Jury in Translation - Mandarin

okay um i think we're ready to start uh thank you everyone for coming um it's really exciting to introduce what is the first durian translation we've ever hosted at the aaa and um to start this project um which is a much wider project called architecture and translation um we thought it was fitting to start with mandarin since uh i think chinese speaking students are the largest demographic of our whole student body and um and it's i think the project as a whole architecture and translation is here to celebrate the wealth embedded in different languages so to identify terms from other languages that can actually expand our architectural vocabulary and change how we talk about architecture in a much more global and diverse way so i'm delighted that so many people are here and we have a great range of projects from across the school being presented and we have an amazing panel of jurors as well and and two translators who will be live translating from uh mandarin to english so the english uh presentations won't be translated but they're keeping notes of um which words don't directly translate or um could be expressed in a different way in mandarin and then at the end of the afternoon we'll have a discussion which they'll join to highlight which of those terms um so just to briefly um tell you uh who's presenting and who's on the panel um uh the presenters uh start i'm again apologize if i mispronounce your name i have a complicated name too um but uh it starts with pengu from projector cities then daijong experimental four um alan from uh sed sustainable environmental design elliott margarita from experimental 18. unfortunately he from first year is unable to make it um but she wishes she'd be here and hopefully we'll do more of these um and then so then it's followed by jing chao from uh housing and urbanism and then carson from diploma 3. um and then on the panel with us today are chris lee from syria architects who also studied here and taught here uh jazzy from london school of economics who's an anthropologist and lee from foster and partners as well as keeshan whoever excited are joining us um they're also aaa alumni and um and so know the school but also coming at it from the world of practice where they've worked on lots of projects in china and then doreen um and mark morris who teach here and kind of understand like how all these projects are situated within the context of the aaa and of course zion who um helped me organize this feat uh very quickly and together with the a chinese alumni group have organized the lunar new year celebration that will take place after um the jury so i hope you'll all stick around for that as well so um without further ado please join me in welcoming ping you to present update um hi thank you i'm hong yuchin from projective cities uh today i'm gonna present my design research part from my dissertation it's still in progress i will present my project in english but i would love to have discussions and critiques in chinese sorry i can present it in chinese the project is called density proximity and temporary forms of collective living of new workers in the context of production transformation in beijing the term new beijinger is not a social term first time being used and defend is when beijing first time providing public housing to non-beijing residents workers in 2017 to define who is eligible this is defined as non-beijing residents with a stable employed in the city without housing for the applicants there are further requirements but very importantly the applicant's profession needs to be corresponded with the industry of beijing's development plan this requirement is a supplement for the building's new urban planning to stop urban sprawl the city is going to shift from a mega city with multiple sub centers with urban planning between shifting multiple city functions and displacing populations in the related industry to the sub-centers the production mode of beijing will shift from manufacture and construction to more cultural and technology focused industries the major labors will also shift from manufacture and construction labors to new types of highly educated workers in technology internet and culture industries in the history large amount of migrant workers flooded into beijing has created problems of illegal housing we may assume that the better educated young professionals with higher salaries will not have the same problem however with increasing higher rental price every year and the urban condition of the beijing the amount in the form of housing are insufficient to provide housing for the new workers in the city the majority the major housing options for the new workers are in the periphery area of beijing outside the fifth string with a lower rent but a long commute time up to two hours the aim of the research in the background of the current urban transformation production transformation the aim of the research is to rethink the new workers current housing situation in beijing and to search for possibilities of new forms of collective living for them not to only provide housing but also generate community and supplement their cultural and entertainment life the disciplinary question is what is the role of housing responding to migration of workers in the backdrop of production transformation the urban question is how to design fluid housing system on the urban scale with consideration of providing residential infrastructures and public space in the diverse urban conditions the typological question is what is the typology for new workers that provide high-density housing and also support the possibility of forming collective life with diverse their diverse lifestyle daily routines and the residence time in beijing the subject of the design research is further refined to a more vulnerable population in the new workers the design subjects are relatively young at age of 22 to 30 years old just graduate from university or just arrive in the city they have a relatively lower income since they just started their career she either works a full-time job or a freelancer need to live in the city this is also responding to the public rental housing policy the subject is not included in the policy but having more housing pressures the subject can accept less for privacy living standards and size for lower rent although the new workers have a relatively higher salary they would not spend more than one third of their income in the rent since they would either need to send money back home to support their family in the rural area or saving money to buying a apartment in beijing in the future they're still willing to live in forms of illegal housing showing on the right for the shorter commute time and lower rent and last since the majority of them are still migrants they are lacking of sense of family and the community in the city this is design research different from the community-led collective living cases the subjects are more atomized more frequently in the city due to job changes or decided to leave the city the design is now trying to design a community of certain number of inhabitants better construct a more loose and fluid form of collective living for the inhabitants on multiple scales to suit their diverse daily routine interest and residence time the project is aiming to generate a system that becomes a medium that allows collective living to happen through negotiation inside and between different collective skills the design starts from the individual units in current tax tigers diagram of collective doling the private unit is pushed to the minimum with only individual living cells all the other domestic programs are shared through minimalizing the function of individual units it seems more space for collective programs and creates a condition that collective living is more encouraged this idea of minimalizing the individual cell in terms of size and function does not conflict with the subject and is similar to their current living situations each private space only 6.25 square meters slightly larger than the regulation requires but they haven't still have a little bit of freedom to run the furniture inside and each individual unit also has a part of flexible space that allows the negotiation between the inhabitants to happen the flexible space has a privacy device like curtains and sliding doors that they can decide whether to open to the community or share one's flexible space entirely with others the light frame system provides a structure for private devices and possibilities of different configurations of sharing their at first the inhabitants will have the post-space closed they can start to making connections and sharing activities in the communal space the communal space becomes an extension of the flexible space as the inhabitants start to getting familiar with each other they can start to share reflect their flexible space by opening up their units or replacing their panels separating their units with sliding doors or curtains with different configurations of private units connecting together the inhabitants already start to form smaller groups and different forms of sharing on a larger collective scale configurations of smaller groups are being fitted into the larger frame this is inspired by ivan leonidov's linear city so each frame will have a similar texture of individual units and similar density of the inhabitants but each frame is programmed with different activities they are not domestic programs but culture and entertainment activity to supplement their life so domestic programs are more considered as facilities outside of the firm unit the grouping of individual units and inhabitants are not limited to structure it provides opportunity for the groups to decide whether they want to be an enclosed community or making connections with adjacent groups the groups are further connected together to a larger scale by the facility course to a larger scale on the urban scale the topology of the building and the connections with the public are decided by the location of the site and the context of the urban scale in 2017 beijing published the policy for using rural construction land for rental housing development to provide a house in the city i mapped the site that approved based on the transportation infrastructure i further divided the size to four types and selected one from each category at the start to experiment on urban strategies each side is different in residential density public residential facilities and the proximity to working areas in the city for example cytovol is more in the center of the city near the surrounding of beijing highly residential areas and a close proximity to working spaces site four is in outside of the sixth room with some residential buildings of the village not much residential facilities urban strategy will be very different the urban strategy for site device to create a more fluid more enclosed relationship of the community inside of the building and has the public programs uh separated from the building um since they're in the cities they do not need much uh residential oriented facilities to support their life but for side four it need more to provide more residential public and commercial facilities it is also more encouraging the public to enter the building to having a closer connection with the inhabitants life in the building from site one to four the proximity of the city gets smaller in order to generate equal and fluid system across the city besides from the supplement of residential oriented facilities and the ratio of density of creative space to residential space to create this equality negotiation between density proximity and collectivity is essential to provide a fluid system for new workers moving around in city and to change their to their working area thank you this is my design research so far [Applause] since we are doing translation yeah i'd like you to start with your bit of translation if you want to describe the words you use for instance an individual unit and perhaps approaching a more communal or collective unit yeah what would be the chinese terms you use to describe these core approaches in chinese the individual units will for my for my research it won't be translated into uh syrian uh done that because it's not uh for private uh just you actually don't own this unit it's uh you're temporarily living inside of the units and also these individual units are composed with the private part and the flexible part so um yeah it will be more translated into uh um current funding current chinese means is we have quite sort of almost the same equivalence in chinese so also to add to the um the word unit i think the word unit when translated in chinese is quite complex um um okay yeah i can hear the um the word unit when translated into chinese um is quite complex um and i think that people at the table would say you could [Music] in those terms actually already assume some kind of collectiveness some kind of communalness some more something more than the individual so i think your your response was quite smart in saying that it's um it's actually there's no direct translation from the word unit as the way you use it um and the chinese term unit um as in that way like you you you will be able to use it but then you will probably you can take advantage of the fact that that way actually is not strictly an individual thing that way it's already something a compound i think that's quite a interesting starting point just to follow up on that and another very important point just touched on is actually the idea of collective or the idea of community via the idea of public because in a way we can say that the term public didn't exist in china like international chinese society because the the idea of public is the way we understand it in the west it's very different how chinese people understand um how to share and conduction among people and also you mentioned the word community which is also very interesting concept because here i say for example in london when we say community it refers to say a group bounded by interest is not a defined group but in chinese there's two different ways to translate community right you can say foreign [Music] [Music] has several meanings in china um i treat it as a relationship rather than like in china [Music] relationship so it's it's it's about relationship between uh several community it could be relationship between several communities purposefully in replace of you know communal unit is the cons is the term collective uh intended concept which is you want to differentiate is the communal unit or public area i don't know for me for me chica [Music] collective i think it's more general wider than community you're a collective collective can include multiple communities just my own interpretation of like the difference that's a very difficult question by the way my own understanding is collective has been more normative defined by say institutional institutional framework for example in that way i would call it a cluster but the content ratio too i would call it the second you might understand so your project is intended to build a collective living which which fostered a community but also an another very simple question just to clarify are the you know the the unit the individual unit are only for you know sin bachelors single people or it's also for family like a household of three you know a lot of migrants new migrants in beijing are actually migrating with their children as well so when i was looking at the space for the individual units it's quite small for a family i didn't explain this information like but according to my research majority of the workers or the young workers in beijing are singles or couples they're not a family with children so uh this design is for um not really for family but for a single company and is it for certain you know social class or it sort of wants to break break down the class boundaries or is it you know for certain social class certain types of workers yeah yeah i think i i have explained it in the beginning it's for very specific young high educated workers in beijing see having under many social issues with long working hours in beijing for those workers and apparently beijing are encouraging to have more of this type of workers to foster technology and the third tier industry development and this population of the second-tier workers to the sub-centers of this city so the majority of the subject will soon are becoming of this the subject i'm not describing but the thing that links them is these young couples or single people educated or that they are immigrants to beijing yes and so would you talk about this i want to come back to collective again because i like the slipperiness of the term you talked about collective scales from the unit to the city and i think in the drawings we were very much caught up in the the single unit or the various ways you deploy furniture within a standard cell and then you show the floors the collective at another scale but if we if we think of this notion of scales of collective does it only operate at those sort of three moments or are there do you imagine and zooming in even more would it matter to me if i only have this room of six square meters what the design of the door handle might be or if i could have my own door handle for that space or what are the height of the windows are there ways to make to individuate these cells no matter how small that they become somehow rooted to an identity or are they all meant to be at an architectural level at the level of interior design self-saying the interior of these cells i would imagine becomes a real focus of the next step of your work do you care about those smaller details within the space of the unit or is it mostly about the design of those larger plates of the building floor because at the scale you focused on that cycle of plans of the unit was the most interesting where the bed flipped and where i might get a desk in or there was a plant or a place to put my clothes those became immediately specific but in a diagrammatic or notational way is there architecture to be to be brought to that scale that you're working at for me the showing of that different configurations of the individual rooms is to show that they haven't had the freedom to uh reconfiguration these rooms it's not that i'm designing this room also it helps me to to learn how big this room should be whether you can shoot with a double bed for a couple and for different situations but i'm not really focusing on how to design the interior for the specific subject but the relationship that this kind of units and the flexible units can provide to foster the relationship between different individuals on multiple scale and in between units in between multiple units and on the uh on the larger scale to connect with the public i guess just link to that those those plans showed um these larger collective spaces not lobbies but living spaces yes and what is your stance because i think we got from your presentation your attitude about the units but we didn't discover you as the author of the project how you were addressing those larger spaces shared by multiple units because that's another scale of collective isn't it we've moved from the unit to the space shared by maybe 20 of those units um currently i'm defining them with a different pro program that that could foster between the inhabitants but does not belong to the traditional sense of domestic problems they can transform into working space you can transform to what to be considered that and also the lecture and cultural programs that is kind of like good kind of gentrified by the that is not so available for them because of the high prices generated by the market in the city and also since they are living very far from the with the instrumental culture areas in the city so this becomes a supplement the very narrative very easy to provide culture and pleasure life also it becomes connected i mean just back to this notion that would seem one of the most interesting scales that pivot between these what we'll still call family units and this larger city engagement i think that's an interesting next chapter you'll probably have with the project um first of all i just want to say that i can speak english but to match the theme i think um i will try to speak as much mandarin as possible i think everybody should do that otherwise i think the translator will feel super bored so i think i think yeah that's for everybody's benefits so from now i'll try to speak as much mentoring as possible um out of architects and very fast studies in your project but i don't think you have explored all the directions in your project what can i say the groups of people families and individuals so studying study research might be boring very [Music] in terms of your architecture i think you showed us the flexible part in terms of flexibility each group of people have different interests family can be a couple of include friends it's a different dimension so you can go into details in this in terms of structure you talk about this is a very big topic personally i think it can be your personal interest you have to look orientated or you have to probably you can explain it to us i think which can be shared among people slightly different from our conventional sense of this sharing but it's not in the strictly speaking this new spatial relationship between the two as to how to adapt to different demands individuals to make it more affordable and cheaper i'm more focused on the space arrangement maybe my turn i think you're put almost in a very impossible and difficult task but i think it's it's great that we are talking about uh in in a forum like this um and and i think as many as pointed out when first started is that when we begin to compare uh languages and we look at what are the gaps of misunderstanding or not understanding certain terms i think it illuminates the discourse whether the discourse is through the chinese perspective or let's say western or eurocentric perspective so my question to you is having been put in this position would you re-question some of the research pedagogy that you've been asked that you have been put through in the course because it seems to me for us to have a fruitful discussion almost inevitably we should have defined certain words because certain words then create certain concepts certain concepts opens up certain discourse and hopefully certain discourse builds on certain knowledge right and within that build knowledge then we begin to question how in which it you know challenges the received knowledge of western-centric knowledge or versus one which is a chinese-centric knowledge so would you reframe your research pedagogy instead of perhaps looking at what the urban question the typological question and the housing question i think there were three questions would you perhaps put up let's say concepts of community in chinese terms and concepts of community in the current term that you discuss do you think that's something productive you mean with uh it's a like a chinese way of thinking of the community will it be productive too in your research right so far yeah because i think in a way even you are struggling in a way to define right those terms that are so critical to you the reason why i'm bringing this up is that of course one of the first few uh documents of knowledge the encyclopedia that was that was drawn up in in the 18th and 19th century they always start with the word because it essentially it is through the etymology of the word that words creates concepts and then concepts builds on to create theories opens up discourse i think a very great example are the french uh encyclopedias quarterman adequacy is one of them for instance so if if this understanding uh and the and the formation and creation of knowledge is so critical uh that sorry that recites so critically on the definition of the words and concepts then obviously we would want to see those up there i mean your program projective cities would have a interest in these terms as a baseline of research it also has a i mean one way to assign value to those terms would be through historical references or precedence and i know projective cities is interested in in deploying precedence in a certain methodology but we didn't really see explicit references is that a part of your research is that how you come to the project or why is that not a part of your presentation today because it might have helped with some of those terms or to give a framework for basic terms and come back to that question i try to define the term community in my project is that what you're trying to ask i have listened to your opinions and comments i'm also very interested in what kind of research you have done was it based on survey or um so your survey is in terms of questionnaire or survey or so how do you conduct your project so how do they describe their life what kind of language do they use in answering your survey or questions imagine the life they aspire to and i guess you want to build a you know a space a kind of architectural space for them to live in the inspired you know inspired way the kind of social relationships so in short what kind of social relations do they want i don't know whether this is your preliminary topic of study for anthropology we will look at this in this social sociology researches like that and for me how i attracted the profiling of the subject is through statistics and research has been done on the renters in beijing and also there are several researchers been down by the rental corporations for their own development but yeah i extracted this information from there but yeah i think also come back to his question it's it's it's important to having a more solid research if you really want to do a project in beijing frozen but i'm kind of using the subject to speculating especially into a new relationship of community rather than to become a real project in china i'd like to say that your project this relationship should to go to this direction what kind of community or space would you like architects as an architect we need to focus on [Music] and also i've heard you say some of them are industry-based and located uh it also related to their working hours because different groups have different powers but what about the other requirements or eating or do they have dinner a meal by themselves or with others in terms of social life different companies have different ways and also it depends on industries so this to have a more understanding of these will help you to define your terms and scale require the space and what space is needed [Music] you can take advantage of the usage like a word the precise meaning of a word what does it mean in chinese um um you don't have to say start from the private individual you can say in chinese so this can be the second phase i think we have to move on to the next presentation but thank you very much thank you hello i'm tadao from experimenter 4 and basically our unit is based on the testing and exploring new material for architecture so i'm going to present my project bypass landscape a moving life in english so i don't speak chinese but be happy to get some answer using chinese actually our units start the project by using um a case study so my case study is a pavilion called need candela designed by zaha and eth and i was interested in this project because normally the fabric is not used as architecture structure components but not only use used for the decorative properties but this in this project they use the fabric as a mould when they making a mold and also use this fabric as an interior decorative purposes so it was very interesting for me so i started looking at the process process of fabric foamer exactly following their process of making this pavilion because at that time i was not really familiar with making the some architecture structure by using fabric so at first they make they made this geometry by using computational method and after they finding a proper structure and aesthetically fine in geometry they use they use the ordinary ordinary industrial kneading machine to generate the fabric for this structure and actually it only takes 36 hours and also the weight is only 25 kilograms so they the meeting is it takes a place happening in switzerland but they move this to the mexico where this pavilion is seated so at that time they only used two suitcase to move this fabric to from switzerland to mexico so it is one of i thought it is one of the advantages using the fabric as an architecture purposes and also for the structure thing even they use they need the timber structure to hold the fabric on to make it as unworth so i think one of the advantages is really light material and also after after they move this to the mexico um whole process of the construction is only takes five days so it is also very short time to construct some um even at this pavilion so after that basically normally when people use uh fabric as um architectural purposes they use it only as a word but they put some uh pattern on the pattern on the fabric and they leave like left lift that as the creative purposes inside inside interior for the interior so i think it is also interesting point from my case study after after that i am thinking about normally in fabric homework process people use only the singular material on top of the on top of the fabric to make a share because of mostly because of the structural reason but i am thinking about how how can i put [Music] from opaque to transparent gradient material on top of the fabric homework that is going to be very interesting to give some spatial diversity to inside from from the inside the chair so i so i test i tested this um opaque to transparent material by using concrete and legend after that we went to shanghai which is our site and from there i found that fabric fabric waste in shanghai is really they have a lot of fabric waste and also the fabric waste is usually usually processed in landfill site but um and also in shanghai in shanghai government was operating seven language sites in shanghai but in 2017 they decided to close two renters site in shanghai so now there is a lack of planned precision to process or process the fabric waste so i decided to use reuse fabric for my prozac when i am searching for the reuse fabric we use mostly the majority of fabric is used we use is just fabric the coals the fabric itself reuse of the fabric itself and also the fiber recycling so i am trying to more focus on the fabric reuse and also the fiber recycling and and one of the issue in shanghai is a lot of construction sites the contracts construction site is waiting for the permission for from the shanghai government and normally it takes more than a minimum on a year and if it is longer than that it takes five years to get some permission from the shanghai government to build new building on the site so rather than left that as empty side i'm i'm decide i decided to make create some new new space for the public and also for the private and on the site and also that kind of that's going to be temporary because the site the duration of using site is remitted because the new building will come soon and also i think it is good nice to use the fabric to use to make a temporary structure because it by using the fabric is really easy faster than also the light material so after that i am looking at how to use the uh slope on top and also i am trying actually i am trying to make a private space like a residential accommodation beneath the chair structure and also they utilize the chair on top using the slope thing so i'm looking at this study and i came up with the basic module i can assemble it depending on the size of the construction site so these are all the basic motor i can assemble it later after that depending depending on the size side size of the size i am trying to make it uh assemble to make more bigger space and also for to achieve more spatial diversity because all of the is multi-sharing same one same card and also they have different opening to other side so i think i can stamp it and also to achieve bigger space so i studied about how can i use the motor itself and also been business the chair and this so this one is the residential motor and this one is the cafeteria and this one is the educational space for the construction construction site worker oh this is the culture area and i currently i am trying to figure out how can i um put apply the gradient pattern on the pattern on the chair so it is one of the exercises that one of the structural exercises basically i am thinking to put gradient depending on the structure weakness and strength and also that these are the fabric patterns or the the other method that you can apply in the future yeah thank you [Applause] can we have a look what is a referential module and then what is public module actually still progress to the right how can i use the module itself so how can i use the multi receiver basically the uh the curve is curviest curve at the surface is all the antique anticlastic surface called anti-classic surface which is very strong to make a denser structure because they don't have any bending and compression only have tension so i was trying to make the motor using the anticlastic surface and after that i am currently i am trying to assemble that to make some more diverse space is now still studying my question was actually because you mentioned you have a residential module public module right so i'm just wondering what other criteria you have to define like okay this is residential this is public or do you need to define that basically i am trying to make a residential motor independence business of the chair and also using the top of the chair for the landscape and it is for the public it's core basic strategy i am trying to achieve now service is based on the spatial quality in a way produced by the phone basically along science direction if anticlastic surface or structure is the answer then what is the question [Music] if this structural module anticlastic surfaces is the answer yeah what is the question what are the challenges what what are you confronting what i am trying to do is um mostly the beard if we create something on something on the empty space mostly they have to only use the inside space but i am trying to do is make them make some residential from the inside space and also utilize on top of the chair for the public and so if you can pass by there yeah another way to put it is that if you have if you have a hammer everything else looks like a nail so i think it's important in the life of a project to clarify what are the challenges right that you face um as a perhaps a disciplinary question or whether as a practicing architect and of course accompanying that what are the theoretical questions yeah what i find hard to enter this discussion is that we don't know what these are for of course it could be many many things but we will not be able to evaluate right efficacy of this modules unless we can compare these modules with other solutions to the same problem yeah right basically because otherwise we'll be vexing poetics over a couple of objects here yeah i agree but basically our unit is more focused on the material study so now i am focusing on how can i apply the different types of fabric on top of the chair so but but your point is also i need to think about in the future okay um i just wanna can you can you understand mandarin or you prefer to speak english no i can let me just speak english to them yeah it's easier in your case personally i think it's very interesting because uh because i graduate from memtex so and material research is one of my background and i think it's extremely extremely interesting and i think there's tons of potential for it a couple of things i think first of all new research we were talking about the fabric and the resins personally when i was in a.a apart from the course i did i also did a lot of research by myself i made the chair by resin by fabric and little things by myself i think it's very interesting so i did a lot of like research just for myself um and a lot of a lot of a lot of design can adapt to it i know you're in the early stage of developing the research developing the materials itself but i think you should also start combined with how you use different algorithm to to study the forms which form is the strongest which forms the weakest and where to adapt those forms to um you can start with you know the what kind when when when i was studying aaa we would learn a lot like uh genetic algorithm and evolutions and those things it's not just five of them probably gonna have thousands of them and then you'll find which one has the best performance and to to which field and what kind of materials and i can see that you start to mix different fabric and what's the performance of those different type of fabric and as also there's a lot like five or six of the residence types over there each i think you should explain a bit more of which which one is kind of the best in terms of you know the the way that you're going to use them and when you when you go to the next step i'm just talking about the next and the next step for the studio where it goes next step because luckily we use the i mean foster we use the genetic algorithm we win the project recently it's in shanghai yeah it's uh it's i was like you know 10 years 10 years before you you started and then later you win the project it might happen i mean this thing because because architecture just developed so quickly and a lot of new ideas just come into practice and maybe 10 years ago it's not practical but certain years later you never know and and then i think and after after you study about the form you can study about the environmentals yeah what kind of when you start to adapt these material studies into buildings they will have different performance and then they will react to different environments heats when some water all those things will come into it and it's a matter of how you use it because because what you're using now is very general property research but i think there's a potential that you can you can use your research in the future but you just need to find a way because this this thing is just because when i when i studied what i what i did is um let's just go back to 10 or years ago and i was saying hey my my thesis 90 is is about research it's about how to transform noise to a usable energy and so it's it's i mean there's a lot of way that you can you can you can you can adapt your research to to the real project so i think be positive but you just need to do a bit more thing yeah ounce for ounce the modules are more frame than fabric and i know there's an agenda with the fabric that you're using recycled fibers or some proportion but i really forget the fabric i'm really interested in the laser cut mdf and if that system if that language of form only works in one axis of recombination is that enough certain configurations you had were sort of centrally planned one tipped one of those so i know you're thinking in the direction but my guess is if if this is going to be so heavily weighted toward the frame then the frame wants to do as many possible things as it could so that you have in that set of five many many possibilities of of aggregation so i'm wondering as you set about questioning the frame whether it's too heavy-handed or whether you evacuate some material or what is the minimal amount of frame you need to still make the fabric do what you want it to do do you also interrogate its compatibility in three dimensions as potential pieces of a much larger assembly is it only four or could there be a 16 module building out of your components how how far do you want this to go actually i didn't i didn't think about that before but you need to think about that from now on yeah but for now they align like trains on a track right but there might be other possibilities or tangent moments that you have so much area given over the frame you could imagine as a next step of research because i know i my guess is you're so here that the frame is secondary for now but i i might equate them or i might even advance the frame for a while of your research and then come back to the the best attack in terms of the textile [Music] um you've chosen to be very muted in your palette of fibers and fabric and colors um but then you're shown photos of the recycled fabric being really colorful and i think there is an opportunity to um all these comments to push towards research and the relation between frame and the fabric it's really crucial but it's also a cultural sign so it's something about the way you weave it is not purely about the technical performance of it both in negative and positive ways but it also creates a language of how it communicates and also maybe it starts to relate to how you decide how the space is being used and how people anticipate their behavior within the spaces i think start you can be quite actual in really collecting particular fabric also when you're dealing with recycled fabric they sometimes come from errors bygone areas like the the technique of producing those cloths has already disappeared maybe a particular dyeing technology or particular weaving technology or manual which they no longer produce and if you if those features can somehow be in a way traced and start to speak certain ways and also fabric is is never just let's say a floppy sample it sort of wraps around bodies you know like you imagine it wrap around pillows you know that people put their heads on or or duvets or curtains you know that wraps around negative holes and walls and so and sometimes it drapes around lanterns etc so they they are things that the fabric sort of engages as positive negative volume which uh uh can also become part of your story i think that would be very exciting yeah like a tartan yeah i mean there's um a sort of mythic origin story around western architecture um this primitive hut or the the temple in the woods as if pre-history grecian architecture just happened in the woods trees grew like a colonnade things started to thatch over and you get this vision of from nature suddenly something that begins to look like a grecian temple and then there's this other postulate that that's not that's just complete crazy fantasy the real fantasies in in the world of semper and that it's textiles and it's it's bringing together a frame and that the wall begins as fabric and only solidifies as something else much later in history so i wonder is there a parallel mythic origin tradition of architecture in china that's different from a sort of logie primitive hut or different from semper's fantasy of a tahitian hut is there something about where does architecture begin in in its own historical narrative you can watch lots of uh contemporary chinese films that's where you find me in yeah we use different kind of materials in different regions of china i guess you all know more than i do as architects right but that's an important point i think essentially i think what it points to that architecture cannot be just be discussed from a technological perspective because when we make even with technological solutions we ultimately make cultural decisions and cultural decisions are at the end of the day discursive right so for instance the origin of architecture through logia through the primitive heart essentially is a greek temple was an attempt at the 18th century to justify that greek architecture is still the architecture that is more worthy to be pursued in the light of the rise of the sciences the rise of the engineers and also in in the realization that they were architectures that predate greek architecture for instance egyptian architecture so therefore we could say that the decisions that we make about what architectures do we adopt ultimately is a cultural mission right as much as what what uh has been pointed out yeah so this is where i find the most missing and this is why i said what i said before if this is the solution but what is the question exactly i think everybody's saying it has a potential but it's still in a very early stage you need to adapt to the culture adapt to the history and then find the applications where you can used to um and you just need to do a bit more yeah yeah i think the car also one thing i want to point out is about when we're saying you know sustainable also use the reused materials it needs to not just about to itself it's being reused you need to consider during the process when you transfer the materials to be useful materials there's a certain energy it's consuming during the process and is that worth it is that not worth it you need to consider that as well yeah and it's not just about the result it's about the process as well that's that total thing that's how it achieves sustainable yeah thanks just to following the cultural aspects in technological experiments even the idea of new reuse itself the perception of reuse in chinese context is quite different how people understand reuse or recycled material like it's quite a different way so like even that you have a cultural aspect in your project potentially that's like what we're saying i like the translucency of the material but um i do not does it bring anything to i think you need a more clear brief just to help yourself whether like the property of this material what does it give you why is it better than other translucent material you were talking about something that's inside inside outside space and i think you just you're missing the brief and yeah but i don't like the look of it [Music] [Applause] um thank you for being here uh uh shin and kyla um so i'm from the post-grad program sustainable environmental design and uh for us we focused on data-driven design using a combination of vernacular architecture environmental science and computational analysis to inform architecture and you know and just a little bit about hong kong as a context yeah so my project is about um passive cooling for high rise in hong kong and um in the context of hong kong it is located on the northern coast sorry northern coastline uh of the south china sea it's a small territory uh consists of multiple islands with mountainous terrains and it is considered hot and humid subtropical climate and hong kong is a highly humid place all year round and it rains a lot during the summer period and due to the high amount of water in the air evaporative cooling through the skin becomes very difficult especially when temperature is really high so providing air movement and having a porous building envelope is extremely important for maintaining thermal comfort in the summer period and some buildings in hong kong especially the older constructions are sorry the newer constructions are tightly sealed with which have a condensation and molding and in hong kong it's commonly known as a wall sweating and hong kong is also known for its highly dense urban fabric in a very small landmass in terms of urban population it's twice as dense than new york city four times denser than london and and to accommodate the the growth growing density vertical living becomes a necessity more than 96 percent of hong kong residents lives in high rise apartment with an average building height of 150 meters which is around 40 stories tall making it one of the most common building typology however these vertical extrusions often sacrifice quality quality of life and neglect environmental considerations and even though hong kong benefits from air movement from the sea due to approximate proximity to water body because of the highly dense urban morphology it restricts the amount of airflow going into or further into the city this leads to rising temperature and increase in urban heat island effect and also very poor air quality due to the lack of removal of pollutants and this is commonly known as the wall effect in hong kong and there's also another phenomenon in hong kong uh called the indoor jacket where during even during a hot summer day you know 35 degrees outside people tend to carry lightweight jackets with them because indoor spaces tend to be extremely over conditioned so it kind of eludes to the problem of over reliance on energy consumption [Music] so the research question for my project is can be summarized in three uh three parts can thermal comfort period be extended without the use of mechanical cooling in a hot and humid climate can vertical density be achieved without sacrificing environmental performance and third when where and how can a building be open up to outdoor environments so i did go to hong kong and did some field work and i think a great place to start is to survey and ask questions about the locals and observe how they deal with heat and what i've noticed is that people in hong kong are extremely resourceful and adaptable during a hot summer day it is very common for people to carry umbrellas um for um not not so much for rain protection but for uh direct protection from direct solar and also people are very in tune with finding uh shade shade spots and also in terms of infrastructure hong kong has a lot of shaded walkways which allows for rain protection solar protection but also for better ventilation because they're elevated and i'm also extremely curious and interested in how hong kong use or adapt their outdoor spaces and turn them into their own and it seems that there is a tendency in hong kong where people are able to turn informal spaces into functional spaces such as corridors or bridges as you can see some of the photos here a lot of them are being used for drying the laundry or you know finding a shading spot to play chess so learning a little bit from the climate in order to reduce the amount of energy consumption consumption it is important to investigate how we can cool buildings and cool the city passively so based on the climate there are three key environmental considerations that are extremely relevant and effective in a climate like hong kong so the first one is solar protection because hong kong has a very high amount of direct solar radiation and also diffuse and also the solar angle is extremely high so having external protection for for the building is extremely important thermal buffering so hong kong has a challenging climate with humidity and also high temperature so the building needs to be insulated for especially the horizontal surfaces for you know direct solar radiation so green roofs might be a good solution but at the same time the building also needs to be porous to prevent condensation and molding and for uh third is ventilation control so how can we take advantage of uh natural ventilation to better cool the uh indoor indoor climate and i made a series of what-if diagrams that are explorative and conceptual which aims to challenge the conventional approach to hong kong tower design so the first one is what if indoor spaces can be free running for most of the year so currently a lot of the typical hong kong towers the new newly constructed ones they tend to be enclosed and the core the corridor the elevator everything is air-conditioned uh so what if the future tower design in hong kong can be can move to mixed mode so maybe it's partially open to the outdoor environment and partially closed depending on the season or can it be free running at all what if we open up the building to the outdoor environment so on a vertical level and also on a horizontal level can we maybe open up the atrium open up the core to the outdoor environment and can we segment the the tower volume to allow more airflow into the city not just providing ventilation for the building but also contributing uh providing more ventilation for the inner city and can can buildings uh what if buildings are more than just build structure but also living and breathing organisms so how can we add contribute a little bit more and add a bit of life in a vertical living so for this ex for this project i chose my site in champshay po which is northwest of the kowloon peninsula as a testing ground and here's my site which is uh along the uh the victoria harbor and there's actually already an existing proposal it's a building a hundred meters and it as you can see it's very close to the adjacent building so it pays very little attention to overshadowing or obstruction to the neighborhood building and also the buildings are very compact and smooth so very little over overhangs or solar protections being provided and the current proposal is a fully glazed building so what i'm trying to do is to optimize the volume by allowing more daylight to the neighboring building increasing the density and height deconstruct the mass to open up the atrium to provide a more breathable building taking advantage of stack stacked effect and cross ventilation using a thermal displacement to cool the in door spaces and then also shifting the floor plans to provide self shading this also doubles as a um as a private terrorist and then new pedestrian access for the ground level and then ultimately to uh to create a vertical neighborhood that each volume has its own unique uh character a little bit about the analytical work is uh i perform is to prove that the design can be performed well in this climate so the first thing is uh solar protection so i did a radiation mapping on vertical facades the goal of this analysis is to see if it's possible to reduce solar radiation through modifying the building form this means that the simple idea of cell shading can reduce thermal exposure to the sun which will minimize overheating and lower cooling loads and the next is when analysis is performed on the proposed tower various gap distance are tested and the goal is to improve air movement within the building but also on an urban level providing a wide range of outdoor conditions with very various degree of wind protection and also wind exposure allowing this flexibility can have can allow for a wider range of public activities and also programs to be placed the next thing is with a with a very high elevation and extrusion there's a a problem of down draft so to minimize that and to create a more comfortable microclimate for the for the balconies the push and pull effect also helps reduce the wind speed on a higher level higher elevation compared to a smooth surface and and also thermal performance is conducted so basically to summarize these graphs depending on the season different strategies were implemented so the summary is that during cool weeks and mild seasons passive strategy alone can bring the temperature down to a comfort uh comfort level and and out of the year only a little bit of a cool mechanical cooling is needed during extreme hot periods to bring down the temperature and as a result the the improved design can reduce the annual cooling load and to 35 kilowatt hours per square meter and just as a comparison as a typical household in hong kong has a cooling demand of 137 kilowatts per square meter and the design vision is to in terms of unit types i decided to simplify the the typology into three three generic unit size uh a sink a one bedroom two bedroom and three bedroom and these are based on the current housing demand trends which right now in hong kong the average uh number of people in the household is 2.8 and it's in the decline right now due to a large a large population of single seniors and smaller family size and and the idea of a vertical neighborhood is is that every 10 stories forms a cluster and eight eight resin uh within that there's eight residential floors and two floors of shared spaces and in terms of material use the building will mainly be using reinforced concrete for structural reasons but it will also i'll also be using clt cross laminated timber to help offset some of the embodied carbon energy because timber timber has the ability to store carbon it's fire resistant and easy to uh construct off-site so it's a good material to uh to supplement with and in terms of programs and activities there are three categories that i've identified uh there's outdoor which is uh they're mostly green spaces indoor shared amenities these are spaces that can be in mixed mode and also free running and also transitional spaces that are informal spaces for people to uh claim and also uh create a sense of shared ownership science oh sorry a few more slides um yeah this is the last light so the the whole concept behind the the design intention is to create a tower that can be adaptive to all seasons and support outdoor activities and all yeah all year round and yeah i think that's that's about it open atrium yeah [Applause] sorry um maybe just to follow up the um sorry do you want us to respond in mandarin uh um about climate condition yeah you're pleased so basically how does the climate condition you observed actually produced a particular way of life in hong kong so basically for example like the always cover the space air conditioner space how's that linked to people's behavior and then like more like yeah a particular ways of life i think from based on my field work and research i've i think that uh people in hong kong innately has a very wide range of adaptability and based on the way they you know use spaces in in public areas but i think the general trend in hong kong is that buildings are more uh moving towards condition which i think it's kind of counterintuitive in terms of a hong kong culture and my my thesis is basically trying to challenge the cons the pers perception that certain spaces needs to be conditioned and why if so why you know and all of this is under the pretext of dealing with climate change i don't know if that answers the question your proposition is very it makes a lot of sense the solutions are also very straight straightforward in a sense right because i don't think they're like huge uh invention passive cooling wind speeds of 1.5 meter per second it should be red rather than blue right for it to be to to work the question is i think it would be useful for you to ask why are not why are simple strategies like this not adopted in the city i think i think it's because people are like my parents live in hong kong so i i also talked to them about you know trying to convince them to maybe open up the windows and use less air conditioning i think one one aspect is that the electricity bills are actually fairly affordable in hong kong so there's in that sense there's less of an incentive to use passive means um and another way i think another consideration is that i think people are accustomed to a certain lifestyle and a certain uh standard of comfort and their definition of comfort is very different than no i don't think that that's that sounds okay because if that's the case all you need to do is to just tell your parents you know it's better for the planet yeah use despite the electricity bill being cheap just use natural ventilation and then that will solve it right right to me it's less about that is because all housing typologies in high density places like hong kong malaysia's improv and then the tropics is because it's double loaded yeah it is double loaded because you want to meet all house builders whether they're government house builders or whether they're private developers wants to reduce the amount of circulation to leaseable or sellable or habitable area yeah which means that by default units are not uh aren't able to be naturally ventilated because the the block plan becomes too thick yeah it's simple yeah your plan is a single loaded plan yeah yeah because you violate one of the biggest economic rules of creating high density housing right so i think you if if you want to make this this proposition credible you you cannot ignore the economics behind high density high volume housing that's the biggest challenge we all know that naturally ventilating apartments is the best way to bring down energy consumption you do that actually not only by making them single loaded you actually go further by actually reducing room depth in fact your room depth is actually 2d right you should bring it to about six meters maximum right and you have to place openings at both at both ends yeah and of course even in your simulation it's really telling you you failed right in in your wind speed your wind speed should be about 1.5 meters per second and blue and green is actually less than that it means the ones that are in these studies that's how you show up yeah you'll see these studies right so to bring it up actually you should run another simulation to do mechanical ventilation in terms of using the fan you will bring it up to 1.5 sure you can with those plans but again i'm what i'm questioning for this to be credible you must consider the the basic parameter of high density high volume housing which has to do with total build area which is offsetted by circulation area no hong kong apartments will allow you to do one single loaded corridors so in your opinion do you think what would be the the best approach to start investigating is it through developer model studying that you have to understand the challenges of building right because land cost is so expensive any house builder whether it is the state or whether it is private they will maximize the number of habitable area or sellable or rentable area as opposed to circulation so the invention would be how do you begin to think about the organization of circulation that will still allow you to create a thinness of units that will allow you to ventilate right this is of course believable if you take away that parameter but that parameter i think it's too too real and too pressing to ignore right and alongside those parameters can we go back to the slide where you show the proposed uh volume it was early days you said there's already one proposed before you even came to the site yeah because i suspect there's a reason why the height limitations along the water side are what they are yeah if we could see the slide before that yep so it's not by chance that every building in that district hits a maximum height and stops and next slide when you propose that there's a wild assumption about yes you're you're giving sunlight to the adjacent buildings they would not have otherwise you're opening up an air corridor that would do all the things you say but in that one move have you already superseded the zoning restrictions i mean i'm talking about the whiff of believability and the proposal are we already on to a trajectory of fantasy or is this permissible in that sort of i'm thinking when mies van der rohe um allows for a building that's higher but gives more of a plaza to the city and there's a kind of trade-off have you looked into that angle of the project as well as the double loaded corridor yeah so uh based on hong kong zoning bylaws for projects along the waterfront it does have a height limit which is 100 meters that's why they're all uniform but i think i i try to push beyond the existing building code and sort of challenge what if we you know limit the the actual square footage or the built area and extrude it higher and providing permeability because my my assumption or my um uh uh what i thought is that the reason why they have the height restriction is because uh based on the ventilation guideline in hong kong uh they wanted uh to have better airflow into the city so so by by sort of uh segmenting the building i i also achieved similar uh results i mean i think that's a reasonable stance to say i'm bucking this trend i'm questioning the restriction and i'll show you why this is better but i think you could be much more upfront about that and then you'd have to kind of decide pick your and choose your battles because if that should battle which i think is the bigger issue then the notion of how you organize those floors the depths of units or the double corridor or indeed the eight to two logic of the economic viability of the section in terms of those public floors all those things only had more layers of question whereas i think you're quite clear about trying to challenge right the prevailing norm to show that there's a net good to be gained if they would loosen up on their restrictions that is your thesis isn't no yeah yeah but knowing the city if you loosen up the height restriction the density is going to go up your far will go up that's the problem yeah yeah i i totally agree i think it's definitely uh an important consideration um [Music] yeah yeah i think uh coming from scd background we're very you know we're we like the idea of having an open atrium for you know and we also like single loaded buildings and yeah it goes back to the the challenge of how can we make single loaded uh layouts more efficient and and fit the the context of hong kong so yeah that's something definitely i want to further research and also another layer would be to kind of consider through my thermal simulation and all those things consider the um what is the future lifestyle of hong kong people you know because that pays that also contributes to the internal heat gain so let's say in the future people actually don't use the the unit as much so can we take advantage of that or not so so i definitely want to move towards that yeah [Music] [Music] i lived in taipei and so i know what's it like to live in such a hot place so in terms of cultural behavior how they use the space it's very different depending on the time so like evening activities can be popular um so you're next to the seats that is an opportunity based on your understanding of local people how they use space according different time that would be an opportunity and also so proximately can be a behavioral thing for example in hong kong there are lots of high rises connecting bridges some of the spaces can be connected to other high rises so you can have some clubs um like tai chi etc so these by this way you can add a value to these spaces and also the exchange value will be higher too because there are more practical uses yes so just very quickly um i also i specialize in high rises i face the same issues in hong kong if you want to do this you need to consider two aspects humidity number one and also comfort why um hong kong people do not have that many flats with balconies because the humidity if it's the building is higher uh it's it can be really windy on the top floor and also when there's typhoon um because in hong kong that can happen you your project actually can be very practical so they they will question you through in in these technical areas just quickly in terms of material i've done a lot of research and cot as well whether this can be utilized in hong kong in their high rises i think that your pro it's this project is it's like a studio design it's very comprehensive so if if it goes to canada it would work but in hong kong you need to reconsider the lots of factors material use social factors but i think the content is quite thorough but in terms of like statistics need to be very accurate can you represent the building code so you need to do more research on these local regulations material study as well because hong kong is quite challenging when it comes to lowering the body carbon energy because most of the materials are transported from china and elsewhere so and transportation makes up a big part of the energy use so yeah i definitely agree with that my name is margarita this is alias and we're from experimental 18 which is a new unit that focuses on harvest buildings so today we're gonna talk with you and discuss the cctv headquarters by oma in beijing china and that's because at the beginning of the year we were we had to choose a case study to analyze in order to understand better the skyscraper typology as a building typology we analyzed this case study based on two parameters which are movement and structure that's because we were quite interested in how the two relate to each other but mostly affect each other and after this analysis we're going to show you how those two parameters actually ended up affecting our our own projects that we're currently working on so we picked this case study because it's quite uh controversial in fact it's not about the skyscraper as much but about everything around it it's not about static aspirations but dynamic interactions that pushes the skyscraper typology beyond its limits so as you're aware um it's it cctv is not a traditional skyscraper uh in fact it's not even one of the highest but that's because um the architects didn't want to compete in the race for the height but they were more interested um about this continuous loop form yes so the building itself it was a structural challenge again because of the form itself but also because of its location that it was in a seismic zone as you're aware groundbreaking started in 2004 and it was completed in 2012. the building is was built as two separate towers which were at the end connected uh through the cantilever and that was the trickiest part of the construction sequence because they had to make sure that the temperature of the steel was cool enough for the two to connect so it was an action that took place uh in the very early morning um in terms of uh architectural concept uh the the aim for the architects was to break down the ghettos as i quote and that's because as they say we presented the building as a diagram of all the company's components and made the argument that it was important that they confronted each other that's because basically this building was going to host the chinese uh television center and oma's main goal was for the different sectors and programs in the building to get the chance to confront each other so that's how this loop movement and form of the building was created because he wanted people to interact with each other and share ideas so basically the main goal again was the movement of people throughout the building and the fact that it would have been a continuous uh circulation throughout um so the mean we can say there are three main loops uh in the buildings one is the movement of the staff one is the movement on the vips and one is the movement of the public which was going to have a dedicated entrance and circulation throughout the building so we we basically um came up with our own diagrams to unders to analyze the buildings so this first diagram shows uh two different loops which are the staff movement in blue and the yeah the vip movement in yellow so as you can see um what we're trying to depict here is that their goal of creating this continuous circulation throughout the building was successful uh for only for half of the staff so for the vip it was quite successful because they um they're still they're circulating throughout the building not only vertically but also horizontally so so they get this continuous experience but for the staff um it's like if the circulation was basically separated in in the two towers they each have the same amenities so they they would have no reason to travel all the way through the other portion of the tower then here we were trying to show the visitors loop so basically it was an opportunity for the public to actually get to visit the studios and the spaces but again their goal was not really met because instead of being able to visit and experience all the spaces the public was only able to access some some spaces so it was basically just programmed views of spaces that they were meant to see whereas all of the others were not accessible and in this last diagram we basically tried to show how the three different loops of movement of the people um if they were men if they were overlaid what would happen um so it's it's trying to show how the movement of people was successful in some ways but was not in others so for the vip it was quite successful as a continuous movement but we don't have any informations about the spaces and what they were actually accessible to so we couldn't find any images then for the staff um it's quite separated into uh sectors but that's successful because the public was able to view into their spaces and lastly the red loop which is the visitors loop it was a dedicated loop just for the public which would have been really successful if it didn't if if the access was not denied after a couple of years so in this tower structure and movement are intimately intertwined each heavily influencing the other so as to which one is the more dominant force in that relationship it's open to debate but um the structural gymnastics that were necessary to create these intertwined loops all throughout the tower have a significant impact on the building so firstly the structural exoskeleton carries the primary load which frees up space on the interior of the building but blocks a lot of the good views outwards and furthermore when you have a lot of programs and departments combined into one tower the need for lots of elevator cores that go to all the different sections of the tower is a lot so it takes up a lot of the valuable floor space in the building the cantilever at the top of the building that brings it all together it's supported by double height transfer trusses which dissect some of the spaces into these very awkward layouts now the building is often marketed as this looped connector that brings all the departments of this media company together in one harmonious whole and they say that it's to create connections between employees in different departments and foster different ideas and flow throughout the building but the fact is that a lot of the departments have all the facilities and the amenities that they need in their own sections of the tower furthermore upon arrival employees are segregated into different elevator cores depending on where they're going in the building so actually not as much mixing and mingling happens as the architects hoped for or planned so with that in mind what does the loop form of the tower really offer well the primary primary users of this loop are actually the visitors who who are going on tours to the building and in this looped form kind of constructs a narrative about china that's told through the projected views into the different areas of this chinese media company and on top of that by combining these four different buildings into one loop it creates an icon for cctv and also it positioned beijing as a global city in time for the 2008 winter olympics so an interesting thought is maybe what really ties all these programs together in the end is a projected image and finally coming back to this quote again that made says not about the skyscraper as much but about everything around it it's not about static aspirations but dynamic interactions that push the skyscraper typology beyond its limits with all the research we did on this tower we've moved into our own design work for a tower here in london and we began by analyzing program and looking at important connections between various programs and views to the outsides then breaking them down into units of scale on their right so that we could utilize that in stacking exercises so looking at the connection between different programs and different departments and what beneficial or what benefits they would gain through through connections then that was my proposal at the end of term one um for me so basically uh our brief for this year is to create a tower design in london of mixed programs so we have to pick a traditional tower typology which is like either commercial or residential and mix it up with a an unconventional one so personally i picked the hydroponic farm which i'm not sure if you're aware of but it's basically growing crops without soil and and natural lighting but artificial lighting can be used instead so basically i'm designing a tower that mixes up it's basically for vertical farming so for me the analyzing the cctv headquarters was really helpful in understanding how much movement impacts in a tower especially because it might not only be the movement of people but uh for my proposal it's also like the movement of the of the greenery itself so in this conceptual sketch i was trying to show how in my tower i'm um it's gonna be like maybe even the shape of the tower itself and the the spaces are gonna be created by the movement of the greenery itself and how much that's gonna impact both the productivity of the greenery and the food and people's lives so with this collage i was trying to show how i'm gonna have this type relationship between movement productivity and well-being because according to how much food and greenery is produced i can achieve one goal which is feeding the city and feeding the individual and on the other side um the movement of the greenery can basically improve the the productivity of the the person itself himself and their well-being and right now we're developing the actual design of the tower thank you why did you pick cctv to start with well i think it's an interesting tower where you have the movement and the structure are very interrelated so what happens with one of them intimately influences what happens with the other so it's an interesting case study to look at how um you know structural decisions can influence that type of movement or certain types of movement that you want to create influence structural solutions do you think um in in this case does it really matter cctv is in beijing or is just a tower that you can isolate and analyze do you think the context matters in this case or the client or the user i think for the i suppose the combination of all the programs into one building and then um having a visitors loop run through i think it's maybe interesting that it's in china or beijing because the cctv i think they're trying to tell a story about their work and their role in china and they try to tell that through the visitors loop and the views that they give into their into their or their processes and their work could we go back to the that perspective of cctv the highly colored one where you see buildings framed beyond yeah no you had it um no the other shot yeah that one is there really nothing about this that wedds it to any ideas about i hesitate to ask but i will ask as a westerner at the table is there no feng shui or this particular cultural resonance with something that is a portal versus a tower or is the building ever ritually evaluated in any of those terms or is that a misconception um held by westerners about projects going up let's say in beijing it doesn't have any relevance we haven't talked about it today but be interesting to have the panel's um opinions about that in china this building is called which means the great panthers yeah that's i always wanted i'm glad this came up did you know that yeah i forgot to mention good good so does it fail in any larger cultural sense as i i'm talking about morphology linked to culture or is it could it be anywhere that's really your question does does it have a relationship to sight that is in any way specific uh i don't think that when it was built uh the public was kind of ready for it and that's why they gave it a bad nickname actually like that's the nice nickname but like they they tend to refer it to the like uh pornographic version of it so a woman um opening her legs uh but that's like the nice nickname so i don't think they weren't ready for such a change and especially i think also the fact that um not chinese architects were in charge that was a big part in fact like it was by oma but the engineers were arab here based in london but they have they also had to work together with a chinese group of engineers based in beijing which would make sense but um they had to go through like three times the usual protocols that they go through because of this building so i don't i don't think they were really happy about it when it got built yeah and to answer your question about feng shui i think these buildings definitely break their feng shui rules because uh they definitely don't want stuff like a sharp corners especially right facing you so you can see the tip that's a it's kind of really sharp and right facing you so um that's definitely not that the right so like fungus solutions um and i think this building depends because it depends on first of all it's in beijing and in beijing is different than the rest of germany cities because those kind of you know the the political things and those policies come into beijing very strongly and also the government change you know those kind of things will affect the building strongly so um but i do agree that's you know your your structural solution it doesn't so like it has to be you know you get it from somewhere else there's also has to be these buildings but one thing i'm getting interesting is do you mind to go to that page the spiral um the spiral colors tower page i'm just thinking like because that as i just correct me if i understand i mean correctly um the color bed it's all the functions together with the uh the structural movement elements that you put them together well what this tower is is it's a combination of a convention center right with traditional offices so the gray represents the traditional office the colored parts represent different functions of a convention center yeah because when i saw this when i saw this image i'm just thinking like if we're talking about pure if you're talking about just pure about the uh the topic you are you are researching if you take out all the gray what is left and i think from that and from that point onwards you can you can you know you can go a bit further i think instead of just feel those kind of gray back in like a normal tower you can do a lot more interesting things based on the studies that we're doing there because apart from the the you know the the non-tradition like yo yo your design your development there's other factors like social factors economy factors and other other factors you can add into it rather than just put the grade back to the to to like a tower form don't think about form i'm just thinking like two about functions yeah i think you can do a bit more on that i i know your criteria was to look at movement and structure and in that sense i think ctcp would be the last star that i would look at in terms of parameters for high-rise also it's because it's such a unique project and such a one-off project i don't think he has much lessons there actually because as you know as you write this show then structure to hold this tower up structure is actually subservient to form so it's actually the structure is not that intuitive for uh for a high-rise typology if you ask me what would be more interesting or more fruitful as a research is to actually look at structure in relation to the program for instance the structure for office tower it's very very different for us for a high rise the structure for a high-rise office tower is very very different for a high-rise residential tower this is because of the way in which rooms are configured right for for instance residential groups they are working at about 3.6 to 4.2 meter grid right although structure could span easily 8 to 10 meters but because of the way in which rooms are configured in a residential tower give rise to a very a different grain of structure that would then give rise to a certain architectural tectonic and grammar and type of construction similarly office towers have a different grid because eight meters nine meters also gives a good grip for the open open playing office right you can go up to 20 meters to get daylight in etc etc and that also gives you the opportunity to look at the sun differently facade that no longer requires every opening at three meter intervals because it is related to room but perhaps looking at curtain walling for instance so there is a huge relation between high-rise tower its program and its structure and i think cctv is the last one that actually [Music] offers any sort of lessons that could be then translated especially when you are saying that you are looking at a multi-program mixed-use tower yeah that's very challenging for instance when you do a mixed-use tower usually actually you see there's there are very few mixed-use towers in the world why do you know why um because it's probably quite challenging but the basic problem is because your residential circulation you do not mix your residential circulation with your office situation for fire reasons but also for ownership reasons which also means that therefore you are duplicating circulation and structure within a very tight floor plan so the question is how do you solve that as an architect right so i think this is not a lesson if that is the brief that you are looking at sorry too technically did you see the other proposal i didn't put any muscle i mean it's basically yeah but i think this one is interesting because the other one when you show a diagram with stacking volumes stacking programs that worries me a bit if that's your understanding about tower i think for towers mainly its structure and then its service so if you're talking about monty function tower that circulation and the vt you mentioned about how many lifts there are in this cctv tower vt is the main part of of a tower and this one in particular the service is very interesting because you're not servicing people so you're not bringing up ducks you bring up like pipes and water supply for the plants that's another way to look at tower but i think just stay with service and structure will get you further on tower design probably thank you yes good afternoon my thesis title is assembling differences and achieving scales the presentation is originally english but i tried my best to write it or rewrite it with native chinese so that to experience the language by gap by myself areas quite difficult aries um so i'll try to talk slowly why does it go through automatically the problem is thank you exponential demand of the housing we've done well we've built lots of houses and but the lack of city language design language and lack of governance and also special um design designer gonna try to he's reading the script we're gonna try to get him to talk slowly okay so so this this these kind of super blocks will whether they can accommodate thank you who's reading script so this has caused lots of um closed um enclosures and lack of functionality and also the type of flats they look very repetitive and so they cannot offer much urban life or reflect the dynamic individual needs so considering the dimensions of the super block how could it accommodate a gradient of programs and lifestyles by its depth so what governance does to take it aggregate to the super blocks into layered urban framework that could support to reach civic life and the given the advancement of manufacturing and information technology as well as dynamic and diverse population is there a way to engage the users in the process of housing in such a way that they could customize the individual units in an open structure and then group together to share certain spaces and facilities and is there a way to assemble such diversity of flags and flats and other uses into complex type of typologies and coherent environments so our presence predecessors already tried um but the challenges actually lie in how it could be achieved technically how can such customized units be industrially produced is it possible to design a responsive and open-ended process which doesn't take too long if so what are the overarching principles that coordinate the aggregation in every scale these are the critical questions uh in research intended to explore a similar precedence dates back to the competition of mass produced housing in the 1930s group osa explored the potential of the three to three grids to accommodate diversity in different scales however they regarded it as a bondless geometry without concerning inhabited space or standardized construction so to start in and between every scale the urban district the super block the cluster and the floor plate there is a part-to-whole relationship upon which this design-led research intends to establish a coherent reasoning in the sense that all scales are prefabricated in adaptable components actors could be engaged in any stage spatial rules would uphold collective values ideally the following process could take place at the same time use user engagement design and governance and um fabrication and simply speaking it is the adaptable components that enables the initial layout of course on the grid without finalizing the morphological structure and it is such postponing of construction that makes time for the ongoing customization and design which would at least determine the assembled outcome in this way the procurement model is responsive and open-ended the site my home is located two kilometers from the metro station and uh one and a half hour from shanghai city center it's a random yet typical super block in the suburbs despite its taste it is all fenced up with repeating unit type and no collective or urban functions unfortunately in china we couldn't afford a negotiative progress uh process like the um bulgarian concept in the tubing which took 10 years however we could investigate how this framework of user engagement and collective decision would adapt in a framework of industrial production so instead of waiting the developer could um already start to build the development platforms and fabricate cores columns and beams in this suburb uh the authority would anticipate little street life so the cause would be laid out in 45 degrees for better solar orientation larger cores are built um the periphery um guidelines are designed to indicate hierarchy and regulate prominent facade and permeable ground based on the superficial the main developer would start to engage the users and collect data for example during phase one there might be quite a lot of requirements for workshops and mixed users and those residents who are interested in the cluster might want uh some private and acquire environment so um these two cores might be uh separated separately sold to specialize managing um specialized managing company and around these two cores to the south the quantum is distributed so that it forms a nicely dimensioned enclosure and a tower is built in the north which faces the beautiful open landscape and of course depending on the urban condition it might involve evolving into a quite open campus environment point blocks with rich greeneries um in 19 in 1971 a london group device which allows this customization of units but neither the reasoning nor uh the quantum of this project reached larger scales so similarly in this proposal potential users could choose from a set of five structured type of prototype for example this one would form small floor plate with um a better view well this unite type would be compact and cheap one could pick any amount of space and according to the purple lines fortunately and unfortunately in 2019 um um a floor plate might accommodate a variety of flats meanwhile certain special rules and implemented here for example a shared space to let in sunlight helped by new technology and those who love collective life might be grouped together and decide to shared space and instruments in other cases those love plants could enjoy a long green balcony when those prototype script structures are assembled into complex types architects would play a more important role for example here each household need a window um so in this cluster those who love an environment of freestanding pavilions will be grouped together the developer will ask the them to open up this area lastly the the designer will open up the mess okay opening openings are made to integrate the space the collective room would be designed and positioned according to their likes and the rest is left for flats with garden only at last stage landscape is designed to hold the variety of volume and uses together from more public hardened ground to a greener meandering and in this way we can already start to imagine how this process would transform the delivery of a large urban district during the process workspace commercial residences and shared facilities would gradually take their place in those super block in progress and because of everything might adjust along the way the government the governance would be loose but profound to ensure collective goods ideally repeating this responsive process in different sites would result in less cost and different evolving outcomes in conclusion this design-led research turns the challenge of quantum into advantage uh establishes a responsive and open-ended framework and designs overarching principles that could coordinate the part to whole relationships across scales in order to deliver housing that is driven by diverse needs and support dynamic civic life aside from providing a complex solution it envisions a synergy between new technology institutional framework and spatial design and with such a new context tries to redefine the role of the architect in the delivery of housing and the formation of urban areas curious see when you're translating your own thesis what are you thinking uh it's like i've translated a book but when i speak i always mingled with english and the difficult is not in language but in discussion so to you which are the difficulties i think super block is very difficult to translate like actors stakeholders [Music] and they are all related to developers and investors but it's not appropriate here is the part two whole relationship such a term but these are the difficult points you refer to actors i find it very difficult sometimes people use subject and you use actor so the most clue the closest that would be stakeholder or stakeholders i think it's more appropriate it is rather difficult to decide which term to i think we i need help of the professionals yeah term super block yeah yeah i don't think i would use the word super block to describe uh almost a planning unit of chinese urbanization i would use the word super plot yeah because i'm sure uh larry has asked you to look to read super block by cohen right uh no actually i i was told by elena but yeah but i didn't ask anything because could cohen would describe super block as something quite different from what we see in china super vlog essentially through cohen is to say that the building assumes a certain size yeah that it embodies all the richness and complexity of a city ah so it's used to describe a building a building and the example that he uses whether it is the hermann herzberger building or whether you use um rockefeller center yeah those were buildings that actually um hugs the edges yeah right yes use the word super block right a building that becomes a city block yeah but if you look at uh urbanization in china yeah uh you don't find blocks you find very very large separate laws separate plots developmental plots that are punctuated by endless repetitive skyscrapers yeah right so in a sense it's almost a caboosian model yeah organization yeah you don't get blocked if anything is the opposite of block right it's high rise in an undefined ground plane yeah right now of course there's a huge history why that is so is because as you know from late 70s onwards the only thing that the chinese have is no industry but they have land right because land is owned by the state and therefore to kickstart the economy urbanization right yes and there's a lack of lack of actors and developers exactly right so so the state uses the super plot yes the most basic yeah as well as by default yeah architectural scale right yeah to create urban environments and you rightly pointed out that it creates a homogeneous urban environment but i but precisely because of the word block and plot i think you need to clarify because i think it's really tied to the way in which china urbanized in the past 30 to 40 years right sorry 20 to 30 years yeah now which also means that when we begin to look at the shortcomings right of a kabusian tower in the field versus the potential of a block i think then we begin to see a certain problematic or challenges become more and more defined in terms of how you could approach them i think to create difference i think it's not necessary to work on the scale of of a floor plan i think the the challenge is to create those difference in the scale of the plant precisely of the plot and why we see that all these plots are so homogeneous also is in relation to the way in which the state allows the developer in exchange of the land to also create whole neighborhoods that uh that are in a way mixed that should function as a diverse neighborhood yes but more often than not we see in china that's not the case because the developer uh delay the building of public goods which includes commercial amenities school hospitals and so on because they just want to sell all the flats yes right now if you begin to understand the mechanism of urbanization in china that is tied to the question of the urban of the mega plot not the mega blok then i think the the the solutions that you are trying to propose here would be quite different i don't think that it is necessary to create every single plan yeah housing plan to do to be different i think it has to do with the insertion the choreography and the way in which you assemble public goods on the ground yeah thank you thank you yeah very constructive i'll take a different tack i've been in the aaa archive for on and off um this sermon lasted wondering about the the way students of the architectural association were making drawings in the 1960s and early 70s the grammar being modernism there's not a lot of joy in some of the drawings because there's a lot of um the lack of a better word straight lines going on but what's beautiful to see or where you see some sort of artistic flourish is in the depiction of a landscape or in the foliage or the foreground of a tree could we go to some of your drawings i think toward the end of your presentation you had quite a fine one that one so if i think of that legacy in our own archive when people were trained to draw like this i want to come back to you and ask when you present such a drawing and i think it's critical to the project i think you're beginning to address this notion of plot because you've activated graphically what the landscape might be do you have any hesitation presenting such a drawing in terms of people's perception of that drawing maybe being nostalgic because it's hand-drawn or is it something you're deploying strategically to arrive at design solutions or representations of how you conceive of things that are not a part of the architecture but a part of your plan for the whole of that district in terms of its its approach to landscape yeah it's a very good question but i actually didn't have the time to think of it because the reason why i applied this technique is that it's fast that's the only sound yes that's true i mean it's a very fine drawing i'm really entranced but i how were you trained to make such a drawing i know you i know for a fact you were not trained here to make this drawing i tried to uh i tried to uh not use the uh the now wide spreading line and photoshop coloring style because i want to explore something else which kind of accidentally turns back but i would say that the critical attitude towards this style of drawing that it doesn't actually shows what the modern modern way of life is here it's kind of yeah it's true um uh how long does it take to draw one of these drawings just one like one day it's quick yeah it's quicker than building 3d models because actually actually i was about to ask the same questions i mean i like your presentation there's a lot of like hand drawings thousands of them i just and i can see spend a lot of effort just to draw them up and he represents some of your ideas but i just wonder how much effort that you spend on those joints and make them pretty rather than think about the the you know the ideas and things behind it because this is this is as you know as we said this is fine joints but uh the first thing when you put it in front of people is you you would like to expect people understand what this picture is showing you immediately yeah i mean for for me i think it's nice drawing but uh but i i couldn't tell the big picture the big idea behind it the first the one the first time i want to see it yes uh i what i wanted to show in this drawing is probably firstly the volumes then there's some transparency going on say this atrium here while this should be drawn through this building while it's not and the the ground flow is transparent and there's a technical rigorousness uh i've designed the components to an extent that i trust the structure engineers could finish it and i want to show this in this inside this drawing as well i think that's it's intended yeah i guess my larger point and it's not about this project is it'd be nice to take for you a critical position about your approach to drawing particularly hand drawing and how it's a part of your methodology or strategy because i think there's a there there it's not just a habit and it's not just about the economy of time and representation but there might be things you can target this way you can't elsewhere more readily um and then the difference between the way you drew the plans which are quite diagrammatic actually quite good diagrams versus those drawings they live in two different realms so there's this yeah there's this gap if you will between these two narratives you tried out in the story and i think you might want to be attentive to or announce why you deploy certain methods of representation for different reasons uh i think uh yes the plans are drawn i think still i feel that there's net both necessity for both the technical should i answer in mandarin or english okay it's fine for me i think the plan it requires a technical precision and which then we will use handwriting hand drawing but these modules okay can be approached from different perspectives but here and we talking about this lifestyle is the the the floor plan it should be here this one each unit has shown a way of life from here we can see there is one unit for a couple young couple and here it also shows the private space frame framework so this is the way i use the the drawing rather than hand drawing that's a part of a bigger conversation but yes you started to thank you so i'd like to ask or say as chris if it is a plot so how do you break up the urbanism there is a gated community sense or concept in our practice we always come across this when we do master plan urban plans and you they need to be break up to have public functions so free but in china it becomes more gated i think this is in china we have four tea sons and architects to do this and the administrators are more than the architects and this doesn't show because we are short of architects or because development is too fast so this is a historical event or trend and when we look at the tradition traditional way of doing it and if we have a better typology autonomy and we have better integration in shanghai we one of the secretary uh told me that without the gated community his child will be lost in three minutes so this is a practical problem so how what kind of state a society is in and to what extent it can be accepted and it is probably need to be 20 or 30 years thank you thank you very much [Applause] so um good evening my name is carson and i'm from diploma 3 and um yes and our brief is body politics which centers investigative works in the threshold between the physical body and the external environment that sustains it and my project is called the weaponization a weaponized infrastructure in hong kong balance of non-lethal right control and yeah just be aware of that so one common feature of protests around the world is not only political but rather architectural and in the hong kong protests the state and protesters repeatedly weaponized the flow of air bodies and transportation against each other infiltrating the city at an infrastructural level and this um drawing or diagram um documents from the con the moment that the movement started up to um just before october and you can see how the um increasing frequency of conflicts um led to vicious cycles of retaliation between both sides and an escalation of violence and this project sees body as the site of uh interfaces that constitute this relationship and them three uh three main categories of interfaces and the first one is interfaces that dealt with uh the surveillance system and second one namely the physical uh violence and the the one standing out um in the red lines are the chemical policing tools and if we look at the body through um the gears and things that they have on the body you can see how the gloves the lycra sleeves respirators and goggles are kind of extending the epidermis of the envelope of the body and the the gas mask of the police shows that they will have to adapt to a situation in which human respiration was assumed a direct role in the events of rare control and the body's ability to exist in the body's existence is qualitatively conditioned to the composition of the atmosphere that surrounds the body and the particular chemical cs which is used all over the world as the main ingredient for tear gas it constitutes that cloud of smoke and the attack of tear gas is two folded it's it has a kinetic side and a chemical side so on the left side you can see the riot gun with the canister inside and once the canister is being fired the gunpowder triggers the um aerosolization process of the cs and it ends up as a 0.1 micron particle that launches an attack on the trpa1 receptor which triggers the the pain pain sense of pain on the mucous membrane that could be found all over the respiratory and digestive cavity of the body and it also penetrates the skin and here's a short video of how one will react tear gas so this is a journalist with a gas mask on and she's still suffocated by the chemical attack sorry about the swearing word if you know cantonese yes so um apart from the body itself the cloud of gas would also um attack on architectural ventilations and airways through its process of decay and such process would lead to a lot of psychological impact on people who live in locations near the place of conflict so this is a testimony of a local woman so um the peacetime use of tear gas started um with the ban of chemical weapon in warfare after world war ii with the geneva protocol and it is virtually legitimized into con convention which is the chemical weapon convention in 1993 and in between um the business um rhetoric of um commercializing tear gas as a really good pr2 for the police has been one of the driving force for the state's continuous use of tear gas and you can see on the bottom left side where um federation lab which is a very famous um ammunition company uh they they have been in this in a very active um stage in lobbying for the government's um use in riot controls and in 1990 it's further standardized um in in um in america the production of tear gas and led to a booming riot control ammunition export market which china plays a big role in it and the kind of the um commercial side of tear gas is fueled by the increasing need of riot control in colonial uh the british colonies during the earlier day early years of the century and hong kong as one of the colonies uh um has tegas was introduced into hong kong in 1938 and have seen extensive use against um the pro communist and pro-taiwanese riots during the 60s and along with the imported tear gas a whole standard and protocols of tear gas has been introduced by the colonial government and as you can see the the warning flag is one of one of the protocols that kind of legitimizes the human humane use of tear gas and the medical gaze on tear gas has also been a bit biased um throughout the history where human human experiments in america and the us focuses a lot on the healthy body instead of understanding body as um could also be having um certain sickness and uh weaknesses and and during the 70s where um the the british government committed this hemsworth report as a reflection on the use of tear gas in the truck during the troubles in northern ireland which um regarded tear gas as a drug instead of a chemical weapon and this um understand this medical understanding of tear gas is uh continuing today and see and and seen as um a response of the hong kong government to to the public health crisis that tear gas created and all these uh understanding attitudes reports uh converging in hong kong these uh in in the protest movement where you can see tear gas manufactured in china the us and the uk are being used by the hong kong police and kind of to understand the non-lethal aspect of tear gas depends on a few parameter and the first one is the munition character characteristics where tear gas was supposed to be shot in a projectile motion instead of a level shot and also it is um the non-lethal aspect is kind of controlled by the uh metrological condition of this uh of the area that's being used and tactical aim and the the dissipation of gas is especially important in uh decreasing the harm of tear gas um in in a situation of riot control where the dissipation of tear gas dilutes the particles and into a non-harmful dose and it is highly highly dependent on mechanical turbulence and thermal turbulence in the city which could vary uh during the day and all of these parameters um constitutes the non-lethal aspect of the tear gas and and such parameters um especially hard or uh to to be carry out in city like hong kong where the um architectural or urban airways are highly engineered as the previous projects that presented would tell and this is one um study from one mtech tech project which looked at um um urban area and hong kong through different heights so different downdrafts and vortexes would constitute a different urban climatic situation and also our assumption on the um enclosure of the architecture where we assume wind details of windows are perfectly capable in concealing the interior itself and also how ventilations could come into play to to draw in the chemical cloud in um and in the other end weaponizing the interior space and this has also been seen in hong kong where hospitals and residents around the conflicted areas would it became their day-to-day life that tear gas is constantly affecting their life and so my project proposes a study on three different urban climatic situations namely the first one is the public interior where tear gas has where the hong kong police has been constantly violating the non-lethal rules of using tear gas and also how i'm also interested in how streets and the urban climate situation could lead to residues being in a in a vortex and affecting a lot of people and also the private interiors where tear gas has been seen fired directly indoors and the proposal calls for a protocol or a menu for the people who working in such conditions or forced to be living in such conditions to deal with the constant contamination of tear gas and we and one of the aim is also to kind of uncover the extra legal violence that that is inherent in the legal system that made it impossible to bring the site bring the state accountable to collateral damages that is inflicted by riot control tactics and teargas has been conditioning lives in hong kong for the past seven months and it is very important to address the city as the battlefield of state power and the collective body in order to uncover the social political impact of chemical warfare that has been rooted in the notion of modern riot control thank you okay um maybe maybe i go with a star maybe i just speak in english because your study actually reminded me quite a lot of my thesis my final thesis back in nowadays it's also focused on the research itself and then give the potential proposals but i think there's something in lack of here because my because i remember my physics it's also about it's about noise it's kind of like harm resource it's going like from the industries from the airport from everywhere um how can you use those negative elements and transform into a positive element and i give a potential proposal for it i think this is similar because tear gas you know now now i can personally i learned quite a lot of how the tear gas what's the harm of the tear gas is but i think what is missing here is how can you transfer tear gas from from from sort of like uh really really really negative yeah elements into some positive things because what i did just as an example what i did is i did some material studies i transfer noise actually is it's not visible but actually it's type of evaporation and i use uh one they call it like yadi inside out it's called like a piece of ceramic which is very sensitive to vibration and then actually noise is one type of operation so you create one type of vibrations and then you transfer the noise into electricity therefore you kind of propose a way of how to transfer the negative resource into positive resource i think i think the things it is really is really really in-depth uh studies but i think you need to give a little bit more proposals of how can you first of all solve the situations and transfer the negative situations into positive e by materials by any solutions i can see that you can you start to propose some ventilation strategies and things like that but i think that is still a bit more it's it's it's not sort of like uh future proofing solutions i would say well i mean the problem of tear gas yeah it's um i think a bit different from noise where you tear gas is kind of a form of power that is asserted on the people by the states and it is i don't really think it is something that could be kind of transformed into something positive yeah because it's inherently um a chemical weapon and uh a contamination on the an attack on the living condition of the people in the city and i think maybe i should make it a bit more clear that this project wants to propose defense mechanism from the civil side instead of um tampering with the um state from from the narrative that tear gas is creating a lot of harm but we're trying to kind of dissect the problem that the state is overseeing which is the contamination within the urban condition and to look at that problem and use that body of knowledge to to create this activist activism moment that would help the people who are in those conditions i think if you say that it is an activist moment uh do you think that this activist movement is addressing the symptoms of the cause well i think the symptoms is kind of the end result of what had happened and through dissecting the cause of the symptom but you're not looking at the course well so far focus on the symptoms well the protest is the simple symptoms of deep rooted cause right that is urban that is political because it's urban right so i'm just afraid that the activism part is commendable but i think focusing on tear gas and protests i think as an architect i think is quite limited i think there are other more deep rooted problems right that give rise to unhappiness to protest to to many many things and in which an architect with a deep knowledge of space the choreography of material into artifacts right for collective use i think you will go further rather than focusing on the protests well first of all the kind of the focus is not the political cause of the protests but the uh political result of using tear gas in an highly architectural or engineered condition which is the city so i think there's a kind of difference in the politics that we are talking about maybe no i think that's why i call it symptoms and causes right yeah i just want to add a bit to that discussion if let's say the reason for using tear gas is to disperse assemblies yes and an assembly is something which let's say from the point of view of control is something which is potentially not controllable in this way which may be termed a protest but it can also be just everyday life and that happens to be in city with a with a sense of crowds so there's there's a fine line and i think by shifting the perspective away from just simply the chemicals and the performance of the chemicals you know to the damaging aspect but then also the control the political aspect i think this notion of let's say a spatial response and potentially how assemblies can in a way disperse in some way to protect itself so there is a form of barrier that maybe you do propose but then there's also kind of probably much more interesting is how urban spaces and the movement of people across urban spaces could also be changed um not so much that you could you could simply change the decision to use tear gasses because that is something not so much your architectural proposal could influence but i mean it could in some ways um in some other means but um i think there there's kind of the way you it's it's really amazing presentation in some ways in in the depths and and how daring it it went to dissect the situation but i think you could in a way um look a little bit more in the spatial terms and the choreography of the uh the front line and the front line being at very different heights of the city yes find out really interesting you know how certain compressed areas could be of an advantage to the controlling party but it can also be of an advantage to let's say the protesting party or departing of assembly and by doing so i think your the skill of your analysis can be more enriched and therefore leading to a more interesting kind of scenario of spatial use or spatial activism that hong kong could perhaps potentially hasn't known yet but you could in a way present back to the city as an option so that's just an additional thought my mother was tear gassed when she was she didn't know she was pregnant with me but vietnam um um protest in ohio of all places and nobody died it was non-lethal using tear gas nobody died until they started actually shooting students in ohio but i think your point if i follow the research and it is a beautifully um organized body of research is you're trying to make an architectural point or a spatial point around non-lethal and lethal and the legislation internationally around it and when that slide of what looked like a gymnasium with a haze of tear gas in it came up i realized this is the kind of threshold that in fact this non-lethal permissive use of tear gas by a governor in ohio or by the hong kong government is one thing but because of the the unique characteristics of an urban plan or indeed the interior of a building this same substance becomes potentially lethal right away or much more harmful so you're talking about dissipation you're talking about different scales of application is that where the research is going because that does bring all the things you talk about in terms of your interest in architecture and urbanism to the quantifiable aspects of the chemistry and the prevailing winds that make this a lethal use of a non-lethal substance i mean that's what you're trying to go with this no yes because um the i mean tear gas itself is um kind of the use of tear gas characterizes uh if it is lethal or not and yeah so um kind of to to look at hong kong as the battlefield of using tear gas and the kind of side effects that it brings this is kind of and and through uh really kind of technical terms or technical ways to kind of quantify that violence is one of the aim of the project itself and i suppose to uncover moments of fortuitous moments where if i'm this looks like a train shed or something so the dissipation might be more quick but if i know i'm going to use the corner of bedford square something that has enclosure at a particular time of day without a prevailing wind i know it'll have much more impact so it becomes a kind of i guess a discovery of mapping all those conditions and finding to what degree are these are these moments of deploying tear gas being used strategically to amplify their effect using architecture or the urban environment as the amplifier because um one thing that made tear gas such a good riot control too is you basically couldn't visualize the harm or the process of attack through um a screen and this is not bringing um people into account to the the the conflict or violence that the tear gas has inflicted so yeah i guess one of the the real really good point that you bring up is to amplify that whole situation but it's the next step you are trying to propose something to of like solve these associations or yeah that's kind of the proposal for the next step yes because i think in terms of the research the depth of the research is there already but i think what is lacking for the next step is your kind of personal proposals in terms of urban spacings and what can you solve these you know situations if you know if it continues or you know you might go on let's let's see yeah i think yeah that's yeah kind of violence maybe i can just throw in like one random idea i think your project may benefit from say a very clear threat to link all the different questions or dimensions you already posed for example the chemical particle you already identified what if you trace the full cycle of that chemical particle linking the body to the interior space to the urban space it's like how we understand hydrological system what if you do that through that particular chemical and then in this way you literally map that in as an intersection or in a sort of that's spatialize it or contextualize that in a very spatial reading so because that's your contribution to this and then bring in also the temporal dimension into that as its tear gas and also the body as you you could mention that just like yeah just throwing that idea maybe you can benefit from that rather than talking about tear gas and tear gas right maybe i can just add a very brief comment from anthropologist's point of view i'm very impressed by how broad or how broad you can go with architects research especially your presentation has very much impressed me um but i i'm sort of still confused what you want to get out of here right as an architect and i guess if if if you are a social scientist you know giving this presentation i would push you more of thinking about not really technical solutions to the problem but really the political and social solutions which i think are the more i guess fundamental solutions to the problem we don't want tear gas anywhere and yeah i guess it's just my comments not technical solutions to the to the problem i think um solution is kind of um very interesting term to be thinking about because if you think about something that you have no control over and how could that possibly lead to a solution so i i'm kind of like on on that thinking um but you start with a political problem right it's not a technical problem it's a political social problem yes and it induced a technical problem and so by kind of visualizing or kind of showing it and to understand it because i i mean through the history of tear gas it's only been evaluated through the eyes of the state but not the people who are subjected to tear gas and kind of now i'm using that kind of new way of perspective to look at this particular gas which would cover grounds that would traditionally be ignored in a state level but i guess using the lens of state is exactly to see how you know the subjects of the state are being sorry i just want to perhaps add to your defense um perhaps it is by means of a project a form of protest because he's trying to make visible something that is very very much camouflaged or very difficult to be visible so perhaps that's why yeah i just wanted to say that it's a very good question i think the presentation would work very well as a political project rather than a technical project yeah the round table right thank you very much thank you very much you

Channel: AA School of Architecture

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Id: ID9R5Z4VOTg

Length: 185min 35sec (11135 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021