Emfolio'17

PORTFOLIO’17 Emma Siu, MSc (Arch)

CONTENT

03 curriculum vitae 04 job references property development lobbies renovation serviced apartments

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siuyim@outlook.com (+852) 9732 5648

public housing facade reno restaurant design exhibition center medical center 12 academic works THESIS | unbuilding hong kong from belleville to place des fĂŞtes invisible skyscraper(s) badalona reweaved a course that binds the senses sanctuary 41 extras samples of handsketch

CURRICULUM VITAE ARCHITECTURE EDUCATION

2016.12 2014.10

• POLITECNICO DI MILANO MSc (Arch). Master of Science in Architecture 110/110 Cum laude

2011.06 2007.09

• CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG BSc (Arch). Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Architectural Studies first class honours

Name: Siu Yim Date of Birth: 05.03.1988 Citizenship: Hong Kong

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2014.07 2013.08

LANGUAGES Trilingual: Cantonese, English, Mandarin

2013.04 2012.06

SKILLS Proficiency in various 2D & 3D drafting programs (AutoCAD, SketchUp, 3dMAXStudio, Revit) Proficiency in post-production graphics and text composing (Photoshop, InDeisign, Illustrator)

2012.06 2011.07

Well versed in hand drawing (2D & 3D, details), physical model making, video editing and public speaking THESIS Unbuilding Hong Kong: A Comparative Approach (Paris) To Designing Public Space In Highly Urbanized Context

2010.08

2008.08

DISSERTATION Museum Experience and the Typology of Ramps EXTRA

• VIA ARCHITECTURE LTD Architectural Assistant Firm was commissioned by Swire Properties as design consultant for a serviced apartment project. Worked independently for the firm with other parties: client, architect, designer, main contractor, sub-contractors and consultants in site office.

Worked also on some local interior projects in small teams Project reference: W50, Taikoo Place Apartments • ARCHIPLUS INTERNATIONAL (HK) LTD Architectural Assistant Worked in a team of six on a large-scale residential project over the construction stage. Routine involves making drawings, reviewing specs and coordination between different parties Project reference Ultima • VPANG ARCHITECTS LTD Architectural Designer A broad spectrum of works from planning, architecture, competitions to interior renovations, usually in team of 2-3 persons Project reference: Re-coloring of Choi Hung Estate and other public estates, Guzhan lighting exhibition center (competition), Zummer Fine Dining and Bar • RONALD LU & PARTNERS Research Internship Project reference: Urban permeabilities study • HONG KONG HOUSING AUTHORITY Internship Aid with maintenance works for various estates Gold-PoliPiacenza 2014, 2015 SCHOLARSHIP OpenCity International Summer School Year Representative 2010, 2011

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job references

Private Residential Housing Development ‘Ultima’ 23 Fat Kwong Street, Ho Man Tin Client SHK Properties Architect Archiplus International Ltd S. Engineer Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Ltd Contractor Chun Fai Construction Co Ltd Completion 2016 Project & Scope With 6 towers and 7 houses and a clubhouse of 120,000 sq ft, Ultima is marketed as a luxury property hightlighted by hotel-like features. Between 2012-2013, the project was in early construction stage, my works include but are not limited to façade technical drawings, material sourcing and verification, gondola sourcing and verification, carpark design, clubhouse fitting out, as well as working with interior designers for an off-site show flat.

Office Tower Lobby Design and Build ‘W50’ 50 Wong Chuk Hang Rd, Aberdeen Client SHK Properties Year of Completion 2015 Design At W50, a boutique office building intended for small businesses, we sought to create an identity that blurs the boundary between work and living, and elevate the mundane day-to-day experience to one that carries a hospitality edge. From a base of stained timber veneers in combination with natural and reconstituted stone, we created a graphic that is part plant veins, part contour, and part fingerprint. Simple gestures taking cues from natural elements, rather than strict geometric repetitions, further enhance the bespoke and relaxed atmosphere not usually seen in the office typology. The result is an interior identity that feels luxurious and hip, attracting young entrepreneurs and creative businesses alike.

Luxury Serviced Apartments Interior Consulting ‘Taikoo Place Apartments’ 23 Tong Chong St, Quarry Bay Client Swire Properties Architect Wong & Ouyang (HK) Ltd. Interior Designer Richardson Sadeki New York Contractor Hing Shing Engineering Ltd Year of Completion 2015 Project & Scope The Taikoo Place Apartments features 111 fully serviced residences ranging in size from 477 to 1,610 sq ft, including studios, one- and two-bedroom suites, and exclusive penthouses. Facilities include a clubhouse complete with a reading lounge, a landscaped terrace, a gym, two spas and laundry facilities. To work with a remote design firm, we were brought in to guarantee the end product is up to par with the high standard of our client. Fit-out drawings approval, details approval, materials approval, loose and fixed hardware approval, inspections on site and at factories were carried out routinely.

Public Housing Redecoration Works Choi Hung Estate + 17 others Client Hong Kong Housing Authority Partner Prudential Surveyors International Ltd Year of Completion 2012 Scope The social significance of the outlook of public estate lies in the identity it gives to its residence and the color in specific, could have an impact on their psychological well-being. Montages using existing photos were to be made for every single faรงade and parapets alike in 18 estates over the course of one season. Each color scheme was approached by systematically generated palette and are finalised by representatives from the public sector.

Fine-dining Restaurant Bar Design & Build ‘Zummer Hideout’ QRE Plaza, Wan Chai Client Private Design The duplex fine-dining experience was set to be partFrench and part-Italian. Working with a tight budget, furnitures and fixtures from the previous rentee were up-cycled to contribute to the new western vibe. The project was overseed from design to the opening.

Competition ‘Guzheng Lighting Convention Centre’ Guzheng, China Design An iconic convention centre comprises of two halls was proposed in the peripherals to the historical town of Guzheng. The two halls come together seamlessly through a modern interpretation of the Chinese rotating lamp. The form and skin of the convention center gives a beautiful silhouette of movement and fluidity and is perfect as the display case for all lighting designs both cutting-edge and traditional.

Commisioned Schematics ‘Southside Medical Centre’ Macao, China Design The clinical area of the centre allows a cool tone which converys a hygenic and professional tone. Upon the patients’ arrival to their abode, a warm hue fill up the atmosphere, with the intention to make recovery process feels truly like home.

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academic works

HONG KONG SAR conducted in

PARIS, FRANCE

“ A new kind of urbanismmanipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditonal public space - is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and pseudo- historic marketplaces. It marked the beginning of the realization that public space was being stealthily privatized and commodified... ’’

Unbuilding Hong Kong Treating urbanization as a phenomenon closely related to modernization and industrialization, policy makers and urban planners alike often seek rational and direct answers over sentimental and sustainable ones. Today, cities are swiftly transforming themselves into the nesting ground of hyper-blocks in response to the urgent demand posted by fast-growing population. In Hong Kong, historical buildings along with public spaces are disappearing at an alarming rate for this very reason.

With public space as a commodity in trades, how do we keep them for free? What are good public spaces anyway? How to rectify our errors after relentless development? These are the questions we will all be eventually asking for every big city.

Advicing professor: Hervé Dubois Team: Chan Hiu Fung

urban bipolarity

CUSTOMIZATION

Originally built as standalone office towers in the central business district, high-rise buildings were later adapted for residential and mix-used purposes and are pretty much a ubiquitous entity in the many urban centers in Hong Kong. But as unplanned, spontaneous replacements of older buildings with the new became more frequent, the city is rendered indifferent with that of an illshaken cocktail, sporting scenes after scenes of absurd urbanity+.

Since the 70s, these languages were vastly discarded in the new building designs as demand for space in the city center increased exponentially. In the 80s, following New York’s lead, the idea of letting private sectors take ownership of public space (POPS) was introduced to balance out the shift of dominance from the public to big corporations. And from then on, the once vibrant street life began to dissipate at an alarming rate.

The early developments of block building in the 50s and shadow block in the 60s have exhibited avid concerns for the physical comfort of the pedestrians. The veranda provides shades from the fiery summer sun and pouring monsoon rain; the cascading upper floors allow sunlight in on the road for health and sensory purposes. Rows of these buildings together formed a nice, long shaded urban corridor that thrives on continuity.

In 2001, a statutory body called the Urban Renewal Authority was set up to accelerate redevelopment and to turn buildings that are over 50 years of age into profit-making projects. Omens of detrimental health consequences and fire hazards were spun upon the low-rise, age-old buildings. And so a purge began - huge areas of block buildings are taken down to make way for the brand new hyper-blocks, cutting off sunlight and prevailing wind from reaching ground level.

The deteriorating urban conditions however did not serve as a sign of caution, but instead drove people further into the safe haven of the indoors.

On the verge of a great swamp of despair, it is only morally correct to see that the buildings built in the 50s and 60s can be rightly appraised for their social, cultural and environmental values. The process of re-evaluation is to draw people’s attention to the businesses that are already struggling to compete beyond the ground floor, to inject economic values into the community, and to help them escape the fate of being bulldozed and replaced.

residential

90s - NOW HYPER PODIUM W/ TOWERS

office hotel

80s PODIUM BLOCK

50s BLOCK

Enclosed by a conglomerate of shopping malls, office skyscrapers and a few cake-dividing highways, the selected area is the last piece of land to the west of Nathan Road+ where buildings from the 50s and 60s can still be found. Due to their low-rise physique, the general area could benefit from the turbulence effect caused by a good ratio between the width of street and building height, washing away stuffy air and pollutants, hence maintaining an acceptable air quality on street level when compared to its inland counterpart of Mongkok.

HYPER-BLOCK

commercial

60s SHADOW BLOCK

PUBLIC SPACE

CIRCULATION

The chronological transformation of building typologies in Hong Kong is a tell-all of how a group of people had sacrificed their cultural and historical heritage in exchange for shinier things. The fact that a 3o-floor skyscraper with 100% ground floor site coverage and a 7-floor pre-war building could seemingly coexist in the busiest of city center is an act of monopoly for futilely, some years soon, the little ones will cease to exist.

billboards

70s HYPER BLOCK

LAYOUT COMPONENT

PODIUM HIGHRISE

VERANDA BLOCK

LATENT LAYERS

NEIGHBORHOOD RESPONSE

Back lanes

Action

Existing podium platform

Low-level setback

TECHNICAL SUBTRACTION

High-level setback

MOTIVATION

Structural Frame

Integrated POPS

Circulatory Core

Floor Area Compensation

Reaction

backlane revival

The notion of two dissimilar organisms co-existing in intimate association – a symbiosis is always a better solution than the destruction of either party.

The project’s aim of joining two disparate building typologies into a balanced union is an attempt to ‘keep’ rather than ‘spend’. It crosses the matter of sustainability, whereas taking down buildings generates construction wastes by the tons; it also posts a question to our mentality, and to our democracy.

Measuring city and architecture solely by their monetary values does not bring prosperity; instead it sought despair from the mass.

The quality of public realm, public space is instead a better indicator of people’s general happiness, with largely universal parameters: visual clarity, accessibility, inter-visibility and level of mass involvement.

01

02

03

01 A symbosis of the old and the new, a correction to insensitive planning, re-propered through a new network of public spaces

04

02 A proper public domain free from the corperate decree, more interactve activities can now be accomodated in the widened back lanes 03 Moderated spectatorship provides safety and trust within the neighborhood 04 Multi-leveled plinth of no more than 15m, reveals forgotten venues by elevated looking platforms 05 Three dimensional public space that are physically and visually accessable is installed through subtraction

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PARIS, FRANCE

“ Whilst today our public realm is shifted heavily into the virtual world, it was merely an indicator that says our physical public space is not good enough.

We are still by and large physical beings, who rely heavily on public space and social interactions to abide to the better values in our society.”

From

Belleville

to

Place des Fêtes Quarters are the best storytellers of Paris’ history.

From Haussmann’s modernization in the mid-19th century, the chronic conglomeration of the urban and suburbs, to the high-rise built in the 70s, many ideologies were hidden in plain sight, waiting to be read in the eyes of the beholder. The quarters that make up the city, like many acts, are written in ways specific to the culture, the audience and the environment of the time. And therefore our job would not be to recreate it in the non-quarter parts of the city but to decode the distinctiveness into an understandable language and formulate them into a new play with great characters that make sense to our generation. Wherever the site may be, it is bound to be between two quarters.

We need a new light, but in fact, like composing a bridge between verse and chorus, rhythms are rarely invented but preceded.

Professor(s): Herve Dubois Massimo Galluzzi Stefano Di Vita Team: Chan Hiu Fung Jin Sihuan

1: program (a: open space, b: shops); 2:

pace (a: time for crossing, b: crossing); 3: material; 4: scale

1a 1b 2a

190

23

24

66

2b 3 4

PARIS, FRANCE

“ A building isn’t a building, she and they are going to be disappointed by the outcome. A skyscraper will introduce congestion, cast shadows, and interrupt quaint 19th-century views — in Paris or anywhere else in the world.”

Invisible Skyscraper(s) Architecture is space as much as it is mass, when it comes to high-rises, their impacts on the city have to be treated with extra caution. In the city of Paris, where skyscrapers are recently re-opened for discussions since its ban in 1977, it could perhaps benefit from the introduction of a small footprint, high capacity solution which results in more open space on ground floor level. The approach of trying to keep the building invisible from the neighborhood refrains a monstrous structure to land on the city while serving as a solution to density.

Professor Hervé Dubois Roy Nash Gianluca Vita Team Chan Hiu Fung Giorgio Pernasilici Elena Saccaperni

landmark explorable zone

landmarks and the city

physical boundary main road / connection density saturated area

OVERLAYING LANDMARK & DENSITY ANALYSIS

unactivated streets activated streets secondary road / connection density saturated area

An analysis of the abundance landmarks of Paris focuses on the presence of the structure projected to city strollers. Every landmark was marked with a D400 meter walkable zone presence. Structures that height over 35 meter were considered having a larger presence zone of D600 meter. While super structure Tour Eiffel and skyscraper Montparnasse projects presence zone of over 1 kilometer, meaning people approaching can feel the presnce of the landscape much earlier, implying the probability of exploring the surrounding area on foot.

main road / connection density saturated area

MAPPING THE STREET POPULARITY

existing Landmark explorable zone new skyscraper explorable zone physical boundary main road / connection density saturated area

COMPLETING THE MISSING LINK W/ 2 NEW SITES

landmarks connected with overlapping walking zones of D400m

landmarks connected by visual axis

landmarks that fell into the visible zones of taller landmarks

PERIMETERS Nยบ 1 2

3

1 building density wider = more spacious 2 population density taller = more densely populated 3 target area

site(s) chosen

unblocking the city

urban plaza for better connection in the city

subsidary connection for better access

increasing interfaces by leveling

maximising distance to the skyscraper(s)

residential block

residential block

stepped- farming block

stepped atrium

internal viewing deck pool deck sporting ground + event spaces

outdoor theatre

neighborhood block rebuild plinth + urban connection communal plaza

BADALONA, SPAIN

“If urban fabrics are an enormous architecture unfold, each fabric must perform differently but still comes together as a whole.”

Badalona Reweaved Just cross the river of Besós from Barcelona, Badalona today faces the challenges of urban changes after decades of Spanish industrialization.

On the verge of the retirement of the iconic thermal plants (las 3 torres), a well-integrated scheme which encompasses public/private programs is desperately sought. The dynamic and regenerative capacity of urban planning is explored through the establishment of a systematic framework which may rewrite situational and emotional components to this ancient Roman city.

Professor(s): Lluis Vives Chen Jun Ho Giancarlo Vecchi Team: Stephanie Bart-Mensah Tatiana Perkova Elena Saccaperni

urban analogy

centralized open space

monumentation of node

transitional open space

disposition & direction

infiltrated open space

buffered open space

distant placement

SITE

TREATMENT OF NODES

TYPICAL BLOCKS

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL

A

“Every week I have to wash my filthy curtains. But I can’t take my lungs to the dry cleaners, it is unrealistic to imagine that it might become a park. ’’

Course that binds The Minhocão (earthworm), officially Via Elevada Presidente João Goulart, is a 3.5-kilometre elevated highway in São Paulo, Brazil. Between 21.30 and 06.30 on weekdays and all day on Sundays, the highway is closed to car traffic, allowing dedicated use by pedestrians and cyclists. Local urban planners have long advocated the tearing down of the road in order to promote urban renewal. But what if the infrastructure itself was renewed?

Professor(s): Pessoa Pereira Alves Henrique Bartolomeo Corsini Giancarlo Zappoli Sebastiano Citroni Team: Chan Hiu Fung Maria Anna di Iorio Stephanie Bart-Mensah Wu Haolin

macro approach

green patch(es) Throughout the linear area there are quite a number of parks and green patches that are isolated because of the massive structure. However, they have huge potential to be more open and better connected that would bring people together

gathering point(s) We have chosen to look at shops that serve the general public, which are the restaurants and bars. They are distributed evenly throughout but rather uninviting or simply does not have seats for eat-in. On a nice sunny day people should have the opportunity to enjoy food comfortably, or better yet outdoor where they can do some people-looking and get interactive with others The task of the project was to propose a new landscape to replace the existing highway.

forgotten space(s) Including back of house, worn basketball courts, unmanaged backyards, or simply grounds left vacant along this busy street, hey contributed to a negative ambiance to the area and could be utilised together with the transfomation of the highway

detail tract

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m ro r s f oo es fl cc nd l a rou g

p em s r t itie fo iv e ct ac / a Sp nts e ev to nd ite te d s ex se es nu idg g u br rin w bo Ne igh ne ide ov ce pr a o r sp t t de igh un yl r Sk te igh br ity un g m nin m de Co gar





 

SKYLIGHT DETAIL 1:10

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



GLASS FLOOR CONSTRUCTION DETAIL 1:2       

Floor finish Min. 1.5 clear containment Sealant 24mm double glazing tempered glass Perimeter member Aluminum Part Supporting Structure

CÁDIZ, SPAIN

The

“I wanted to be ‘blind’ to enhance other senses that living in a city are asleep. It was peace that many would like,” he says as he navigates this underground maze from the thirteenth century.

Senses Sanctuary Among the San Cristóbal mountain range in Cádiz lies a few quarries where stones were used for the important buildings arose between the 16th and 18th centuries in some nearby cities like Sevilla.

These quarries, or ‘caves’ were inhabited sometime later until 1986. There has been an effort to develop the heritage into a landscape theme park since.

Professor Ramón Pico Valimaña Team Chan Hiu Fung Nguyen Tung Lam

branding

skygazing

let it flow

sounds & shadow

yours to enjoy, anytime.

shaping the void

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extras

samples of handsketches

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siuyim@outlook.com (+852) 9732 5648