Kowloon Walled City Memorial: Design Drawings

Kowloon walled city memorial to collect and rebuild the lost memory Y u , Y i n g H o Z e n o / M A C I G

2 0 1 0 - 1 1 / 1 3 0 5 0 4 2 1

t h e s i f i n a d e s i g d r a w i n g

s l n s

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K O W L O O N

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W A L L E D

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C I T Y

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M E M O R I A L

Kowloon Walled City occupied a relatively small patch in Hong Kong and was never officially under British ownership, nor de facto controlled by the Chinese. In some ways, it can be called a ‘country’ within the former British Colony. As a territory in limbo, it finally became an incredibly dense city with only 0.026 km² area offering homes to 50,000 people. However, due to its embarrassing political position and its image as a sinister place, it was demolished in 1993 and replaced by a park. To most foreigners, Kowloon Walled City is always the first reference when thinking of the congestion and chaos of Hong Kong. However, this thesis asserts that the walled city should have been valued as a remarkable part of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage.

Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate and explore the relationship between memory and cultural identity through the (re-)construction of Kowloon Walled City. On one level, it formulates the design concept by linking cultural theories about memory to the act of memorialisation and explains why such a process is important to Hong Kong’s cultural identity. Memory is fragmented and individual in nature and how memory is “collected” in the public places of the city shapes public discourse. The project explores how memory fragments of the destroyed City can be ‘re-collected’ and developed into the design of the memorial to the City. It thus ‘collects’ memory fragments from different sources and then abstracts, juxtaposes and encodes them into new architectural languages for the memorialisation of the destroyed Walled City of Kowloon. This design creates a sequence of overlapping participatory spaces for the people to remember and rethink their identity. Moreover, it also aims to develop an architectural design as an antidote to the mundane and formulaic nature of contemporary residential architecture in Hong Kong.

James Young reminded us that societies cannot remember in any other way than through their constituents’ memories. He suggested therefore that we speak of ‘collected memory’ rather than ‘collective memory’. how memory is “collected” in the public places of the city shapes public discourses. IT suggests that memory is a process, an action—it is never a noun, fixed and permanent, but more rightly “memory-work,” a continuous remaking of the past for present needs and purposes, and to project our future. most importantly, “collected memory” implies that individuals and groups are doing the “collecting.”

Memory fragment [01]

l a b y r i t h i n e s t r e e t s c a p e

A maze of dark routes pierces the city’s mass from one side to the other, virtually no sunlight reaches them. Looped electric cables festoon their ceilings, dripping alarmingly with moisture. Sometimes you are alone, with every door locked around you. Sometimes lanes are suddenly bright with the lights of a laundry or a sweetshop factory, and with loud Chinese music providing a sound track to daily activities. This memory fragment is to form the basis grid of the site of the memorial. The main streets are taken from the map and abstracted to form the new path for the landscape park.

K W C

Memory fragment [02]

KWC historical landmarks A m a ze o f d a r k r o u t e s p i e r c e s t h e city ’s mas s fr om one s ide to t h e o t h e r, v i r t u a l l y n o s u n l i g h t re aches them. Looped electr ic c a b l e s f e st o o n t h e i r c e i l i n g s , d r i p p i ng alar mingly with moistur e.

So m e t i m e s y o u a r e a l o n e , w i t h e v er y door locked ar ound y ou.

So m e t i m e s l a n e s a re s u d d e n l y b r i g ht with the lights of a laundr y o r a s w e e t s h o p f a c t o r y , a n d w i t h l oud Chines e music pr ov iding a s o u n d tr a c k t o d a i l y a c t i v i t i e s . T his memor y fr agment is to f o rm t h e ba s i s g ri d o f t h e s i t e o f t h e memor ial. T he main str eets a re t a k e n f r o m t h e m a p a n d a b s t r a cted to for m the new path for t h e l a n d s ca p e p a r k .

p l a n

1 8 4 7

[0 1 ] military of f ic er ’s yam e n

[02] S ou th gate

[ 0 3 ] N o r t h gat e

[ 0 4 ] a r m o ury

[05] BAR R AC K

[06] pa ra de grou n d

[ 0 7 ] e r sh en g t e m pl e

[ 0 8 ] O l d we ll

[09] C annon

[10] H il l top pavil ion

[ 1 1 ] m aj o r g en e r al m an si o n

[ 1 2 ] m ur al wa l l

[1 3 ] Par ad e pav i lion

[14] gu n p ow de r fac tory

[ 1 5 ] e a st gat e

[ 1 6 ] wa r e h o us e

r ein t er p r et at ion

o ld

p r o g r am m e

Memory fragment [02]

The location of main military buildings is marked on the site with a new icon which is designed in accordance with the function in the old time with a new interpretation.

The icon may carry function like pavilion, ticketing booth, entrance gateway, parade ground or merely a sculpture portraying its original function.

On top of that, each icon is also designed as the entrance for the underground pathway to the memorial and link up the Fragment 03. It symbolise the meaning that the visitors should re-read the memory from the old days (the icons) to the heyday (the pathway) before entering the memorial building.

Memory fragment [03] T R A C I N G

W A Y

B A C K

H O M E

T h e m e m o r y t r a c e o f o n e ’ s daily journey back home is a v er y indiv idualised e x p e r i e n c e , a n d e v e r y o n e should hav e in KWC had one mind, utilis ing s ecr et p a t h w a y s a n d n e g o t i a t i n g laby r inthine s treets . T his pr oject accommodates d i f f e re n t r o u t e s t o a c c e s s the memor ial and the r esulting indiv idualis ed e x p e r i e n c e . T h e p a t h w a y s are des igned to carv e out fr om under gr ound to s y m b o l i z e t h a t t h e e x i s t e n ce of the City was quite inv isible to the major ity a n d t h e l i f e i n s i d e t h e s h anty town was misunder s tood as my s ter ious y et d a n g e r o u s b y t h e g e n e r a l public. T he city was als o por tr ay ed as an illegal h e a v e n w h e r e m a n y a c t i v i t ies s hould go ‘under gr ound’.

memory fragment [04] C h a o s ,

d e n s i t y

&

r h i z o n e

Hive of dreams. Those mismatched, uncalculated windows. They seem to absorb all the frantic activity of Kai Tak airport, sucking in energy like a black hole. All are built without control and intervention but based on the memory collected from fragments of lives in KWC.

Memory fragment [05] Y a m e n

a n d

t h e

v o i d

The void over Yamen offers a particular quality in the City where sunlight and air can reach ground level directly.

The perception and reality of Yamen varied through its history, from solid mass to negative void.

Memory fragment [06] H K

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

S P A C E S

Contemporary Hong Kong architecture is dull and soulless. Habitable spaces, private or public, are similar in design, both spatially and aesthetically. This results in a sanitized and various forms of creativity - including the way in which the past is valued, interpreted, drawn upon - is in extremely short supply.

eas t

elevat i on

THE memorIAL R e - C O L L E C T I O N

O F

M E M O R Y

This project is not intended to construct a replica of the lost city fabric, but to re-collect memories of the city and rethink the way in which cultural memory is recalled or reconstituted in built form. In and of itself, memorial remains inert, and is wholly dependent on visitors for whatever memories they finally recall of produce.

FLOOR PLAN

I n d e t e r m i n a c y Memory is a phenomenon that is directly related to the present; our perception of the past is always influenced by the present, which means that it is always changing.

The spatial arrangement in the memorial is to create an architectural indeterminacy, which is highly flexible and ever-changing.

Contrasting functions are placed side by side without any rule or system, but to generate the contestation and interrogation.

SECTION

I m a g i n a t i v e

r e c o n s t r u c t i o n

The properties of the City can only be understood as a dynamic context; in terms of movement, interaction and transformation. The memorial is an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole active mass of organized past reactions or experience.

MAPPING [01] R A C I N G

P I G E O N

B r e e d e r

The roof level of kowloon Walled City acted as the lung of the chaos.

It was where people could breath the air and feel the freedom. One could experience the city at the limit of aerial line with its unique perspecitve to the void and yamen.

MAPPING [02] H o u s e w i f e

inside the windowless room somewhere or nowhere in the city, one could experience the maze with different sound, warm, light, touch, dirt and smell. Every strip of the path is temporally and spatially unique that provide a different way back home experience.

Memory PATHWAY Spatial-temporal

narratives

The memorial is designed with numerous underground pathways with entrances marked by the follies designed in Fragment 02.

Each pathway represents a different experience or memory going back home based on different spatial-temporal narratives as collected from the residents. It aims to create a participatory function and designed with the qualities found from the streetscape inside the City so that the visitor can feel how the people in the Walled City moved around as a daily cultural practice

Memory PATHWAY Texture

AND

Scent

of

KWC

Various principles of plot construction ground our ordinary memory practices: we assume, for example, that the remembered I has traced ‘a continuous spatio-temporal route through all the narratives of memory, a route continuous with the present and future location of the remembering subject’ (Campbell 1997, p.110).

Memory PATHWAY F r a g m e n t e d

a b s t r a c t i o n

The pathway is an abstraction of the different qualities and experience inside the City derived from memory... including light and shadow, dampness, smell, noise, colour, openness and enclosure. They are all fragmented elements used to represent collected memory.

Memory fragment [02]

The location of main military buildings is marked on the site with a new icon which is designed in accordance with the function in the old time with a new interpretation. The icon may carry function like pavilion, ticketing booth, entrance gateway, parade ground or merely a sculpture portraying its original function. On top of that, each icon is also designed as the entrance for the underground pathway to the memorial and link up the Fragment 03. It symbolise the meaning that the visitors should re-read the memory from the old days (the icons) to the heyday (the pathway) before entering the memorial building.

MACIG 2010/11 THESIS exhibition 16-20 SEPTEMBER 2011, In 4/F Architecture Studios University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS The overarching objective of the course is to produce graduates who are culturally sensitive designers. It does this through promoting design as the primary method for theoretical investigations into the links between architecture, urbanism and cultural identity within the dynamic context of globalisation. Design and text-based projects sited in London this year explored themes such as empowerment and exclusion, architecture and material culture, cosmopolitan cultures, place attachment, land and commerce, and the appropriation of urban space by diasporic communities. International sites were explored through this year’s field trips, which were conducted through Palestine (West Bank) with the theme of ‘Contested Ground’.

u n i v e r s i t y o f w e s t m i n s t e r M A i n a r c h i t e c t u r e , c u l t u r a l i d e n t i t y & g l o b a l i s a t i o n