Severe Acute Respiratory City

Thomas Lindsay Robinson College

25th July 2014

SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY CITY

An alternative model to environmental health and disease resilience in reaction to the medicalisation of Hong Kong.

15,222 words

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MPhil in Environmental Design in Architecture (Option B) 2014

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SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY CITY An alternative model to environmental health and disease resilience in reaction to the medicalisation of Hong Kong.

All images are the author’s own unless otherwise stated.

This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

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what is the most likely path for a new infectious disease into the city?

what is the most likely path for a new infectious disease into the city?

PREPAREDNESS HEALTH SYSTEM

Hong Kong is assailed by external threats beyond its control. It must extend its health system outside the city itself to be able to predict and prevent the next epidemic.

PREVENTATIVE HEALTH SYSTEM

The SARS epidemic heightens Hong Kong society’s concerns over poor environmental hygiene. The next decade is spent preparing for further threats.

defined by the city’s physical boundary. Building typologies include hospitals and urban planning.

SARS 2003 1999 a 1997 & n Influenz

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A cholera outbreak in 1883 pressures Hong Kong’s government to take up Osbert Chadwick’s recommendations to rehouse the population to avoid the risk of disease. Hong Kong’s urban fabric is adapted for the first time to fight against epidemics.

figure 0.0. Timeline of infectious disease epidemics in Hong Kong and the health systems used to protect against them.

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Abstract This thesis explores how the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in Hong Kong 2003 questioned global cities’ ability to manage health and hygiene within their borders. The unforeseen outbreak also galvanised the city into a new state of preparedness and awareness of future epidemics and wider environmental health concerns. The thesis looks at Hong Kong’s past relationship with infectious disease and how the city has become divided between hygienic and unhygienic spaces, both real and perceived. Through exploratory design, a discussion on the need for a balance between both ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ spaces emerges.

The research covers topics as diverse as epidemiology (tracing the path of transmission and understanding the impact of the built environment on transmission), behavioural psychology (people’s perceptions of hygienic and unhygienic spaces) and air ventilation principles for urban planning – all within the context of architecture and urban design.

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figure 0.1. Pei Ho Street Municipal Services Building Wet Market.

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List of Acronyms AVAS CUHK ECT FEHD MSB SC SEZ SSP URA

Air Ventilation Assessment System Chinese University of Hong Kong Evaporative Cooling Tower Food & Environmental Health Department Municipal Services Building Solar Chimney Special Economic Zone Sham Shui Po Urban Renewal Authority

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Contents 6 9 10 13

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Abstract List of Acronyms Contents Acknowledgements

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Introduction Methodology Contributors

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Part 1 : Understanding Hong Kong’s urban form and its status as a global city Post-SARS SARS and its ramifications The importance of Hong Kong’s status as a Borderless City when considering planning for resilience Global health : the need for a new health system Preventative and Preparedness health systems compared A Preventative health system’s effect on the population

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Part 2 : History and opportunities in the design of Hong Kong’s built environment and an explanation of the Emergent Hygienic City Contemporary history and the medicalization of the city Health systems and urban design Municipal Services Building typology study Part 3 : The Municipal Services Building as a catalyst for urban hygiene and health Layered boundaries Facade/street Internal/external Interior closed/open

168 172

Part 4 : A discussion on the potential and feasibility of a network of new Municipal Services Buildings The statement building Design principles

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Conclusion

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List of figures Bibliography Further reading

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Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Ingrid Schrรถder, Alex WarnockSmith and Barbara Campbell-Lange for their advice and support.

Special thanks goes to Thomas Chung, Carolin Fong, Yee Lee, M K Leung, Edward Ng and Michael Ng whose Dean Hawkes (HK) Scholarship allowed me to carry out my research in Hong Kong.

For making my time in Nanjing a smooth and enlightening experience, I would like to thank Andong Lu. In addition, I would like to thank my friends and family for their support and encouragement. In particular I would like to thank Mehrnaz Ghojeh for her continued support and the discussions that made these two years all the more fruitful and enjoyable.

Adrian Lau Peter Beard Arie Graafland Spencer de Grey Nicholas Ray Simon Smith Mary Ann Steane Koen Steemers Joris Fach Peter Clegg Justyna Karakiewicz Shiqiao Li Richard Koeck Felip Hernandez Mark Breeze Henrik Schoenefeldt Guibo Sun Yuan Chao Ed Atkins Fiona Shenton Steve Lindsay

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Introduction

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This thesis explores Hong Kong’s changing relationship to hygienic and unhygienic spaces and practices after the social, political and spatial repercussions of the 2003 SARS epidemic. Subsequently, it rethinks this relationship through an exploratory redesign of the Municipal Services Building (MSB); a building typology that plays an important role in the city’s resilience to new emergent infectious disease.

In order to fully understand infectious disease in the context of governance, urban design and urban life, the study must go beyond the realms of public health and architecture. Consequently, the research covers topics as diverse as epidemiology (tracing the path of transmission and understanding the impact of the built environment on transmission), behavioural psychology (people’s perceptions of hygienic and unhygienic spaces) and technical air ventilation principles for urban planning.

The study of airborne disease and pollutants1, its movement through and between buildings and people, is an incredibly complex study to draw any meaningful predictions from when considering how to build a more environmentally hygienic city2. There appears to still be a gap (admittedly gradually closing) between scientific knowledge on the matter and the building community. This is partly due to Hong Kong’s interest in the subject being relatively new (galvanised by SARS in 2003)3. Additionally, I have considered that infectious disease is more than an environmental concern and that any plans to address it must also consider its implications on socially and politically. I am also considering that Hong Kong, as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ)4, arguably aims for economic stability above all else. Consequently the exploratory design identifies pragmatic solutions that are in fitting with the political context and does not aim to change the inherent nature of Hong Kong’s economically-driven urban development.

Finally, the thesis doe not propose the redesign of the MSB as a definitive solution to urban hygiene but rather as a vehicle to test certain design propositions and at best as a model for further studies into the effects of buildings on the wider environmental hygiene of a city.

Arguments. The argument throughout the thesis is that there currently exists a fundamentally purist, medicalising view of public space in Hong Kong that tends to eradicate unhygienic places and practices without considering their wider cultural, economic and political ramifications on urban life. This, the thesis argues, is due to an imbalance between governance, urbanism, and urban design. While the two former aspects to urban life have reacted quickly to the threat of new infectious diseases and other environmental health issues, the urban environment itself still arguably runs on a largely economic-driven model of urban development5.

Through a review of potential opportunities for intervention, the study identifies the MSB typology as a valuable building type that has the capacity to redress the balance between hygienic and unhygienic spaces in Hong Kong.

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1. ‘infectious disease’ disease in the context of the thesis means infectious respiratory diseases of which SARS was one as is Avian influenza, another new and potentially threatening type of disease. These diseases can be transmitted through contaminated materials or on airborne particles. The airborne potential of these diseases is why this thesis, and the Hong Kong Government, are considering urban ventilation strategies as form of resilience to new infectious disease as well as for other health reasons.

2. According to discussions with Professor Alan Short, Professor Edward Ng, Andy Brown (see Contributors page).

3. For example, the majority of scientific papers on the subject of SARS and the built environment referenced within this thesis conclude that there is a relationship between the two but go no further than this.

Conversely, reading of papers on architectural engineers (in relation to SARS) point to potential problems that engender the spread of infectious disease but fall short of suggesting features of the built environment that decrease the likelihood of its spread.

This thesis tries, within its scope, to bridge the gap between diverse fields of study.

4. China has designated certain provinces, including Hong Kong, as SEZs in order to promote free market-orientated international trade in a controlled manner.

figure 0.2. the Sham Shui Po District wet market within the Pei Ho Street Municipal Services Building.

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Terminology Biopolitics The state’s invasive power over the human body.

Biosecurity Security against biological threats.

Epidemic An outbreak of disease above normal transmission levels.

Epidemiology The study of the cause and effect of disease.

Hygienic Blackspot The term used by Donald Tsang, one of Hong Kong’s previous Chief Executives, to denote unhygienic places in the city.

Medicalisation The process whereby all problems become defined and treated as medical conditions. It is often illconceived overreaction that quite wrongly excludes perspectives other than a medical one.

Municipal Services Building A multi-storey, multi-use building typology found mainly in Hong Kong. It contains the wet market as well as other public facilities.

Pandemic An epidemic that has spread between human populations across large regions.

Urban Canyon Effect The effect of buildings on either side of a street creating a canyon-like space between them which creates a microclimate that effects wind, temperature and air speeds. It is partly blamed for the poor air quality in Hong Kong.

Wet Market A market where live animals are kept and sold freshly killed. They have become a threat to urban human populations as they allow the transfer of infectious disease agents between animal and human populations.

Zoonosis The process of an infectious disease moving between species.

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Scope. As mentioned, the work covers epidemiology, behavioural psychology and air ventilation principles for urban planning purposes.

The MSB is used to test urban ventilation strategies that have been developed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as part of their Hong Kong government backed Air Ventilation Assessment System (AVAS). The thesis also acknowledges that while holistic urban scale restructuring of the urban form is the best way to attain a properly ventilated environment, it is not the most feasible method6. It is for this reason that I am testing (1) to what extent a single building using these wind principles can have an influence on its environment and, to a lesser extent, (2) can it be a prototype for MSBs in other districts.

5. The relative lack of health-driven development in Hong Kong’s built environment compared to its public perceptions and state governance of health actually, I argue, affects the effectiveness of the two latter points. For example, by the Hong Kong government raising public awareness of good health practice, they have inadvertently created a risk culture that is even more aware of just how unhygienic Hong Kong is!

A city cannot be hygienic without considering all three aspects.

6. According to discussions with Professor Edward Ng, key contributor to the Hong Kong Government’s report on urban air ventilation strategies.

Significance. There is little literature on the architectural significance that SARS and other infectious disease have played in shaping Hong Kong (although a causal relationship is discussed (Team Clean, n.d.), building for disease is usually left to medical journals and governmental departments). The literature that does exist is largely from the scientific community in response to several initiatives by the Hong Kong government to review the management and control of SARS. It therefore consists of many peer-reviewed epidemiological and public health studies with a minority of papers reviewing the psychological impact of those citizens who were effected by the outbreak. These papers have then been used to guide certain policy reviews by Team Clean and other public health branches of government. More recently, post-2010, when the impact of these policies and health campaigns have begun to affect the urbanism and built environment, urban theorists have begun to discuss Hong Kong urban life in relation to health and infectious disease postSARS7. This thesis seeks to capitalise on this new branch of interest and to understand not just the repercussions of SARS but also the potential to design with this in mind.

Reasons. Having previously worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on a paper linking health experts and architects to healthy housing8, I found that political powers and society have a tendency to treat disease as a purely medical condition and that the only solutions are also medical in nature. This is not only wrong, it also is potentially harmful to a fully functioning society not to acknowledge additional ramifications of disease.

Furthermore, Hong Kong is a city predominantly shaped by market forces and celebratory of its globally connected status, I consequently find it interesting that a seemingly ‘old’ health problem such as epidemics are so at home in a modern form of city. Such 21st Century outward-looking cities have a much different relationship to disease and impurity that I feel has not been explored in an architectural sense and its significance to more than simply public health experts is only just now trying to be categorised by architects and theorists alike.

7. For example, Shiqiao Li’s findings in Antisepsis (2013), rethinking of global cities and global disease, Wagner’s work on dialectics (2008) and LSE Cities conference on Health and Well being in cities. (Taylor, 2012) 8. Haines 2012, Promoting health & advancing development through improved housing in low-income settings.

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Methodology This thesis uses a design research based methodology as developed by the University of Cambridge’s MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design course. It incorporates testing arguments through design with academic research and primary source material. The topic of health and hygiene in Post-SARS Hong Kong is still an emerging field that requires a relatively untested cross-disciplinary approach to research9. The aim of this thesis is to extract fundamental principles from each discipline and then use architectural design as a vehicle to explore practical and theoretical implications on the built environment that could not be pursued through one single discipline.

Furthermore, it is not to gain a specialist understanding in either the quantitative (air movement) or the qualitative (perceptions of hygiene and disease) but instead to build a dialectical understanding of how disease and hygiene affect the architecture, urban environment, and urbanism in a global city such as Hong Kong. By doing this, architecture and urban design can be used as a tool to test both qualitative and quantitative principles that challenge the drive towards a medicalised city and may suggest another relationship between health and disease in the city.

To properly survey and understand the sites and circumstances under investigation, over the course of two visits to Hong Kong in 201310, I conducted photographic surveys of the Municipal Services Building typologies as well as key informant interviews with local stallholders, Food & Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) staff, architects, activists and policy-makers11 regarding health and hygiene in contemporary Hong Kong. The research predominantly centres on Sham Shui Po’s (SSP) MSB as its context defines much of Hong Kong’s current environmental hygiene concerns.

Furthermore, in order to understand not only the theoretical standpoint to the topic but also the more pragmatic side, interviews have been conducted with a number of experts from a range of disciplines.

9. The conventional approach for an architect, investigation through environmental design, has been explored in immense detail by professionals such as those that carried out the AVAS study. In order to contribute to the discussion of environmental health in Hong Kong, understanding how the findings of studies such as AVAS work in a politically and socially dynamic city will serve to further the discussion than if I was to explore attempt what government-backed research groups have already investigated.

10. I also previously worked in Hong Kong between 2010 and 2011.

11. Many of the interviews were conducted in Cantonese using a local translator. I was able to use my intermediate Mandarin to some extent too.

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Objectives and research questions.

- To what extent can Hong Kong’s MSBs influence the environmental hygiene of the surrounding neighbourhood?

- As a totally hygienic city is a practical impossibility, can an equilibrium be reached between hygienic and unhygienic spaces and what does this new relationship hold for urban design and urbanism?

Additionally, an underlying objective is - To build a dialectical understanding of health and hygiene in the global city that takes into account more than the medical nature of the topic.

- Extract key design principles from the design exploration that could be used in future development of the built environment.

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KEY:

DESIGN

WRITTEN methodology & scope

Introduction to topic objectives research questions

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF HONG KONG’S RELATIONSHIP TO SARS

Determinants of SARS linked to Hong Kong’s global position and urban condition.

- connectivity - mobility - proximity

MODE OF ANALYSIS

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING

Part 1

architecture and urban design in relation to: environmental design behavioural psychology epidemiology

Defining HK as a paradox between mobility and fixity.

HK = new global status based on mobility HK = old urban form defined by its fixity

fixity spatial forms order hygiene

mobility systematic chaos dirt

HEALTH SYSTEMS COMPARISON AND RISK CULTURE ANALYSIS

ASSESSING HONG KONG’S HEALTH SYSTEM, RISK CULTURE AND ARCHITECTURE

BY ITS ABILITY TO MANAGE MOBILITY AND FIXITY Health systems compared (old) Preventative Health System (favours fixity over mobility) (new) Preparedness Health System (favours mobility over fixity)

Risk culture as a biopolitical tool and the dangers of too much awareness

the biosecurity network design intent: exploring opportunities for intervention and what a preparedness system may mean in practice.

Design Q: what are the extents of HK’s biopolitical boundaries? How far can they be extended using architecture?

A NEW PARADIGM OF HEALTH ONLY WORKS IF THE HEALTH SYSTEM, CULTURE AND URBAN FORM ARE WORKING IN CONJUNCTION. AT THE MOMENT IT IS SKEWED

WHAT TYPE OF NEW ARCHITECTURE EMERGES FROM A NEW HEALTH SYSTEM AND NEW CULTURE? ?

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figure 0.3. Methodology flowchart.

Part 2

TYPOLOGY STUDY AND CONCEPTUAL DESIGN INTENT

HISTORICAL REVIEW

HONG KONG HAS A HISTORICAL PROPENSITY TO FAVOUR FIXITY OVER MOBILITY IN CONTROLLING HYGIENE

Colonial (Sanitary Order) > Modernism (Purism) > Pragmatism (Economically-driven) > Post-SARS: Medicalisation of the city (ungoverned and emergent in reaction to pragmatism’s hygiene deficits.)

Hong Kong historically is also a laboratory for urban governance and development.

The MSB’s potential to turn from a hygienic blackspot into an hygienic cleanspot

To what extent can Hong Kong’s Municipal Services Buildings improve the environmental hygiene of their district?

DESIGN STUDY

Part 3

Facade/Street

internal/external

Internal open/closed

Ohno Laboratories Segmentline City vs.

Zoning City theories

Ohno Laboratories Outer field layer theory

Shiqiao Li’s antisepsis

A discussion on urban ventilation in relation to a single building

A discussion on perceptions of public space

Open vs. closed spaces

concept

of

behavioural psychology (perceptions of risk)

DISCUSSION

Part 4

Design principles extracted from the design study.

The value of the MSB as a statement building 23

Universities

Architecture research groups

Engineers

Policy advocacy group

Government

Pokfulam Council

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Contributors Discussions with the following people have been greatly appreciated as well as allowed valuable insight to the topic as seen from the perspective of various disciplines.

Epidemiology Dr. Ben Cowling, Associate Professor and Division Head, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong Derek Smith, Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics, Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for Modelling, Evolution and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge James Wood, Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge Urban Ventilation Edward Ng, Yao Ling Sun Professor of Architecture & Director, MSc in Sustainable and Environmental Design Programme, School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong Yuan Chao, PhD Candidate, School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong Guibo Sun, PhD Candidate, School of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong Alan Short, Professor of Architecture, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge Andy Brown, Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd Hong Kong urban design & Public Health Travis Bunt, Director of Urbanus Hong Kong Myfanway Taylor, Research Officer at LSE Cities and Author of the Conference Report on Hong Kong: Cities, Health and Well-being Dr. Justyna Karakiewicz, Associate Professor of Urban Design in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne Hong Kong culture and urbanism Shiqiao Li, Weedon Professor in Asian Architecture, School of Architecture, University of Virginia Risk and Resilience John Haddon, Global Resilience, Security and Risk Leader, Arup Hong Kong Policy Paul Zimmerman, Southern District [Hong Kong] Councillor and CEO of Designing Hong Kong

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Part 1

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Understanding Hong Kong’s urban form and its status as a global city Post-SARS

figure 1.0. Hong Kong, the Borderless City.

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KEY:

DESIGN

WRITTEN methodology & scope

Introduction to topic objectives research questions

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF HONG KONG’S RELATIONSHIP TO SARS

Determinants of SARS linked to Hong Kong’s global position and urban condition.

- connectivity - mobility - proximity

MODE OF ANALYSIS

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING

Part 1

architecture and urban design in relation to: environmental design behavioural psychology epidemiology

Defining HK as a paradox between mobility and fixity.

HK = new global status based on mobility HK = old urban form defined by its fixity

fixity spatial forms order hygiene

mobility systematic chaos dirt

HEALTH SYSTEMS COMPARISON AND RISK CULTURE ANALYSIS

ASSESSING HONG KONG’S HEALTH SYSTEM, RISK CULTURE AND ARCHITECTURE

BY ITS ABILITY TO MANAGE MOBILITY AND FIXITY Health systems compared (old) Preventative Health System (favours fixity over mobility) (new) Preparedness Health System (favours mobility over fixity)

Risk culture as a biopolitical tool and the dangers of too much awareness

the biosecurity network design intent: exploring opportunities for intervention and what a preparedness system may mean in practice.

Design Q: what are the extents of HK’s biopolitical boundaries? How far can they be extended using architecture?

A NEW PARADIGM OF HEALTH ONLY WORKS IF THE HEALTH SYSTEM, CULTURE AND URBAN FORM ARE WORKING IN CONJUNCTION. AT THE MOMENT IT IS SKEWED

WHAT TYPE OF NEW ARCHITECTURE EMERGES FROM A NEW HEALTH SYSTEM AND NEW CULTURE? ?

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figure 1.1. Methodology flowchart.

Part 2

TYPOLOGY STUDY AND CONCEPTUAL DESIGN INTENT

HISTORICAL REVIEW

HONG KONG HAS A HISTORICAL PROPENSITY TO FAVOUR FIXITY OVER MOBILITY IN CONTROLLING HYGIENE

Colonial (Sanitary Order) > Modernism (Purism) > Pragmatism (Economically-driven) > Post-SARS: Medicalisation of the city (ungoverned and emergent in reaction to pragmatism’s hygiene deficits.)

Hong Kong historically is also a laboratory for urban governance and development.

The MSB’s potential to turn from a hygienic blackspot into an hygienic cleanspot

To what extent can Hong Kong’s Municipal Services Buildings improve the environmental hygiene of their district?

DESIGN STUDY

Part 3

Facade/Street

internal/external

Internal open/closed

Ohno Laboratories Segmentline City vs.

Zoning City theories

Ohno Laboratories Outer field layer theory

Shiqiao Li’s antisepsis

A discussion on urban ventilation in relation to a single building

A discussion on perceptions of public space

Open vs. closed spaces

concept

of

behavioural psychology (perceptions of risk)

DISCUSSION

Part 4

Design principles extracted from the design study.

The value of the MSB as a statement building 29

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figure 1.2. The temperature check desk at Hong Kong International airport monitors arriving passengers in an effort to test for potential infectious diseases into the city.

Hong Kong “A ‘clean room’ in Asia...”

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“...that’s what we aspire to”

Donald Tsang, Chief Executive 2005-2012, in response to the SARS 2003 epidemic

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figure 1.3. A market street in Wan Chai District. Hong Kong’s ultrdensity places pressure on living and working space. It was also one of the reasons for the high transmission rates of SARS.

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figure 1.4. Public health campaign posters put up by the Food & Environmental Hygiene Department in Sheung Wan’s Municipal Services Building to raise awareness of the risks of touching live poultry and the promotion of good hygiene

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figure 1.5. A poultry stall in Hung Hom Municipal Services Building. Stringent hygiene checks and a new culture highly attuned to risk has increased the speed at which the government is trying to phase out traditional wet markets. But at what cost to the socio-economic livelihoods of the local population and, furthermore, to the opportunity to use these markets as bulwarks against new infectious disease?

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“cities…are hybrid and porous translocal sites that are crisscrossed by the multiple lines of networks” Richard Smith, 2003.

SARS and its ramifications1 The unexpected outbreak of an unknown virus (with no known cure) in Hong Kong 2003, then termed Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) for the way in which the virus affected the respiratory systems of its hosts, put into motion a drive for a new, more hygienic city. To change a whole city has required an upheaval of political, social, cultural, and environmental norms.

The following two sections are divided between the two harsh realities that the Hong Kong Government had to face Post-SARS; its (1) global position and (2) urban condition were in part to blame for the spread of SARS. Firstly, the city’s prized status as a borderless city, a city that depends on and excelled in the import and export of people and capital, made it particularly vulnerable to infectious disease. In the brief few months that the virus was prevalent, Hong Kong had the highest concentration of deaths 3(8.6% (299/775) of all deaths worldwide. (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, n.d.)). Furthermore, the city’s role as a global transport hub helped spread the pathogen to some of the 36 other countries with reported cases. The second lesson was that not only was its international relationship with other cities and countries putting it at risk, its own urban form was engendering the spread of the disease. The most infamous case was that of Amoy Gardens in which an ultra-dense residential high-rise unit housing of approximately 19,000 occupants became a transmission node. Due in part to faulty plumbing, the density, proximity of apartments and the flow of air that circulated contaminated droplets, one infected resident was able to infect 328 other residents, a record number. It became increasingly clear to the Hong Kong Government that, rather than being a freak event, new emergent diseases were potentially endemic and, furthermore, engendered by Hong Kong’s urban condition itself.

The importance of Hong Kong’s status as a Borderless City when considering planning for resilience

“It is the dialectic of mobility and fixity that is truly characteristic of the urban condition under globalised circumstances.” Ali and Keil (2006) The term Global Cities has had a tremendous amount of literature devoted to it in order to understand cities and their global status (Friedmann & Wolff, 1982; Sassen, 2005; P. J. Taylor, 2004). Cities such as Hong Kong have extended their reach of influence beyond their physical and even national borders in order to create new international trade routes with other countries’ global cities. This aspect of globalisation has been a defining characteristic of our 21st image of globalisation. It has informed the way we trade and think globally. Although good for trade, the porosity that defines the global city, as Smith (2003) defines it, leaves it vulnerable to infectious disease. Similarly, the urban health theorist and medical anthropologist Meike Wolf (2011) noted that SARS disputed “construction of cities as settings where “nature” is strictly separated from human life” instead marking them as “deeply liminal agents”. The definition of a global city in fact, flies in direct contradiction with what 38

1. Data and Statistics on SARS come from reports compiled by the SARS Expert Committee (2003).

figure 1.6. the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network map of global cities 2010. Hong Kong has been highlighted to show its relation to other global cities. These complex global networks have come to influence health at at a more minute local level.

The global city sits between two states of being: FIXITY territorial, historical, national, local, centres with physical boundaries vs.

MOBILITY extraterritiorial, fluid, autonomous, nodes within a network

the anthropologist James Scott (1998) identified as the foundation of many cities as the origins of stable centres to civilization; a way for mankind to define boundaries of control, simultaneously rejecting nature in order to do so.

If cities, as Scott says, exist to control populations through their fixity, can or should a borderless city try and offer the same protection through its built environment as a traditional city? Fundamentally, can global cities, cities that have moved away from the traditional ‘fixed’ forms by accepting mobility, can they truly use the urban environment to protect a population’s health? In this vain of thought, I question what does the borderless city’s urban form mean for a population’s health?

Hong Kong’s government has tried to rectify the imbalance between mobility and fixity through the introduction of a new health system.

While this paper largely agrees with the foresightedness to change the health system and how wide reaching it can be, it argues that more can be done for Hong Kong to totally accept its position as a borderless city and accept the flux of everything, negative or positive, into and through its form.

To understand what role urban environment plays in balancing fixity and mobility, one must first understand what new strategies have been put in place, namely the political and social systems.

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Global health : the need for a new health system preventative and preparedness health systems compared The following section aims to analyse the health system during the SARS epidemic and its failings in dealing with this new threat compared to the new health system which seeks to prepare for future epidemics. For clarity’s sake, this section categorises the former as a ‘preventative system’ and the latter as a ‘preparedness system’. The study will draw from the work of political science theorists and anthropologists such as Scott, Foucault, Wolf, Lakoff, Adey, and Anderson. The discussion on the relationship of both systems on the built environment will use critics from the fields of architecture, urban studies, and anthropology such as Li, Hooper, Chong, and again Scott and Foucault. Separately, the preparedness health systems and the medicalization of the built environment have been well studied.

However, there has been no significant study of the link between the two and the shift in health systems has on future urban form and society.

Hong Kong’s health system during the SARS epidemic was reported to have worked well within its capacity. However, the report by the SARS Expert Committee (2003) found “significant shortcomings of system performance” due to the unknown epidemiology of the virus.

Further reports have since stated that its core principles, of monitoring and statistical calculation of the population, meant it failed to cope with external threats outside of its scope of observation. To summarise, the main lessons learnt from SARS were that (1) there was a lack of methods of gaining information on the virus, (2) communications breakdown between government departments, and (3) uncertainty as to which authority was in charge of overseeing the response. Scott and fellow anthropologist Andrew Lakoff (2008) see these failings as inherent to the previous system. Lakoff goes further by suggesting a different approach to a system of health; “a vital systems approach emerges at the limit point of population security”. Lakoff ’s analysis of epidemics sees them not just as a health threat, but as a national security threat. Similarly, Wolf notes zoonoses must be analysed as a “mobile, transgressive, and non-territorial phenomenon” and argues for a new understanding of urban epidemiology.

This shift moves away from the foucaultian notion of protecting through regulation of the population and towards preparing the infrastructure and systems for weakness from unknown emergencies. Knowing the link between biopolitics and the built environment, as examined by Scott, does this shift in health system dynamics not entail a new environment too?

Further to the failings found by the SARS Expert Committee in the system, there were two inherent problems. Firstly, the system’s relationship failure to interpret outside it’s own presubscribed boundaries.

The limitations of population control mean that the system can only respect natural laws rather than totally dominate them. Secondly, it has a tendency, as Scott describes, towards miniaturisation if it feels threatened.

The first point is evident from the post-SARS reports; statistical calculations for health were all based on only the legible data within the population. The Hong Kong Government’s stance is now that “Local health is global health”. The second problem was felt as an after effect.

The system cut and miniaturised the vulnerable systems it felt it could not contain such as its poultry trade and street hawkers. This can be seen as a failing of the system due to Wolf ’s opinion that zoonoses cannot be seen as singular or specific. By eliminating the poultry trade, there is no practice left to make resilient. She continues by arguing that terms such as ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ are no longer applicable or relevant to the discussion of epidemic threat protection.

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PREVENTATIVE HEALTH SYSTEM Encompasses most Western 19th and 20th Century health systems. The systems are inherently focused on health risks within a defined population.

Statistical calculations on risk are less complex in a managed society. There is a continuous simplification of the population and the environment for legibility’s sake.

PREPAREDNESS HEALTH SYSTEM Typically a preventative health system’s response to emerging hazards outside of its set domain, preparedness systems analyse possibilities of new risk within and outside the defined population. The system is more speculative and temporal in its approach.

culture

health system

urban environment

figure 1.7. the three aspects of Hong Kong’s infectious disease resilience planning.

EMERGE

connectivity

mixing of people/air/birds/poultry/virus deforestation and land development exposes human to wild animal populations thereby allowing a virus to jump to a human population

China

mixing of human and bird populations Global City status

SPREAD

disease determinants

movability

new host populations

Hong Kong transport System

Global transport

Hong Kong has some of the best public transport in the world Speed - a host can be in another country by the time symptoms appear

SPREAD/PERSIST population explosion

proximity mass urbanisation

HK 2047 - Shenzhen HK DENSITY (CITY CRAMMED INTO LESS THAN 25% OF ITS TOTAL LAND AREA.) 6,650 (MAX 57,120 IN KWUN TONG /KMSQR (LONDON HAS 31,937/KMSQR)

figure 1.8. Disease determinants inherently linked to Hong Kong’s global and urban development. In order to understand how something as complex as the environment has an effect on disease transmission, I have identified infectious disease, as Jonathon Mayer (2000) points out, as being more than purely a biomedical phenomenon. Information compiled from Chia, Heng, & Ho (2011), Hui (2006), Hung (2003), Wilcox & Gubler, (2011).

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By using a preparedness system, incalculable statistics could be handled, unlike the preventative system that was a more protectionist and close looped system. As Adey and Anderson (2012) conclude in their dialogue on security (a review that includes Lakoff ’s theories), new systems that take into account external risk cannot rely on the materials of the previous system.

How does one deal with the temporal nature of the new preparedness system? Are they only temporary and can they be sustained? After the SARS Expert Committee, the Centre for Health Protection has included an infectious disease control system into their preventative planning.

The new preparedness system included functions for anticipating external health threats to the city; “surveillance system, analytic capacity, investigative capacity, training and applied research capacity” (SARS Expert Committee, 2003b). This would better prepare the health system for a new infectious disease, but what about the population itself ? Just as the previous preventative system has sculpted population, how now will a new preparedness system impact society and the wider systems in the city?

poultry farms

1.

2.

3.

figure 1.9. Gateways into Hong Kong; Buildings designed to manage the flows that are the defining features of Hong Kong’s prosperity. (1) Hong Kong International Airport by Foster and Partners (flow of people), (2) Bank of China Tower by I.M.Pei and Partners (flow of capital), (3) the Municipal Services Building typology by the Architectural Services Department (flow of food).

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HONG KONG 3.

1.

2.

figure 1.10. Identifying the poultry network (in red) into Hong Kong is a potential route of transmission for infectious disease into the city.

BIOPOLITICS The Social theorist Michel Foucault’s (1975) concept of biopolitics defines it as the state’s power to over the human body.

Examples include public health campaigns which, either directly or indirectly, require the state to exact political and social control over a population.

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“In a word, security mechanisms have to be installed around the random element inherent in a population of living beings so as to optimize a state of life.”

Foucault, 2003

MAINLAND CHINA STAGE 1.

NEW TERRITORIES STAGE 2.

STAGE 3.

HONG KONG

figure 1.11. “The Biosecurity Network’ is a conceptual proposal to question the physical threshold of the global city to see whether its architecture can extend beyond what is typically thought of as the city limits in order to predict, prepare and prevent against the next new infectious disease.

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Stage 1. The Surveillance Tower.

Built in Qinghai Lake in Northern China, this is most remote known transmission node before statistics on transmission routes become uncalculable due to the complex global nature of new infectious disease. The tower is designed to monitor migrating wild bird populations as an early warning system for global cities. The earlier a new potentially dangerous virus can be found, the sooner a preventative strategy and cure can be implemented. The tower proposition is a mix of architecture and environmental management; the towers incorporate roosts for birds so as to be able to test them for new diseases while the lake is compartmentalised with barriers to avoid nesting and migrating populations mingling and transmitting disease between each other.

Stage 2. The Poultry Bank.

The ‘Poultry Bank’ is designed as a middle ground between local and industrial scale farming. In response to Avian Influenza, the Hong Kong Government has tried to phase out its local farms through a Voluntary Surrender Scheme.

However, as Webster suggests, it is better for a government to manage its own farms than to rely on third parties. This new building type is designed to take advantage of the higher levels of biosecurity afforded by industrial farming while still retaining the multitude of local farms, enriching the economic potential of the New Territories. The Bank is a state-owned farm that allows local farmers a chance to store a portion of their flock during epidemics. This ensures that a portion of their livelihoods may not be destroyed and their business can continue if their farms are hit by an outbreak. The Bank also consists of laboratories for epidemiologists to test the flocks for emergent diseases as well as to educate farmers on better biosecurity practise. Lastly, the building could eventually be used to merge the smaller farms into one industrial sized unit.

However, the important point is that there is a choice between small and large scale development rather than the standard forced economic model which favours singular merged farms but doesn’t necessarily guarantee better biosecurity.

Stage 3. The Municipal Services Building As the point where the poultry network enters the city and any potential disease meets an urban human population, the MSB is the final bastion of defense. Its role in preventing disease and promoting health will be discussed further on.

figure 1.12. Concept sketches for each stage of The Biosecurity Network.

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A preventative health system’s effect on the population Although the outbreak was over relatively quickly, its impact was felt for much longer and in more fields than just public health (Barrault et al., 2004; Leung, 2004; Person, Sy, Holton, Govert, & Liang, 2004). It irrevocably changed how Hong Kong’s population perceived its city, each other and external people. In response to the 2003 SARS epidemic, Donald Tsang (Government of Hong Kong, 2003), Hong Kong’s then Chief Secretary of Administration, announced the formation of a new public health and hygiene initiative: Team Clean.

Tsang’s new “zero tolerance” strategy to tackle unhygienic practice in Hong Kong was designed to transform the city into the “clean room” of Asia. Team Clean’s policies would come to reflect, and at the same time exacerbate, the population’s fear of the unhygienic and revulsion towards the unclean. The paranoia and lack of information about what exactly caused SARS allowed the Hong Kong government to capitalise and instigate public health measures that affected all levels of society; from community down to the more invasive personal level. A new, myopic risk culture has emerged that gauges the city by its level of cleanliness and orders its spaces by hygienic and unhygienic.

Scott denotes a ‘prostrate society’ as a fundamental tool for state social engineering and the ability for state power to take advantage of this. The SARS epidemic heightened perception and alertness to risk in the urban environment (SARS Expert Committee, 2003). As Tsang, Chief Secretary for Administration, stated, “I do believe that after the episode of SARS, Hong Kong people generally are acutely aware of the dangers of various unhealthy and unhygienic habits... There’s a good opportunity that we are going to make a break away from it”. ‘Various’ is correct, the public were not aware of the specific habits. By firstly being unable to assess the direct causes and instead addressing all hygiene issues, the government has more freedom to instigate a clean culture. However, Tsang’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach is the kind of emergency power legitimized by emergency conditions that Scott warns could lead to disastrous social engineering.

Tsang goes on to comment on “dangers of various unhealthy and unhygienic habits that are entrenched in the community” by which he means traditions or culture. Scott again warns of ‘High Modernist Ideology’ like this that denounces the previous culture as outmoded. Such ideology can lead to dilemmas such as the pursuit of ‘scientific’ 2 practice over cultural development. Additionally, the architectural theorist Shiqiao Li (2013) describes Hong Kong as “a multicultural society in which all cultural practices have undergone transformation”, perhaps suggesting the pliability of the society’s practices.

Although a risk culture does have advantages, a heightened disease awareness, rather than health knowledge, can result in paranoia and a protectionist mentality3. As has been mentioned by Wolf, this human need to distinguish between ‘inclusion’ and ’exclusion’ is unproductive.

Furthermore, the social theorist Richard Sennett (2011) claims the “internal, isolating walls of the city” (I interpret these ‘walls’ as the constraints laid by a preventative system) should be dismantled and that “alertness and attentiveness to the unfamiliar, the strange, and the uncertain is an adult strength”. So is risk culture healthy?

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2. Scott’s “Seeing like a State” gives numerous examples of ordered aesthetics being mistaken as scientific practice.

3. Although only encompassing Western risk culture, “Imperfect Health: the Medicalization of Architecture” (Borasi, Zardini, 2012) is a collection of essays and architectural projects that explore (and deplore in equal measure) the effect of an overly anxious population on their cities. Furthermore, the recent ‘Cities, Health and Well-being’ conference on the state of health and wellbeing in Hong Kong highlighted the negative consequences of emerging risk management and urban regulation (Taylor, 2012).

“Post-Foucault, it has been recognised that technologies, discourses, and practices of prevention and health promotion are constitutive of the construction of subjectivities, social order, and rationality” Meike Wolf figure 1.13. (left) The Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign in 1972 was purportedley the largest public health initiative since the Second World War. It began as a way of teaching the public about the importance of public (and personal) hygiene and the dangers of cholera and pnuemonia.

figure 1.14. (right) Team Clean, the PostSARS initiative, continues its campaign to socially engineer the local populace.

figure 1.15. The dangers of creating a risk culture with too high an awareness of dirt and disease. It could be argued that decades of rigourous social engineering have set Hong Kong’s public health awareness out of kilter with their Mainland cousins. This has led to antagonism between the two. The above image is of an advert in a local paper equating Mainland tourists to locusts. An exhibition on the effect of infectious disease on Hong Kong titled ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ (Para Site, 2013) notes that increasingly “epidemiological, racial and cultural contamination have shared the same language”.

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Part 2

“Hong Kong planners prefer to manage its city as infrastructural networks wth growth nodes of high density.�

Liauw, 2001

figure 2.0. Conceptual image to highlight issue of density of buildings and people within Hong Kong.

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History and opportunities in the design of Hong Kong’s built environment and an explanation of the Emergent Hygienic City

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KEY:

DESIGN

WRITTEN methodology & scope

Introduction to topic objectives research questions

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF HONG KONG’S RELATIONSHIP TO SARS

Determinants of SARS linked to Hong Kong’s global position and urban condition.

- connectivity - mobility - proximity

MODE OF ANALYSIS

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING

Part 1

architecture and urban design in relation to: environmental design behavioural psychology epidemiology

Defining HK as a paradox between mobility and fixity.

HK = new global status based on mobility HK = old urban form defined by its fixity

fixity spatial forms order hygiene

mobility systematic chaos dirt

HEALTH SYSTEMS COMPARISON AND RISK CULTURE ANALYSIS

ASSESSING HONG KONG’S HEALTH SYSTEM, RISK CULTURE AND ARCHITECTURE

BY ITS ABILITY TO MANAGE MOBILITY AND FIXITY Health systems compared (old) Preventative Health System (favours fixity over mobility) (new) Preparedness Health System (favours mobility over fixity)

Risk culture as a biopolitical tool and the dangers of too much awareness

the biosecurity network design intent: exploring opportunities for intervention and what a preparedness system may mean in practice.

Design Q: what are the extents of HK’s biopolitical boundaries? How far can they be extended using architecture?

A NEW PARADIGM OF HEALTH ONLY WORKS IF THE HEALTH SYSTEM, CULTURE AND URBAN FORM ARE WORKING IN CONJUNCTION. AT THE MOMENT IT IS SKEWED

WHAT TYPE OF NEW ARCHITECTURE EMERGES FROM A NEW HEALTH SYSTEM AND NEW CULTURE? ?

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figure 2.1. Methodology Flowchart.

Part 2

TYPOLOGY STUDY AND CONCEPTUAL DESIGN INTENT

HISTORICAL REVIEW

HONG KONG HAS A HISTORICAL PROPENSITY TO FAVOUR FIXITY OVER MOBILITY IN CONTROLLING HYGIENE

Colonial (Sanitary Order) > Modernism (Purism) > Pragmatism (Economically-driven) > Post-SARS: Medicalisation of the city (ungoverned and emergent in reaction to pragmatism’s hygiene deficits.)

Hong Kong historically is also a laboratory for urban governance and development.

The MSB’s potential to turn from a hygienic blackspot into an hygienic cleanspot

To what extent can Hong Kong’s Municipal Services Buildings improve the environmental hygiene of their district?

DESIGN STUDY

Part 3

Facade/Street

internal/external

Internal open/closed

Ohno Laboratories Segmentline City vs.

Zoning City theories

Ohno Laboratories Outer field layer theory

Shiqiao Li’s antisepsis

A discussion on urban ventilation in relation to a single building

A discussion on perceptions of public space

Open vs. closed spaces

concept

of

behavioural psychology (perceptions of risk)

DISCUSSION

Part 4

Design principles extracted from the design study.

The value of the MSB as a statement building 51

“Hong Kong’s unique history as a colonial and trading city has created conditions for it to become a city of maximum quantities. In Hong Kong, heights, density, and proximity continue to be pushed to the limit; this creates convenience, speed, abundance, and opportunities”

Shiqiao Li, 2007

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figure 2.2. Hong Kong towers, in an abstract sense, are great accumulators of people and capital. But how well does and can the tower typology be of any benefit to the urban environment?

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the unhygienic...

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figure 2.3. The adjacent buildings show the stark contrast in living conditions in Hong Kong. On the left, a dilapidated mid-20th Century residential unit and, on the right, a contemporary apartment block clad with materials designed to be easily wiped clean.

...and hygienic city

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A byproduct of Hong Kong’s dense urban form are ‘urban canyons’, spaces that create microclimatic changes to temperature, wind speeds, and air quality.

figure 2.4. Bowrington Road Outdoor Market. Public space often exists between buildings, seen as an afterthought and regularly competes with vehicles for surplus space. Note the plethora of air conditioning units (above) that try to add some level of thermal comfort to stall owners and customers alike.

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The city is increasingly seeing a division between its interior and exterior public spaces, defined by temperature, wind speeds, air quality and hygiene.

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figure 2.5. A market road in Sham Shui Po District. The humidity is palpable.

figure 2.6. Many have chosen, where possible, to circumvent the external roads and pavements in favour of the cooler interiors provided by a network of warren-like malls that are strung along many of Hong Kong’s districts.

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The Hygienic City “This extraordinarily vibrant and exciting metropolis also contains a disturbing vision: as more people wear surgical masks in public, more young pupils have their body temperatures taken each morning, more cleaning ladies in shopping malls wear nurse-like uniforms, more architecture uses homogeneous and anti-bacterial materials, and more ‘interiorised public spaces’ like shopping malls choose to have an artificially filtered and conditioned air supply – the city increasingly resembles a gigantic hospital, a citadel of hygiene, and a war against pollution and danger”

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figures 2.7. Examples of cleaned surfaces and the level of maintenance required to keep a certain level of hygiene.

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The following section traces Hong Kong’s architectural and urban development history and examines its changing relationship to health and ill health. Additionally, it identifies the city’s form as a tool of the state’s biopolitical power over the population. This is a crucial insight because, as will be discussed, a redress of the balance between hygienic and unhygienic centres in the city is influenced not only by public health conscience but also by the desire for political power.

Historically, the state has been quick to identify informal, grass root, ‘chaotic’ sectors of society and the city as unhygienic, conversely equating order with hygiene. This, the thesis argues, has pushed a hygienic agenda with a bias for control and order over informality.

High Modernism, a 20th Century term that persists today in Hong Kong, can in fact be traced back to the origins of Hong Kong.

The failings of the ideology typify urban planning, where High Modernism confused scientific practice with aesthetics (Scott, 1998). Hong Kong examples can be seen in the segregation of Chinese locals from Hong Kong Island (in order to manage their migration in to Hong Kong, something which is happening even up to the present day) in the 19th Century for ‘sanitary reasons’ and the grid-like restructuring of Sham Shui Po. Importantly, urban studies theorist IP Iam Chong (Chong, 2001) noted that the issues of public health and social order, termed as ‘sanitary-order’, were codependent at this time. The reorganisation into more easily managed systems is typical of state management as denoted by Scott. Chong goes on to explain Sanitary Syndrome encompasses the colonizers’ fears about their own health, their rule and the threat of the native people. What galvanized the need to redesign the city, just like the present day, was a disease epidemic, this time cholera, that threatened the stability of the colonial power’s sovereignty.

As an additional note, it is important that Chong argues housing was designed along the axioms of sanitation, health and order being diametrically opposed to dirt, disease and chaos. There appears not to just have been a move to improve sanitation infrastructure but also a deliberate rejection of elements deemed unsanitary i.e. the resettling of local Chinese populations. It is particularly telling perhaps that the first ordinance carried out was called ‘The Buildings and Nuisances Ordinances’.

Contemporary history and the medicalization of the city Hong Kong’s contemporary architectural style, Pragmatism1, is a development of the Modernist ideals of the early 20th Century. The difference between both movements is that Pragmatism still takes on board the fundamental rules of Modernism; efficiency, convenience, accessibility and mobility as key drivers. This style of development suits Hong Kong’s nature as an economic powerhouse, where developers build purely for maximum revenue. This in turn helps legitimize the government, which has no democratic power but instead must rely on its legitimacy through its economic success (Adams & Hastings, 2001; Huang, 2009; Lee & Chan, 2008; Tso, 2011). The small but significant difference between styles is that Pragmatism ignores health as a driver of design. Health, instead, is now treated almost entirely pragmatically through the use of mechanical air-conditioned systems so as not to impact too heavily on building design and plot size (i.e. impact on revenue). This architectural style is potentially disastrous to the city’s environmental health, as has been shown with the SARS event. Not only did hyperdensity exacerbate the spread of disease, Hong Kong’s obsession with pragmatism for what Li calls a 62

HIGH MODERNIST IDEOLOGY This theory places an unfaltering trust in scientific methods to place order over the natural and social worlds (Scott, 1998). Perhaps most importantly, it tends to dismiss previous culture and tradition as outmoded and ‘primitive’.

1 A style defined by the building science and technology researchers Xue, Hui, & Zang in their article “Public buildings in Hong Kong: A short account of evolution since the 1960s”. The pragmatic style is also arguably used by the private sector.

(Xue, Hui, & Zang, 2013)

“A disease like cholera helped create the modern city... in the sense that it helped create most of the institutions we think of as modern.”

Richard Barnett, 2014. (Cochrane, 2014)

“The history of modern urbanization can perhaps be written as a history of disease control”

Keil and Ali, 2005.

figure 2.8. The police and Hong Kong Sanitary Board disinfect Tai Ping Shan District during the bubonic plague of 1894.

figure 2.9. Tai Ping Shan District is cleared after the plague. The government of the day took the plague as an opportunity to clear the land and redistribute the local Chinese population that had settled there.

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“The political and military dominance of the colonial regime [in the 19th Century] enables Hong Kong to become a laboratory for “full” implementation of this Public Health Movement.”

Iam Chong Professor at Lingnan University

“a ‘clean room’ in Asia...that’s what we aspire to.”

Donald Tsang Chief Executive , 2005-2012

Hong Kong provides an acute example of the city ‘laboratories of trial and error, failure and success’ envisaged by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Carrie Lam Secretary for Development, 2007-2012

“[Hong Kong] increasingly resembles a gigantic hospital, a citadel of hygiene, and a war against pollution and danger” Shiqiao Li Weedon Professor at the University of Virginia

“It is practically impossible to design our built environment to the high standard of a laboratory to confidently avoid the transmission of diseases.”

Edward Ng Professor at CUHK and lead team member of the AVAS study

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figure 2.10. A series of perspectives from theorists, policy makers and practitioners on Hong Kong’s path to becoming a Hygienic City.

move towards ‘maximum quantities’ meant that solutions to the problem of hyperdensity have also been treated with more pragmatism.

The acceleration towards the medicalisation of the city has taken a trajectory towards Purism, an ideology that labels practices such as the poultry trade and wet markets “hygienic blackspots”; places that contain particularly unhygienic practices. However, to eradicate them mistakes efficiency, convenience, accessibility, and mobility as the sole answers to health. A zero tolerance, utilitarian approach to development misses the advantages that polycultures have over monocultures in respect to disease resilience (Scott, 1998).

Health systems and urban design Preventative and Preparedness health systems create two separate urban and architectural expressions. The latter is historically the system that formed our built environment (Scott, 1998) through the biopolitics of conditioning the population and how it lived while the latter created what Li (Li, 2013) describes in his essay ‘Antisepsis’; an unexplored architecture with no style that “points to its own pioneers and their manifestos – those of Florence Nightingale and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention”. The protectionist views of the preventative system creates collectivising, centralising, and compartmentalising forms of urban planning while the paranoia and anticipation of risk in a preparedness system fuels a disposable architecture that constantly renews and medicalises the city in answer to the failings of the preventative measures.

Hong Kong has become what Li defines as inherently a “behavior-reform machine”.

However, the reaction to SARS from the Hong Kong Government was still in some ways set in protectionist Purist thought. The urban planning theorist Barbara Hooper (2002) explains Purism and urban hygiene as “committed to the ontologization of universal modern forms, [these] are the techniques Le Corbusier invents to accomplish this impossibility”.

With a similar view, Tsang idealises Hong Kong as the future ‘white room’ in Asia. Potentially, the same criticism that Hooper levels at Le Corbusier for rejection of traditional culture in favour of Purist form and the mistaking of the ‘chaos’ and ‘disorder’ as inherently unhygienic, dirty and impure could be leveled at Tsang. With a protectionist impossibility as the end goal, does this mean that risk culture is endless? Is the psychological implication of Tsang’s goal more important than the physical?

The new medicalization of architecture and the antisepsis described by Li, this section argues, can be traced back to the Preparedness system.

It is a reaction to the paranoia instilled by SARS. In his analysis of the continuing trend of medicalization of architecture in Hong Kong, Li likens Hong Kong to a “‘citadel of hygiene”, an unwittingly similar description to Tsang’s own rhetoric on Hong Kong. Furthermore, Wolf ’s (2011) stance that “zoonotic agents live in a borderless world” would surely be in direct conflict with Tsang’s statement.

The infection barriers of Li’s ‘disposable architecture’ goes back to Wolf ’s ideas of infectious disease as not “a specific and singular threat, but as an encompassing, ongoing and generic”. The link between a new architecture geared to raising awareness and social engineering can be seen in Hong Kong’s love for ‘infection barriers’ over architectural tectonics. The new preparedness model is less concerned with the past conditions but the constant adaptation and testing based on current new emergent trends.

Further urban health studies originating from the SARS report, such as the increasing pollution in urban canyons, have resulted in fine-tuning of the environment. Techniques such as ‘urban acupuncture’ as suggested 65

by Edward Ng (CUHK, 2005) to deal with air pollution, as well as the constant cleaning and disposability of architecture point to a continual analysis, evaluation and renewal of urban form. Compared with 19th and 20th Century urban planning, this new temporal planning, while still producing corporeal results, marks a dynamic rethinking of urban form.

What can be seen today in Hong Kong is a gradual metabolism that has separated clean and dirty on a human scale between ‘order’ and ‘chaos’.

The latter can be found in Solomon, Wong, & Frampton’s book on ‘Cities without Grounds’ (2012). Due to the failure of Hong Kong’s external spaces to provide an adequate healthy environment, private ventures have circumvented the state’s infrastructure to provide new, cleaner, more preferable routes through the city in the form of air-conditioned thoroughfares between commercial malls. This is arguably a failure of the government to provide adequate spaces at ground level. What this does, rather than providing a solution to Hong Kong’s environmental hygiene problems, is to simply exacerbate them and divides clean and dirty between internal and external (Hong Kong has become not a hygienic city but a city full of linked hygienic spaces). What now is left over and inhabits the street (i.e. the unclean spaces) are the markets and hawkers. This unhelpful division that almost fully marries dirt to chaos and clean to order imprints in the minds of the public the misinformed view that chaos is automatically dirty. For those elements of Hong Kong that are invaluable parts of city life but in danger of being removed due to their ‘primitiveness’ and unhygienic nature, this thesis proposes that the boundary between internal and external spaces should be redressed.

Central Market completed 1938

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Sheung Wan Municipal Services Building completed 1989

figure 2.11. Frampton, Solomon and Wong’s map of Central District showing the temperature difference between internal (cool blues) and external (hotter yellows and pinks) public space. They argue that circulation within the public sphere is dictated largely by temperature and humidity levels with Hong Kong citizens preferring to navigate via internal walkways and rejecting external circulation as much as possible.

figure 2.12. A comparison of two MSBs built during different periods of architectural styles in Hong Kong. Central Market is representative of the Modernist movement in Hong Kong in the mid-20th Century. It consists of two atriums to allow light in and to allow air out via the stack effect. Its four storey height also signifies the relative lack of building density on Hong Kong island at the time.

However, the Sheung Wan District’s MSB (in the adjacent district to the Central Market), displays many traits of Pragmatism in Hong Kong architecture which still persists today. Deep plan with no atriums at all, it is designed to maximise plot use and to accommodate as many market stalls as possible. It is not only tall and denser, the upper levels house completely different programmes from its lower levels, again to maximise plot use.

The major difference between both styles, I argue, is that pragmatism is a variant of the Modernist style that crucially omits health as a key driving architectural expression.

Instead, it relegates health and hygiene as matters only for its mechanical systems and internal surfaces.

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figure 2.13. The Municipal Services Building and The Biosecurity Network

Opportunities The laboratory From its colonial past as a hub for trade and warfare to its present standing as China’s special autonomous and economic region, Hong Kong has been referred to as ‘laboratory’ for new forms of urban governance due to its unique political and physical geography.

The following section discusses why Hong Kong’s MSB typology could be a useful tool to explore the topic of environmental hygiene in Hong Kong.

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figure 2.14. Worm’s eye axonometric schematic diagram of a proposal for the redesign of Pei Ho Street Municipal Services Building.

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Municipal Services Building Typology Study

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figure 2.15. A map of the Municipal Services Buildings in each district.

Case study district hatched in red.

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Kowloon City MSB

Sheung Wan MSB

Wan Chai MSB 0m Bowrington Road MSB

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100m

Central MSB

Lockhart Road MSB

Causeway Bay MSB Pei Ho Street MSB

figures 2.16. Plans and sections of the eight Municipal Services Buildings that were visited during field visits to Hong Kong. The sections show the building height in comparison to adjacent buildings.

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Pei Ho Street MSB

Bowrington Road MSB

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Kowloon City MSB

Causeway Bay MSB

Lockhart Road MSB

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Concept Hygienic blackspots... ...into whitespots The MSB is a multi-storey, multi-purpose public sector building, typically distributed one per district. MSBs are often an intrinsic part of a community in Hong Kong, both economically and socially (Goldman et al. 1999).

One of the many public facilities it contains (not to mention gymnasiums, cooked food centres, libraries, and/or government offices) is the wet market. This type of market is popular with local low-income Cantonese population because of low cost and freshness of its products. It has, however, also been the subject of scrutiny as it is one of the main transmission routes for new infectious diseases to enter the city.

This section argues that rather than simply phasing out the markets and the MSB, both can be changed from ‘hygienic blackspots’ into ‘hygienic whitespots’ i.e. the most environmentally hygienic part of each district thereby conserving their economic and social benefits as well as preparing them for future epidemics.

The design exploration focuses largely on the redesign of Pei Ho Street MSB (designed and built in 1995 by Lu Tang Lai Architects Ltd. 2012) in SSP; a district popular for its street markets, home to many of Hong Kong’s local Cantonese population and an area in dire need of urban renewal due to its blocks of mid-20th Century dilapidated housing. The MSB and SSP are typical examples of the environmental health challenges that Hong Kong faces.

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79

60m

160m

40m

100m

figure 2.17. size comparison between the Pompidou Centre and the Pei Ho Street MSB.

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figure 2.18. Pei Ho Street’s central position within SSP.

figures 2.19. Typical programmes within a Municipal Services Building include cooked food centres on the top floor (top image), wet markets on the 2nd or 3rd floor (middle image) and stalls selling fruit and vegetables on the ground and first floors (bottom image) 81

Position Current situation The MSB has an indirect and detrimental effect on the build of pollution in the adjacent streets, contributing to ‘the urban canyon effect’ in the district. While not expected to deal with urban air pollution, which is under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Department and the Transport Department, the SSP MSB’s building form goes against many of the technical guidelines for newer government buildings. It is outdated.

However, it is not surprising to see a building that is a vertical extrusion of the plot area so as to maximise space and therefore revenue. Additionally, the pragmatic and staid building form may be more to accommodate as many services as possible rather than purely for financial reasons. It does create an interesting problem; what is the right balance between the provision of an environmentally-friendly form and the provision of ample space for socio-economic-friendly programmes?

Potential The MSB holds the central position in almost every district in Hong Kong both physically and socially.

Its’ placement in the centre of the dense urban form could perhaps make it the best site for an intervention that would reintroduce fresh natural air into the stagnant airways caused by the surrounding buildings.

Additionally, it is the socio-economic centrepoint to many districts. Containing many unique programmes such as the markets, wet market and cooked food centre, it provides affordable market produce for lowincome locals as well as a source of business.

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figure 2.20. The Municiapl Services Building contributes to the Urban Canyon Effect by having no perforated sides that would encourage wind speeds in the street.

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Position - SSP highlight hawkers (+photo)

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figure 2.21. Adjacent streets are home to many small businesses that profit from attracting the same customers that frequent the Municipal Services Building.

TAI PO ROAD

UN CHAU STREET

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figure 2.22. Sham Shui Po District.

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Public vs. Private Current situation Following current trends in Hong Kong, it is likely that the MSB will be privatized and rebuilt as a western style supermarket. If privatized, its municipal and cultural responsibility vanish and it becomes purely a profit-making machine.

Potential As the only public sector in each district, the MSB should arguably do as much as possible for its municipality, in form as well as function. Currently it follows the same principles of every other building in Hong Kong; maximize plot use and reject the street. As the theorist Abbas (1994) points out “the anonymous high rise block must not be seen as simply a solution to the problem of hyperdensity; it also contributes to exacerbating the problem and exists as an index of the problem.” The MSB must break away from this ‘index’ if it hopes to make a statement about what an environmentally hygienic building is in Hong Kong.

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figures 2.23. SSP MSB Section.

figures 2.24. (left) a traditional market stalls. (right) the new western style supermarkets that supersede the local markets.

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The Wet Market Current situation Wet markets are a traditional type of market where live animals are kept and killed in front of the customer to ensure the freshness of the meat. They stem from a time when it was impossible to ensure freshness of produce due to lack of refrigaration technology and the humid temperatures typical to Southern China.

They acquired the name ‘wet’ due to the constant need to wash down surfaces in order to clear the blood and animal waste created from housing and killing the animals within the market.

While ironically they were originally the best way to ensure a good level of hygiene (i.e. by ensuring that meat was not left to rot), since SARS and avian influenza scares they have been known as potential hotbeds for disease. The mix of animals and humans in close proximity and the difficult duty of constantly rinsing surfaces to maintain cleanliness have meant that these markets have been found to be particularly good transmission nodes of new infectious disease in urban populations.

Having been identified as a potentially dangerous unhygienic centres, the wet market typology has been gradually phased out by the FEHD (and, they argue, ‘natural attrition’).

Potential However, wet markets are more than a pragmatic (now defunct) way of selling fresh produce, they have been used by generations of Cantonese which has made them an intrinsic part of old Cantonese culture.

Eradicating the MSBs would have economic and social repercussions as Webster (2004) explains: “Although it may seem a simple matter to close wet markets for the general good of society, it would be no simple matter. Such closure would put thousands of legitimate owners and workers in wet markets out of business, with all the legal issues to be resolved. Continuing demand and high prices would drive the wet- market system underground where monitoring would be impossible.”

Rather than be simply being a source of contention, the wet market could instead act as an early warning system for new diseases into the city and a public health education centre. As the final point of the poultry trade and the only part visible and accessible to the public, it is vital that it projects itself as a node of optimum hygiene and health. Furthermore, just as every other import into Hong Kong has its own statement building (i.e. Bank of China for the flow of capital, Hong Kong Airport for the flow of people) which symbolize a stability and a sense of authority, the MSB could become another statement building.

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Urban Renewal Current situation The Urban Renewal Authority’s (URA) current stance is to build new developments rather than renew older buildings. Certain funds are available for small interventions in older districts, mainly to renew residential blocks. District Urban Renewal Forum, the URA’s committee for districts renewal, is currently focusing on Eastern Kowloon (see figure 2.26). While wholesale renewal such as this is an effective way to achieve better environmental health, it does mean other districts suffer from lack of attention.

Potential Making the government focus on the MSB in each district rather than on scattered developments within each district could potentially be a greater improvement to environmental health and hygiene.

The URA is the most likely authority with the funds and the statutory power to implement this scheme.

However, because the MSB, as a large and complex building, will be a particularly costly redevelopment, the finances will most likely have to be circumvented from other future renewal projects in the district.

URA’s typical district renewal projects are housing blocks (see figure 2.26). The question of funding now becomes a question of priority; why should the MSB be renovated rather than a housing block? In terms of financial priority the SSP MSB could be kept as a public sector venture for procurement reasons. Housing, on the other hand, can be semi-privatised and funded through schemes such as Private-Public Partnership.

Additionally, following Adams & Hastings’ (2001) logic that viable redevelopments pay for non-viable ones, an argument could be made that the MSB is more financially successful than a single housing block.

Finally, financial feasibility goes some way to incentivizing the URA to implement the design but a further consideration is the additional future benefits a redesign may have. A case could be made for what Langston et al. (2008) call ‘environmental obsolescence’; the MSB is unfit for its original purpose of serving its district.

The criteria set out by Langston et al. could be a more compelling argument than the more traditional approach of cost-benefit analysis. An Adaptive Reuse Potential model would make the case for a new design on the lines that it benefits the environmental health and hygiene of an area whereas the one-dimensional view of a cost-benefit analysis may only take account economic gains, something which the URA has previously been chastised for doing.

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figure 2.25. (top right) one of the residential apartment blocks under renewal due to the Urban Renewal Authority.

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figure 2.26. Map of Municipal Services Buildings Overlayed on the Urban Renewal Authority’s renewal plan for East Kowloon.

If a small portion of funds were redistributed to the Municipal Services Buildings in certain districts outside of East Kowloon, the impact of urban renewal may be wider reaching than a district-by-district approach.

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Part 3

figure 3.0. Existing condition concept image. Hong Kong’s mode of urban development encourages the accumulation of maximum proportions.

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The Municipal Services Building as a catalyst for urban hygiene and health

figure 3.1. Layered Boundaries concept image. The balance of boundary and field in regards to the movement of people, air, and disease and the perceptions attached to both.

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KEY:

DESIGN

WRITTEN methodology & scope

Introduction to topic objectives research questions

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF HONG KONG’S RELATIONSHIP TO SARS

Determinants of SARS linked to Hong Kong’s global position and urban condition.

- connectivity - mobility - proximity

MODE OF ANALYSIS

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING

Part 1

architecture and urban design in relation to: environmental design behavioural psychology epidemiology

Defining HK as a paradox between mobility and fixity.

HK = new global status based on mobility HK = old urban form defined by its fixity

fixity spatial forms order hygiene

mobility systematic chaos dirt

HEALTH SYSTEMS COMPARISON AND RISK CULTURE ANALYSIS

ASSESSING HONG KONG’S HEALTH SYSTEM, RISK CULTURE AND ARCHITECTURE

BY ITS ABILITY TO MANAGE MOBILITY AND FIXITY Health systems compared (old) Preventative Health System (favours fixity over mobility) (new) Preparedness Health System (favours mobility over fixity)

Risk culture as a biopolitical tool and the dangers of too much awareness

the biosecurity network design intent: exploring opportunities for intervention and what a preparedness system may mean in practice.

Design Q: what are the extents of HK’s biopolitical boundaries? How far can they be extended using architecture?

A NEW PARADIGM OF HEALTH ONLY WORKS IF THE HEALTH SYSTEM, CULTURE AND URBAN FORM ARE WORKING IN CONJUNCTION. AT THE MOMENT IT IS SKEWED

WHAT TYPE OF NEW ARCHITECTURE EMERGES FROM A NEW HEALTH SYSTEM AND NEW CULTURE? ?

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figure 3.2. Methodology diagram.

Part 2

TYPOLOGY STUDY AND CONCEPTUAL DESIGN INTENT

HISTORICAL REVIEW

HONG KONG HAS A HISTORICAL PROPENSITY TO FAVOUR FIXITY OVER MOBILITY IN CONTROLLING HYGIENE

Colonial (Sanitary Order) > Modernism (Purism) > Pragmatism (Economically-driven) > Post-SARS: Medicalisation of the city (ungoverned and emergent in reaction to pragmatism’s hygiene deficits.)

Hong Kong historically is also a laboratory for urban governance and development.

The MSB’s potential to turn from a hygienic blackspot into an hygienic cleanspot

To what extent can Hong Kong’s Municipal Services Buildings improve the environmental hygiene of their district?

DESIGN STUDY

Part 3

Facade/Street

internal/external

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Ohno Laboratories Segmentline City vs.

Zoning City theories

Ohno Laboratories Outer field layer theory

Shiqiao Li’s antisepsis

A discussion on urban ventilation in relation to a single building

A discussion on perceptions of public space

Open vs. closed spaces

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DISCUSSION

Part 4

Design principles extracted from the design study.

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Zoning City

Segmentline City

figure 3.3. Zoning City (top left) and Segmentline City (top right). Conceptual diagrams used to explore design implications.

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Layered Boundaries “Diagrammatically, the whole city is composed of autonomous fields … and rigidly defined connecting passages.”

Ohno Laboratory, 1992

In order to describe Hong Kong and the proposed interventions in architectural terms of intent, this section categorises Hong Kong’s urban form into ‘boundary’ and ‘field’ to bring together critical notions of the city as borderless and the separation between hygienic interiors with unhygienic exteriors. The boundary and field concept allows this section to explore both technical air assessment and phenomenological space in a shared medium.

1 It is important to point out at this stage that technical detailing of the facade in order to influence wind speed and direction is not considered within the scope of this thesis for a number of reasons. Firstly, to be able to discuss the topic within a range of disciplines and, secondly, due to a number of discussions with experts on urban ventilation (e.g. Professor Alan Short, Andy Brown, and Professor Edward Ng) whom all agreed that it would take masses of data and modeling to accurately predict wind movement. It is for this reason that this section used guiding principles, which, if applied, would likely (but not empirically) show an improvement in urban ventilation.

Furthermore, a tricky balance must be reached between (1) technical and (2) experiential aspects when considering the architectural implications and solutions to disease and hygiene. Both aspects separately are difficult to quantify in their own right. The former, technical, deals with calculating minute air movements in the urban environment affected by air movement far outside the vicinity of the area being tested. Air calculations are so complex that in order for this thesis to discuss them in relation to phenomenological studies the problem is outlined by urban ventilation principles rather than specific calculations1. Additionally, due to what I argue is an inherently developing city with a hungry metabolism, accurate portrayals of future urban wind conditions are near impossible. Principles at the least allow the designer to build towards a more hygienic environment. The latter, an experiential view of disease and hygiene, as the architectural theorist David Gissen (Borasi & Zardini, 2012) notes, allows the study to also address pollution on its historical, cultural or social implications. The threat of disease and impurity, as has been discussed, goes beyond real threats and spills into the realm of perceptions. Addressing psychological issues of infectious disease and hygiene not only serves to tackle the very real public health risks that perceptions of high risk areas caused during SARS but also allows us to explore how architecture plays a part in the social engineering movements such as public health campaigns.

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figure 3.4. Exploded axonometric of the proposed redesign of the Pei Ho Street Municipal Services Building.

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private commercial offices

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clinics cooked food centre

wet market

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informal market stalls

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“Outer layer, in contrast to structure, has been widely neglected in modern architecture; it has been labeled thin, superficial, and unimportant.”

Ohno Laboratory, 1992

pedestrian-centric

2 Ohno Laboratory are a research group who conducted field research in Hong Kong in order to “create a dynamic space model for contemporary metropolis” (1992).

vehicle-centric

The first boundary to address is that between the building and its neighbourhood. As Ohno Lab’s2 notes, the modern city block is built up to its site limit with little or no consideration for its relation to the street or neighbouring blocks. They continue by identifying, in this instance, the boundary becomes subordinate to the field. I translate this boundary as underused space with a potential to interact with the street, which the internal programming of a building often cannot do. This is in stark contrast to the importance of internal hygienic surfaces that Li mentions in relation to the new view of the hygienic city. This already suggests that the façade is missing an opportunity to have a hygienic register and a greater relationship to the street.

figure 3.5. Considering the building’s relation to the neighbourhood.

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Within this section, natural ventilation is explored as a means to reduce the buildup of harmful pollutants and stagnant air for airborne disease to build up in. Hong Kong’s current work into this area of study has resulted in The Feasibility Study for Establishment of Air Ventilation Assessment System (AVAS). The report was government-backed and compiled by air ventilation specialists, advisors and consultants to determine how Hong Kong’s urban fabric could be designed to encourage better natural ventilation. It came as a response to Team Clean’s attempt at creating meaningful changes to the city’s urban development guidelines.

government health advice

Severe

While AVAS does not claim to provide the solution to disease transmission, the series of urban ventilation principles that it proposes introduce clean air into streets that would normally be left (1) polluted and (2) stagnant. The latter point is particularly useful for architects who, if the buildings they designed now had particularly high air movement outside, could now incorporate that into an interior ventilation strategy.

The public is advised to reduce outdoor activities, physical exertion and prolonged stays near roadsides in dense urban areas. Children and the elderly are especially at risk.

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People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses are advised to reduce outdoor activities, physical exertion and prolonged stays near roadsides in dense urban areas.

Children and the elderly are especially at risk.

No action should be taken although long term exposure of several months or years is detrimental to health.

figure 3.6. Hong Kong’s Air Pollution Index.

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figure 3.7. Air pollution readings exceeding 100 (i.e. ‘very high’ or ‘severe’ pollution warnings).

The above graph gives an indication of how invasive bad air is to daily Hong Kong life. In 2012 for example, it would be advisable for children, the elderly and people with existing heart or respiratory illnesses to not go outside their doors or exercise for 140 days of the year.

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figure 3.8. Western Kowloon districts with the prevailing wind direction overlayed on top of the urban grid.

Many streets suffer from being perpendicular to the prevailing wind which would otherwise introduce a wind speed and fresh air to the heavily polluted and stagnant air that builds up.

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Additionally, although the AVAS report had excellent intentions, the practicalities of adapting building codes at an urban level is a gargantuan task that arguably cannot be achieved due to private developers being adverse to losing valuable space in order for their buildings to be ‘perforated’ for better air movement. Due to the MSB’s placement as typically the only public sector building in each district (as explained in a previous chapter), it could have the potential to bypass the economic incentives characteristic of private developers and to incorporate these urban ventilation principles. The question now becomes which of these principles are still applicable at the level of a single building?

figure 3.9. An example of wind flows inside an urban canyon (sectional view). The aim of most urban ventilation measures is to increase wind speed at ground level in order to reduce stagnant air pockets that accumulate roadside pollution.

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figure 3.10. Computational Fluid Dynamics modelling using Vasari. (above) The neighbourhood around the Pei Ho Street Municipal Services Building consists of 7 or 8 storey buildings. This monotomous set of building heights severely reduces wind speed in the streets (slow wind speeds shown in blue). (middle) The same plan view as above but the wind readings have been taken at a higher level above the ground plane to show the effect single buildings have on the prevailing wind. (below) Plenty of wind speed exists above the street level but is blocked by the uniform building forms.

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Urban Ventilation Principles Below are some of the urban ventilation principles extracted from the AVAS study and converted into design guidelines for the new MSB.

01. vertical perforation With Hong Kong’s fondness for highrise towers, this is often the most suitable intervention. It is, however, difficult to retrofit by cutting through existing buildings.

02. perforated block Once air is channeled into the urban fabric through breezeways the air must perforate the full building volume.

03. horizontal perforation A positive way of again infiltrating streets perpendicular to breezeways.

04. height and prevailing winds Building heights should gradually increase away from the prevailing wind direction. The minimal height difference on a street will channel air downwards.

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figure 3.11. 1:500 physical massing models designed to test how these urban ventilation principles may be applied together on one building.

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05. height difference A variety in building heights help to disrupt the air that would otherwise flow over the area and channel it downwards and through potentially stagnant areas.

06. the washing machine effect An idea taken from the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s feasibility study was the concept called the washing machine effect. At road junctions (a particularly hazardous polluted area due to the large amounts of traffic and idling engines) placing two tall building blocks, one significantly taller than the other, on opposite sides of the junction will cause air paths to curve down and then back up again thereby removing the stagnating polluted air.

07. widened street A greater width of street increases wind speeds through. The street width to building height ratio is important but widening streets is often an impractical task in a pre-existing neighbourhood.

08. set-back street Slightly more practical is a staggered set-back from the street. Buildings can make full use of their plot size and their street presence.

09. wind towers and stack chimneys Some of the particularly deep urban canyons may need additional help from air being siphoned into the streets. In some ways the relatively low building heights that are common in Sham Shui Po may be an advantage as wind towers would have an ubobstructed path for the prevailing winds.

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figure 3.12. 1:500 physical massing models designed to test how these urban ventilation principles may be applied together on one building.

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Design objectives - in general The following stages describe basic considerations taken in the redesign of the MSB.

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EXISTING CONDITION The MSB’s form, created by a simple extrusion of the plot dimensions to maximise plot use, exacerbates the problem of poor air quality in the adjacent streets. Considering that this is where outdoor market stalls gather, the MSB is ironically lowering the quality of environmental health and hygiene in the area.

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H =45m

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BUILDING HEIGHT TO STREET WIDTH RATIO = H/W In order to improve air quality in the adjacent streets, a simple move when designing is to consider the building height to street width ratio. Above, the MSB has decreased in width by 5m on the sides adjacent to streets perpendicular to the prevailing winds (which therefore suffer from stagnant air) but gained 5m height. This improves its ratio, changing from 3.33 (40/12) to 2.5 (45/18). In other parts of Hong Kong, ratios can go as high as 6, 7 or deeper (CUHK, 2005) making 2.5 a welcome magnitude.

Arguably the MSB has now lost much of its important floor area. However, this change in ratio allows more space for surrounding markets to inhabit. Furthermore, tall building heights, according to this ratio, do not have as much a detrimental impact to air quality as small street widths, suggesting there is room to explore the benefits of building taller rather than all the way to the plot’s limits.

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GROUND LEVEL OPENINGS The basic premise behind opening the MSB’s lower floor to the street is that the building should not be seen as a separate entity from the street but as an extension of it. It can be thought of more as a cover and accommodate street activities than a standalone building. This design intention aims to rebel against the standard compartmentalised nature of Hong Kong’s ground floor public space.

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EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR VENTILATION STRATEGIES - a facade strategy that is designed specifically to consider wind and pollution conditions specific to the site.

- an exterior ventilation strategy that differentiates between vehicle-heavy and pedestrian-heavy streets.

- an interior ventilation strategy that considers the building form as a whole rather than a series of floors stacked one on top of the other.

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INTERIOR MEETS EXTERIOR - the facade becomes more than a cover to the MSB and becomes perforated at certain points to allow natural ventilation through the building.

- internal programming is divided between more open spaces which take advantage of the natural air circulation and closed spaces which must rely more heavily on mechanical ventilation.

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Design objectives - in detail

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figure 3.13. Design objectives.

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The facade has been considered as an almost entirely standalone structure from the internal structure. This is partly to allow greater freedom for the design of the internal programme while also making it easier to design a facade that does not have to give priority to internal programming.

The facade is made of of single and double skin sections. While the single skin sections are distributed at key points to allow air to perforate through the building, the double skin sections provide opportunities for air movement within its cavity.

The double skin sections have been further divided into either Evaporative Cooling Towers (ECTs) or Solar Chimneys (SCs). The former are designed to circulate fresher prevailing air from the top of the MSB (i.e. above the average building heights in the area) into the street level while the latter extract vehicle pollutants from the street level.

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arrow shows the prevailing wind direction. Note that the ECTs have been placed on the windward side while the CTs have been placed on the leeward.

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1. ECT and SC widths (and therefore air circulation speed) increase near the corners of the MSB as this is where the street junctions are. These junctions are typically the most polluted parts of the streets due to two paths of traffic crossing at one point.

2. The facade becomes a single skin to allow cross ventilation through the building. This will be discussed in another section.

3. The widthways sides of the building are as frictionless as possible and have been set back from the street to encourage the movement of the prevailing wind down both streets.

figure 3.14. Facade study.

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figure 3.16. (right) the ECTs and SCs may have to be fitted with mechanical fans in order to encourage wind movement.

However, by harnessing the principles of the Venturi effect (fluids from a volume of high pressure move into a volume of low pressure) through a change in the width of the facade as well as the stack effect, the air may naturally circulate.

figure 3.15. Foster & Partners’ contemporary reinterpretation of the wind tower in Masdar City shares similar principles to the proposed MSB facade.

Approximate size comparison. Please note that the similar height, width of the tower and angle of the exit shaft are completely coincidental as the Masdar example was found after designing the MSB’s facade.

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figure 3.17. The Evaporative Cooling Tower.

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figure 3.18. Diagram showing how wind circulates on the windward side of a tall building. The addition of ECTs encourages this movement.

Evaporative Cooling Towers Designed to extract fresh air from the prevailing wind direction, the tower drives air down on to street level to (1) reduce the proportion of polluted air and (2) to increase wind speed so as to reduce stagnant pockets of air.

figure 3.19. Perspective view.

Additionally, by introducing a cleaner environment, this side of the street is arguably a good place to encourage the proliferation of the local street market. To further facilitate for this, the building’s envelope is angled in such a way as to provide an element of cover for some of the stalls. The building is also set back by 5m to allow more than just the width of the pavement (the typical amount given to stalls and pedestrians) for the stalls.

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figure 3.20. Diagram showing how the leeward side of buildings can develop stagnant air pockets where potential pollutants may accumulate.

SC extraction point

Solar Chimneys While the solar chimney is designed to meet the same objectives of better air quality as the evaporative cooling towers, it achieves this in a very different manner.

By inverting the flow of air, now from the street and into the prevailing wind, the chimney extracts polluted air from the roadside.

As this road is predominant;y more vehicle heavy than the other side of the MSB the rationale is that extracting the higher amount of vehicle pollutants would be perhaps be more beneficial to overall air quality.

Additionally, the leeward side of buildings are incredibly difficult to inject with fresh natural air. Instead, extracting air may be an easier alternative.

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figure 3.21. Perspective view showing the opening to the SC at street level.

figure 3.22. The Solar Chimney.

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+30m Considering at this height the MSB is fully exposed to the prevailing wind, louvers are incorporated to allow cross ventilation through the building.

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Unlike most buildings in Hong Kong that repeat the same facade up the face of the building, the MSB’s has been designed to take into account different grades of air pollution that exist at different heights between buildings.

6 - 30m Here is the least perforated section of the facade in order to protect against the pollutants accumulating in the urban canyon caused by the MSB and the adjacent building.

0 - 6m Ground floor is open as this is the extraction/injection point for air. Additionally, as will be discussed in the following section, there are more conceptual reasons why the ground floor should be open.

figure 3.23. Section explaining the perforation of the facade.

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INTERNAL/EXTERNAL

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Reconnecting internal and external space

“the various activities that used to occur on the streets are now removed to plazas on individual lots, while the streets have been reduced to a mere transit corridors.”

Ohno Laboratory, 1992

By using the MSB façade to draw a connection between the street and internal workings, a different relationship between the two emerges from the one imposed by the international modernist and pragmatic Hong Kong model. This ‘outer layer field’ as described by Ohno Labs rather than a boundary, requires a different model from that of the “modernist field diagram of the enclosed circle and connecting path”. Now the interior field can impact upon the street.

The conceptions of interior and exterior as dirty and clean respectively begin to blur as each begins to borrow the other’s tectonics. While this moves towards Ohno Lab’s wish of more heterogenous spaces in order to accept the city’s tendency towards vibrancy and activity, they have previously warned against moving activities from the street to ‘plazas on individual lots’, which they argue reduces streets to ‘mere transit corridors’.

I contend that this design does not allow the street to be vacated of activity but instead (1) fuels activity on adjacent streets and (2) rezones streets in order to allow certain streets to be more pedestrian-friendly. This balance between zoning and allowing activity, I argue, moves some way towards balancing the strict premises of the modernist city and the new vision of a city more accepting of mobility and disorderly activity.

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figures 3.24. Examples of the existing boundaries between exterior and interior markets. The latter clearly depend on the former but there seems to be little consideration of how to incorporate them into the design of the MSB.

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One of the most defining elements of the new design is its openness to the street, a feature not fully explored in Hong Kong. Although it is open to provide certain environmental design benefits to the street markets below, this design feature is also intended to merge and blur the threshold between streets and buildings. At the moment this defined boundary marks the line between hygienic interiors and unhealthy exteriors. In order to capitalise on this phenomenon, the MSB’s redesign incorporates a thermal massing strategy that creates a temperature difference between the street and the MSB.

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figure 3.26. Solomon, Frampton and Wong’s (2012) depiction of interior and exterior space in Hong Kong dictated by temperature.

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figure 3.27. The HSBC Tower in Hong Kong employs a similar open ground floor which, however, is barely used. The MSB proposal reappropriates the ground level design in order to add a public space for what would otherwise be outdoor market stalls.

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figure 3.25. xx. Perspective 3.28.

Street level Perspective showing perspective. of ground the condition. relation between interior and exterior.

The market stalls have deliberately not been changed from those found on other streets partly for practicality’s sake but partly for space to feel like a continuous part of the street.

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Inclines up to the first floor creates less of a rigid separation between both floors. It can also be used as a semi-public space with benches to allow the public to congregate.

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INTERIOR CLOSED/OPEN

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In order to discuss the internal balance between dirt and hygiene, mobility and fixity, within what Ohno Labs define as the ‘field’, this section uses Li’s concepts of Hong Kong as a city of infection barriers (2013). This is partly to do with a change in scales; Ohno Labs work deals with the urban scale problem while Li focuses more on the culture and urbanism surrounding infectious barriers that is innate to Hong Kong. Most importantly perhaps it allows a cross between the main thread of boundary and field with the psychological perceptions of risk of disease in public space. It would also be prudent to note here the change from ‘boundary’ conditions to Li’s notion of ‘barriers’. While arguably merely semantics, it illustrates the internalizing and wrapping of indoor space that Li describes. He continues by describing “what controls quantities [heights, density, proximity, convenience, speed] are not systems of harmonic proportions, but the rules of hygiene and safety” (2013). ‘Harmonic proportions’3 of all quantities, similar to segment-line-city theory, is perhaps a better method of constructing such a complex, multi-use building as an MSB then the strict regulations that govern health and safety.

There is a certain element of Hong Kong society that already rebels against this strict formulisation of programming. As Ohno Labs observes, these expressions of urban life are beyond the boundaries set by modernist architecture. Instead they argue for a city “aggressively mixing public and private, commercial and residential space”. The result, it is argued, would be heterogeneity, vitality, complexity as Abbas (1994) explains in his critique of the theory. However, Abbas continues, the theory is overly optimistic and ignores the delicacies involved with the ‘politics of hyperdense space’.

Instead, to bring back Li’s comments, perhaps ‘harmonic proportions’ should be reconsidered as a viable option; a balance between programmes that require strict segmentation and those that would prosper from “heterogeneity, vitality, complexity” as Ohno Labs define it.

3 ‘Harmonic proportions’ being a mode of thinking rather than necessarily an achievable end goal.

But how to define harmonic proportions? This section defines it as the balance of boundary and field in regards to the movement of people, air, and disease and the perceptions attached to both. The current structure of space for MSBs relies almost entirely on a utilitarian definition of balancing boundary and field to achieve environmental hygiene standards. Its architecture takes no account of balancing perceptions of risk for example, only on accumulating maximum plot size and consequently revenue.

Fielding et al. (2009) in their study on avian influenza risk perception in Hong Kong highlight the importance of achieving a delicate equilibrium.

They link the spatial risks (exposure to potentially infected poultry) to public perception, noting high population exposures to live chickens and low perceived risk; a dangerous combination. Conversely, they state that simply raising the perceived risk or “raising population anxiety levels by warnings about disease produces only transient, inconsistent, and therefore often ineffective results as a means of reducing long-term high-risk behaviour”. He goes on to describe three main problems when creating a risk behaviour:

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1) “Persons perceiving control over dubious “hazards” may underestimate the associated risk, which reduces the likelihood of behavior change.

2) Persons who perceive little or no control over a threat adopt fatalistic responses, continue with established behavior, and direct coping efforts towards controlling emotions rather than risks.

3) Hazard exposure causes familiarity, thus reducing perceptions of risk. Therefore, persons may dismiss the warnings as exaggerated or unrealistic.”

It appears from Fielding at al.’s findings that the physical and psychological aspects of risk (i.e. exposure to and perception of ) do not adhere to a simple relationship but one of balance. It is interesting to also see the mention of the importance of ‘control’ as a factor, something that defines Hong Kong’s health strategy. As this chapter will go on to demonstrate, the control of space in Hong Kong is usually entirely under the state which, although brings with it the needed health and safety regulations, does not consider the public’s own control of space.

Harmonic elements; closed and open This section defines the balance between opened and closed barriers when designing for exposure to, perceptions of and control of risk.

“The city as barriers is a paradox” as Li puts it. As has been discussed in previous sections, the idea of enclosing Hong Kong runs against its very nature. A certain amount of isolation and compartmentalisation of the city and its fields is of course an undeniable necessity in order to manage and maintain public health and safety. It is, however, the manner that barriers and boundaries are defined that can exacerbate feelings of risk and lack of control that may be addressed.

When considering the current wet market and its need to be the most hygienic space in the MSB, we begin with the most ‘closed’ space and try to understand how it may adapt to garner a feeling of control for its users (i.e. move away from Fielding’s 2nd problem of fatalistic responses to risk when no control is felt to be had).

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figure 3.29. Cinema and lift sections. During SARS, these spaces were found to be perceived by the public as spaces of highest risk of infection. There appears a common language shared between spaces perceived as high risk, a language of enclosed spaces with a lack of control defined by the user.

In terms of control during SARS, there seemed to be a difference in perception within the category of crowded spaces. As mentioned previously, the public recognized the dangers of enclosed spaces compared to open spaces (Lau, Yang, Tsui, & Kim, 2003). A claustrophobic setting such as a cinema or lift appeared as a higher risk than the open settings of a restaurant or office. It may be that the difference in perception comes down to the level of control allowed. Open plan offices and restaurants are more flexible settings; ventilation, heating and seating can all be personally adjusted. There is also the element of time spent inhabiting these spaces. There is a relative level of freewill that allows for people to vacate or enter when necessary. Lifts and cinemas, however, are functionally rigid spaces that are required to be inhabited at times uncontrollable by the user. The lack of control over the inhabited environment may make the average user nervous. The fact certain senses and actions are cut off only serves to confound the situation. A lift user is more aware of the person coughing next to him in a lift than a person who splutters as he passes him on the street.

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figure 3.30. Section showing interior ventilation strategy

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Louvers above the adjacent building heights allow for cross ventilation through the interior

With such a deep planned building (30x90m), perforation should also take into account floor coverage. Where otherwise would have been unperforated floor slabs, instead is cut an atrium-like space to allow (1) cross ventilaton and (2) warm air to up through the centre from ground level. At this point in the building the facade becomes single skinned for cross ventilation purposes.

The main staircase is situated in the most perforated section of the plan, taking advantage of the additional ventilation.

Stack effect allows warm air to be expelled from the top of the building. The facade at this level is closed to protect the interior from pollution.

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figure 3.31. Section showing closed programming.

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Certain programmes such as the wet market have been enclosed and separated from the ventilation system used by the rest of the building to reduce the likelihood of cross-contamination of system sin the event of an infectious disease outbreak.

If we consider the elements used to create these closed and protected spaces, we may consider alternatives. The typical denotion of boundary is the wall in the MSB. The very instance a wall is added to define a space it immediately suggests a level of constrainment. Their solid and clinical nature is fantastic in order to control germs through hygienic surfaces but it also gives the perception that the user themselves are controlled, again exacerbating the feeling of helplessness. What perhaps would be best is a modicum of free choice in order to instill a feeling of greater control.

However, realistically, the wet market is first and foremost a place in need of high hygiene standards in which case the control should perhaps be imagined rather than real. It cannot, unlike the other programmes in the MSB, give way to complete freedom for fear of falling into Fielding’s 3rd problem of over-familiarity. Instead it must balance a ‘perception’ of free will with a reminder that it is a potential risk.

wet market

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Negative air pressure (i.e. a greater force of air in [1] than out [2]) and a separate mechanical ventilation system from the rest of the building decrease the likelihood of airborne contaminants escaping the wet market.

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[2]

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Facilities to kill the poultry have been moved to the centre so that (1) it does not cross any public circulation and (2) so that public circulation is placed near the facade so that they do not feel quite so enclosed and at risk.

Culling facilities Wet market stall Public circulation

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figure 3.32. Wet market sectional perspective

Perforated mesh allows views out and the illusion that the wet market is not entirely enclosed. From the outside, it appears as a single enclosed entity.

Public circulation Wet market stall

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The floor slabs have been opened to allow air up through multiple levels to be able to ventilate the lower levels.

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Certain programmes, like the ground level and 1st floor markets, remain open to allow a greater degree of movement than what is typically allowed in the previous MSB. This design consideration is particularly useful in times of epidemic when social distancing (a self-imposed measure by people to reduce the risk of infection by increasing the distance between themselves and others in everyday life) is a crucial tool to reduce chances of infection. During the 2009 H1N1 epidemic, social distancing practices (e.g. avoiding crowded spaces) caused anxiety in the population (Cowling et al., 2010). By providing large open spaces, the MSB could ensure that it is still usable, even in epidemic periods.

The facade is semi-opaque to allow views out. This is not to frame specific views but so as to remind users about the constant connection between internal and external. (Buildings in Hong Kong primarily give no indication as to one’s orientation once inside in regards to the street.)

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figure 3.33. Indoor market perspective

Market stall signs are suspended from the ceiling rather than placed on columns to give the impression of openness.

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figure 3.34. (right) Section highlighting main staircase figure 3.35. (below) Perspective of indoor market level.

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Vertical circulation divides the MSB into three sections. Should the wet market be closed down temporarily due to an epidemic scare then the rest of the building can function normally.

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THE H T E A LT H A S P E C The new design incorporates medicinal foods and clinics into the programming. The rationale is that the MSB should be thought of as essential to a community’s health.

The medicinal food stalls have been situated on the same open level as the cooked food centre, giving the choice between both. These traditional stalls are another slowly fading part of Hong Kong life. By adding them to the MSB, it not only helps to conserve them but also adds to the image of the MSB as a provider of health.

Both the medicinal food stalls and the clinics have been connected to the same circulation core so that in the event of the markets closing due to an epidemic, they are still fully functional as their core functions independent from the markets.

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figure 3.36. (top) A shop selling herbal medicine. (bottom) Traditional Chinese herbal medicine. Chinese medicine is usually in the form of food or drink which perhaps offers the opportunity to incorporate medicine stalls into the same level as the cooked food centre.

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Based on Fielding’s rules of risk behaviour, a balance has tried to be achieved between completely removing all perceptions of risk from the wet market (this reduces a sense of risk but could lead to an underestimation of risk) with leaving risk apparent (which potentially will not change high-risk behaviour).

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figure 3.37. Photo essay of a live bird being brought and killed in one of the stalls in Sheung Wan MSB’s wet market.

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figure 3.38. Sectional perspective of the proposed wet market.

The wet market’s service elevator allows views into it from the market levels so that users are constantly aware of the wet market itself.

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The walls between the public circulation, stalls, and culling facilities are perforated to allow some sense of the activities behind.

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Part 4

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A discussion on the potential and feasibility of a network of new Municipal Services Buildings

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figure 4.0. A map of the Municipal Services Buildings in each district.

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figure 4.1. Conceptual overlay of the MSB on a Hong Kong bank note. Could the MSB be used as an icon for the measures the government is taking in addressing environmental health concerns?

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The Statement Building In order for the proposed MSB design to be entirely successful, its impact on environmental hygiene and the public perception’s of health must be reproducible in other districts, each with their own context-specific requirements. The thesis has explored certain design propositions but of course there remains the questions about the feasibility of adapting over 50 MSBs. Politically, it requires a complete rethinking as to how the MSBs serve their communities. The danger is they are seen as antiquated relics of local Cantonese tradition rather than the integral parts of a district and important points of security of food hygiene into the urban form as this thesis has claimed.

The notion of treating these buildings as ‘statement’ buildings is intended to not only incentivise political will but also social awareness. The government authorities such as the Transport Department, Environmental Protection Department and FEHD already make their presence visible to the public; ensuring that streets are kept clean and hygienic. These visual signs of state intervention are important for any government that wants to convince its public it is addressing a public concern. However, within each district, there exists no government architecture with the same message. This restricts government control of hygiene to streets and, furthermore, lets private property dictate the cleanest interior spaces in the city. The government does, however, understand the importance of statement buildings to encourage policies and advertise progressiveness of its administration. In 2001, in response to global and local narratives pushed by a sustainability agenda, the government has incorporated green roofs into many new government buildings. The need to champion policies and set records through new policies is a natural tendency for a government that Li has noted as having a propensity for aiming to attain quantities of maximum proportions. It is this pioneering attitude that actually makes the procurement of many MSBs in different districts seem potentially realisable.

The two issues that perhaps loom largest for the government are (1) that they do acknowledge urban ventilation and environmental hygiene as a tangible problem and (2) that the future challenges of the merger with Mainland China in 2047 will not only bring extra stresses of density, proximity and mobility but could drastically reduce the effectiveness of their social engineering programmes to increase public health awareness in their population.

1 While this paper cannot perform consultations, CUHK’s (2005) AVA Stakeholder Engagement Forum & Consultation Briefings brought up the need for (1) pilot studies “to help develop the test methodology, technical specifications, benchmark standards and qualitative/quantitative guidelines for design” and (2) the Government should lead.

Currently an urban scale problem such as environmental health and hygiene requires an urban scale solution, a solution that would be highly optimistic in light of Hong Kong’s tendency towards economic-led development. Taking into consideration the financial costs and losses through restructuring the urban fabric, redesigning the MSB typology does not appear as comparatively costly. There are funds, for example, such as the government’s Capital Works Reserve Fund, the main source of construction funding for implementation of public sector projects (Shen et al. 2006), that could potentially cover costs. Alternatively, a URA-led 169

initiative1, would have the available funding by using the Urban Renewal Fund that would cover major renovation projects such as the MSB redesign.

Furthermore, the future 2047 merger between Hong Kong and Mainland China could potentially merge the two cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong into one megacity. This will not only put a strain on the city’s infrastructure and likely increase urban density as Hong Kong’s political border ceases to police the influx of mainland citizens, these new citizens will also not have been subject to the intense social engineering the government has subjected its own population to. It is with this in mind that the MSB as a statement building is perhaps most important. Focusing on the current trend towards, and eradication of, the MSB typology and its replacement with the western style supermarket, problems seemingly arise when considering Hong Kong’s future. The new MSB typology acts as a facilitator for future outdoor markets, while the supermarket leaves no room for small-scale, independent, low-income stall owners to meet the needs of the local low-income communities. The influx of a new population from China will almost certainly bring new vendors and stall owners as the scale of China’s population means a drive towards a more developed society takes far longer than Hong Kong does. Not providing adequate facilities could be potentially disastrous, leading to, as Webster (2004) notes, the rise of black market trade which in turn is entirely unmanageable by the city’s environmental health divisions. The western model of market simply cannot take this into account. Furthermore, the potential for the MSB to be an educational tool, ‘behavior-reform machine’ to borrow from Li, gives it more leverage than the supermarket; a purely economically-driven machine.

Degrees of success Success of the proposal relies on the degree to which this set of design objectives for a new MSB typology would and could be appropriated in different districts. Different degrees of intervention, dictated largely by economic feasibility, would lead to different impacts on environmental health and public health education.

If one was to take the redesign of the SSP MSB as the starting point with a view to improve environmental health in Hong Kong, what would be the smallest and largest degrees of success? Firstly, considering a small but significant development would be for the MSB’s design to be used as a prototype to empirically test many of AVAS’s urban ventilation principles. This evidence, arguably lacking in the original report2, could prove a catalyst for policies for future developments in Hong Kong of all highrise building types. Certain elements, for example the double-skin façade or the open ground level, could be incorporated into new building designs or as retrofits of existing buildings.

Were the SSP MSB to act as a prototype for other district’s MSBs, a much larger and wider-reaching impact on environmental health might occur.

As well as potentially influencing future private sector urban ventilation policy, the MSBs could act as a framework whereby districts actively try to improve their environmental hygiene and health qualities through the visible marker that is the MSB building in much the same way that Hong Kong has tried to tackle its green agenda:

“In developing the [Greening Master] Plan, district characteristics have been given full consideration.

For example, the GMP for Central adopts “Heart 170

2 Based on discussions with Professor Edward Ng.

of Gold” as the theme to reflect and highlight its role as the financial hub of Hong Kong by using plants with golden, yellow, orange and red colours.

The theme of GMP for Tsim Sha Tsui is “Jade Necklace” which aims to provide pedestrians and visitors with a relaxing and enjoyable experience by linking up major greened areas.”

Government of Hong Kong, 2014

While this strategy could be argued as only superficial and ‘skin-deep’, it taps into the tendency in Hong Kong to make public sector projects an opportunity for the government to legitimize itself in the view of the public and, to some extents, globally too.

Finally, the original concept of the MSB redesign, to turn the seemingly most unhygienic spot in a district into the cleanest, when multiplied across districts would ideally have a much greater impact on the public’s perceptions of hygienic and unhygienic spaces in the city. In the same way air-conditioned mall interiors have rejected the exterior and subsequently dictated the perceptions of what the cleanest spaces are in the city, by suggesting a more blurred threshold between interior and exterior, can the new MSB create a new urbanism? While this section has suggested that questioning Hong Kong’s typical rigid high-rise typology through the MSB’s new design principles could result in new guidelines and eventually statutory regulations for new buildings, influencing the public rather than the government could perhaps be the most important objective.

As mentioned earlier, Solomon, Wong, & Frampton (2012) identified an interdependence between the public’s perceptions of clean space and shopping centre interiors. By the MSB redesign actively redefining what is clean space in the city, the commercial sector may follow in order to attract the public. This in turn could present new opportunities for urban form which starts to alter the urban fabric in the same way that internalized paths of circulation created by commercial centres linking to each other has done.

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Design principles

From this research a set of design principles have emerged that could be adapted for MSBs in other districts in order to improve environmental health and infectious disease resilience.

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The building’s external form helps ventilate the adjacent streets using a series of wind principles that are sitespecific.

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Opening the ground floor not only allows freer movement of air at ground level, it also provides a rare opportunity for a central public gathering space in Hong Kong.

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The facade responds to the different gradations of air quality caused by the urban canyon effect. Levels above the district’s avaerage building height are able to be naturally ventilated.

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The building can in effect act as a large stack tower to the publicly-used ground level. This is an example of the building acting not simply as an accumulator of density, people and revenue but as a ‘valve’ for street level activity.

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Rather than compartmentalising every single programme, only certain programmes such as the wet market (i.e. potential disease transmission nodes) are enclosed. This helps the public understand which areas need to be medicalised while crucially differentiating between those spaces that do not need to be so highly regulated.

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Open plan programming allows a modicum of unregulated movement usually unavailable due to Hong Kong’s rigid and pragmatic architecture. Choice of proximity to other allows users to distance themselves from others while still being able to use the MSB’s facilities.

This becomes useful during epidemic periods.

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In the event that the wet market closes due to the fear of an epidemic, the remaining sections of the MSB are able to remain operational so that a vital public facility does not become defunct during an epidemic.

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It is important that the public do not become complacent to the level of risk posed by wet markets. The building functions as a public health education machine.

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Conclusion

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Epidemics and poor environmental quality will continue to blight Hong Kong if it continues a model of development that prioritises economic gains and maximum densities over environmental health. The eventual 2047 merger with Mainland China, the potential merger with Shenzhen and an increasingly globally connected world all require Hong Kong to think critically about how well it is prepared for this inevitable future.

This thesis took the city’s core concept, Ali and Keil’s (2006) theory that the dialectic of the globalised urban condition is between the paradoxical notions of mobility and fixity and used it to drive an exploration through many of the political, social and spatial aspects of the topic, not to mention through the different disciplines involved; from the state’s historical need for fixed biopolitical control over its mobile migrating Chinese population to using the concept to design new relationships between ordered, confined, hygienic space and disorderly, open, unhygienic space.

While the thesis has argued that there appears a biased view from both the public and the state that tends towards fixed, medicalised concepts of what an environmentally healthy city is, it does not necessarily dismiss this notion. Instead it has explored a finer balance between mobility and fixity and recognises that both may inform the other. For example, the MSB’s new design seeks to control the uncontrollable by diverting air, the very definition of mobility, into the streets below. Conversely, the fixed pragmatic format of the highrise MSB typology has been perforated and its boundaries questioned to allow movement of both air and people.

From testing that strives towards an equilibrium between the two, a set of design principles emerge. The aim of these principles was not to prove them true by empirical research or to simply design one MSB in SSP. The aim was twofold. Firstly it was not to see the solution to environmental health and hygiene as purely medical but to instead amalgamate a series of seemingly disparate disciplines into principles that create a working building. Subsequently, the final aim is that the explorations within this thesis moves the discussion about the relationship between health, disease and the built environment to a point where solutions are not purely medical but take into account how a building can and must work in the complex system that is a global city.

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List of figures All images are the author’s own unless otherwise listed here.

All CAD maps were adapted from files found at http://www.census2011.gov.hk/en/district-profiles.html All Municipal Services Building plans and sections were based on maps found at each building.

Figure 1.6. the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network map of global cities 2010. Available at: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/visual/globalcities2010.pdf [Accessed 24 April 2014].

Figure 1.13. The Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign in 1972. Photo taken of the exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of History, Hong Kong.

Figure 1.14. Team Clean Poster. Photo taken at the Health Education Exhibition And Resource Centre, Hong Kong.

Figure 1.15. Mainland locust advert. Photo taken at the exhibition ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ by Para Site, 2013, Hong Kong.

Figure 2.8. The police and Hong Kong Sanitary Board disinfect Tai Ping Shan District during the bubonic plague of 1894. Photo taken at the exhibition ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ by Para Site, 2013, Hong Kong.

Figure 2.9. Tai Ping Shan District is cleared after the plague. Photo taken at the exhibition ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ by Para Site, 2013, Hong Kong.

Figure 2.11. Central District Cities Without Ground map. Solomon, J., Wong, C. & Frampton, A., 2012. Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook, Oro Editions.

Figure 2.26. Map of Municipal Services Buildings Overlayed on the Urban Renewal Authority’s renewal plan for East Kowloon. District Urban Renewal Forum, 2011. District Aspirations for Urban Renewal in Kowloon City Review and Prospects.

Figure 3.6. Hong Kong’s Air Pollution Index. Available at: http://www.aqhi.gov.hk/en.html [Accessed 24 April 2014].

Figure 3.7. Air pollution readings exceeding 100. Available at: http://www.aqhi.gov.hk/en.html [Accessed 24 April 2014].

Figure 3.9. An example of wind flows inside an urban canyon. CUHK, 2005. Feasibility Study for Establishment of Air Ventilation Assessment System - Final Report.

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Figure 3.15. Foster & Partners’ contemporary reinterpretation of the wind tower in Masdar City. Available at: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KsNkpoGVcX0/TgoChIFfd7I/AAAAAAAAB6E/tLIPu3lSAkk/s640/Masdr-Cityproject-featur-009.jpg [Accessed 24 April 2014].

Figure 3.16. Wind tower size comparison. Available at: http://www.carboun.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ Masdar-Institute-Wind-Tower1.jpg [Accessed 24 April 2014].

Figure 3.18. Diagram showing how wind circulates on the windward side of a tall building. The addition of ECTs encourages this movement. CUHK, 2005. Feasibility Study for Establishment of Air Ventilation Assessment System - Final Report.

Figure 3.20. Diagram showing how the leeward side of buildings can develop stagnant air pockets where potential pollutants may accumulate. CUHK, 2005. Feasibility Study for Establishment of Air Ventilation Assessment System - Final Report.

Figure 3.26. Central District Cities Without Ground map. Solomon, J., Wong, C. & Frampton, A., 2012. Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook, Oro Editions.

Figure 3.27. HSBC Tower Section. Available at: files/2011/08/0501-Section.jpg [Accessed 24 April 2014].

http://www10.aeccafe.com/blogs/arch-showcase/

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Further reading The following documents, while not cited directly in the thesis, have informed the argument and an understanding to the background of this topic.

1 Alcalde, M.G. et al., 2003. QUARANTINE AND ISOLATION : LESSONS LEARNED FROM SARS. , (November).

2 Amin, A., 2013. Surviving the turbulent future. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31(1), pp.140–156. Available at: http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=d23011.

3 Arup, Resilience, Security and Risk Consulting.

4 Authority, U.R. et al., Tackling Urban Decay: Partnership in Progress. Annual Report 2012-2013.

5 Beech, H., 2003. The quarantine blues. TIME, 0. Available at: 13/10/2012.

6 Blendon, R.J. et al., 2004. The Public ’ s Response to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Toronto and the United States. , 02115, pp.925–931.

7 Buildings Department, APP - 152 : Sustainable Building Design Guidelines, 8 Carmona, M. et al., The temporal dimension. In Public Places - Urban Spaces. Architectural Press, pp.

193–210.

9 Centre for Food Safety, 2011. Statistics on Live Food Animals Imported from Mainland China :, Available at: http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/import/files/Statistics_on_imported_food_animals.pdf.

10 Centre for Food Safety, Guide for importation of live chicken , pigeon and other gallinaceous birds from the Mainland, Available at: http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/import/files/Guide_for_importation_of_live_ poultry.pdf.

11 Centre for Health Protection, 2012. Preparedness Plan for Influenza Pandemic. , pp.1–36.

12 Centre for Health Protection, Advice on Household Disinfection at the Height of Influenza Season. , pp.1–4.

13 Centre for Health Protection, Avian Influenza ( H5N1 ) - Epidemiology and Enhanced Surveillance Presentation at a glance Local situation of human Avian Influenza ( H5N1 ) Case characteristics. , pp.1–10.

14 Centre for Health Protection, Health Advice on Prevention of Avian Influenza in Workplace.

184

15 Centre for Health Protection, Recommendations on Laboratory Testing in Outbreak Investigation. , pp.1–2.

16 Centre for Health Protection, Safety Guidelines for Handling and Disposing of Dead Wild Birds.

17 Centre for Health Protection, What Employers / Enterprises Should Know about Influenza Preparedness.

18 Chai, K.W., 2004. Misery, remembrance, lesson, epidemic museum + SARS memorial park: Lower Ngau Tau Kok, Hong Kong. University of Hong Kong.

19 Chan, Y., 1997. Redevelopment of Wanchai temporary market. University of Hong Kong.

20 Cheng, C.K.C. et al., 2011. Wind-induced natural ventilation of re-entrant bays in a high-rise building. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 99(2-3), pp.79–90. Available at: http:// linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0167610510001200 [Accessed January 3, 2013].

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23 Chui, E.W.T. et al., 2010. Study Report The Achievements and Challenges of Urban Renewal in Hong Kong. , (March).

24 Civic Exchange, Community for Road Safety & Designing Hong Kong, 2013. Walkable City , Living Streets, 25 Coker, R.J. et al., 2011. Health in Southeast Asia 3 Emerging infectious diseases in southeast Asia : regional challenges to control. The Lancet, 377(9765), pp.599–609. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(10)62004-1.

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33 Department, C. and S., 2003. Thematic Household Survey. , (11).

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