she slept the night(or the day) before. The next morning you will find them in another half-room, settling in or ready to move to a new place for work.

The Bridge Half-Studio Weekly Occupancy

The Bridge offers the model of half-studio for weekly occupancy. The weekly dweller always dreams for his/ her own place for living in yet the budget could only afford half of it. They keeps the space private to themselves for twelve hours a day, while in the other twelve hours, he/she will open up the space for neighbours.

The neighbors hosted a welcome barbecue in the community garden last Sunday when the weekly dweller was moving in, but by Wednesday he/she could only recognize half of their faces as the other half of the neighbors are this week’s new comers.

The Mini-Tower Half-House Yearly Occupancy

The Mini-Tower offers the model of half-house for yearly occupancy. The yearly dweller pays for the privacy a house promises without the cliche of luxurious redundancy. He/she sometimes hosts parties at home, but more often they enjoy meeting random people for coffee or drinks when working remotely in the cafe-bar next door. Every season he/she would buy new furnitures to rearrange the layout of the half-house. In six months the weekly dweller expecting his/her first child so they are planning to move to a bigger halfhouse for a new bed and perhaps a bigger closet.

SECTION - 11 0

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The floor plan alphabet can then be translated into combinations of different types of work space and live space generates a series of live-work hybrid condition.

To some extent, the design offers three different models of living alone while being together: the hourly half-room, the weekly half-studio and the yearly halfhouse - each suggests a set of specific boundaries between private and public, live and work, subject and object. Each mode of inhabitation therefore should be understood as particular form of imagination between the individual selves and social collective.

PLAN 13F / hourly + weekly + yearly housing 0

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PLAN 19F / y 0

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yearly housing 10

PLAN 23F / hourly + weekly housing 0

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10

IV.

my (anti)thesis as manifesto

In the earlier part of this thesis, it was said that the Corbusian Hong Kong, with its absolute technological and social efficiency, is problematized by Rem Koolhaas’s theory of Bigness. It ought now to end by providing my own antithesis of Koolhaas’s theorems, with which I hope could conclude my thesis:

movie still, Five against the House, Phil Karlson, 1955

Acknowledgement The thesis becomes a reality with the kind support of many individuals, I owe my gratitude to: my thesis advisor Eric Hรถweler, for his trust and tolerance of my curiosity, experiment, and persistence; my family, for their never-ending love; my teachers and friends at GSD and other places, for the many inspiring debates, advice and encouragement.

This thesis is made possible by two hands and many others.

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