Imagination Art & Architecture

Tony Yam

 








 






 


 







Money is undeniable the main force of architecture and the built world. Every construction needs to be paid, either by governors, developers, or individuals. In Hong Kong, money is the absolute ruling power governing most decision-making of the society. The project "Architecture of Money" attempts to understand the relationship between money and architecture, in terms of spatial creation, mechanism of money flow, and architectural functionality. Without being critical to its content, the design explores the full potential of the three aspects in large-scale architectural intervention to create a monument of money standing for the contemporary city of Hong Kong.

The initial interest of the project was to search for a true form of functional architecture from the city. In the study of commercial vernaculars, it demonstrates a rational approach of spatial creation, which works pragmatically for consumption. Under the realm of Capitalism, architecture and space become the event space for money activities, thus, space has been quantified and calculated to exist for a reason. The observed spatial practice serves as an ideal form of efficiency, utility, and flexibility for design applications.

As architecture is repositioned as space for consumption, the society should be understood as a flow of money and capitals. It is a socio-economic study of the relationship between functions and programmes. There are five functions of money, namely symbolic function, units of account, store of value, medium of exchange, and standard of deferred payment. Each function is operated by different money activities. The "Architecture of Money" serves as a representation of the logic of money with programmes dedicated to allow the happening of different money activities.

In contrast to ancient landmarks and monuments, it is a money monument celebrating Capitalism with its super functionality instead of icon nor symbolism. By adopting contemporary media and building technologies, the design further explores its functionality in the form of media facade and responsive container-office system. Situated in the most prominent part of Hong Kong, the creation is an architecture of Hong Kong bearing its own ideals of the culture of consumption and Capitalism.


Kar Him Mo
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong China

 



 






 


 





 


Growing up in a beautiful coastal town, my grandfather would share stories about pirates in the ocean. The beauty of the ships he described had the power to take your breath away. By linking my love for architecture and the stories my grandfather told me of the beautiful pirate ships I merged both my loves into one.The hotel is located on the beach where its appearance fits in perfectly. The idea of this project is primarily a hotel that is reminiscent of a ship. The corner motifs which have very specific balconies evoke the bow of the ship. Uneven floors give an elevation of different facades.The glass surfaces which are blue are reminiscent of the blue sea and sky. The main mission of this project was to coordinate and synchronize the hotel function with form and appearance. The hotels entrance is punctuated with large eaves detail on the facade. The hotel has two side entrances; the economic part and the conventional hall. The main floor has many functions which include a reception area, offices with business areas, and the economic part of m and a spa.The first floor is dedicated to rooms for the conference hall with an open bar, a restaurant, and apartments with kitchens. The hotel accommodates 144 people. The rooms are divided as follows; 12 one bed rooms, 2 rooms for people with special needs, 54 double bed rooms, and 11 two bedroom apartments. I imagined the interior of the hotel to be similar to the interior of the ships my grandfather spoke to me about. The central part is designed as an atrium with a glass roof, while the rest of the surface is covered by a flat concrete slab. For the interior of the hotel, I used sophisticated materials which were dominated by a glass surface. If my work have harmony and balance in architecture it will alow me to fell the power of succsess,especially if this project can be transformed to reality in the future,wich would give me a sense of accamblishment.

Hana Ismailaga
University of Montenegro Montenegro

 


What if spaces associated with the hyper-real media of film and the realism of film production are programmatically cross-bred?


The public spectacle of movie-going and the individual ritual of reception are interweaved in the long barn of industrial building sitting on an organic-inorganic movie landscape, countering the growing preoccupation of individualistic movie appreciation and render the Harcourt Garden as a interactive space of general public and professionals bred by the academy, with a mutually inclusive agendum of movie-appreciation and movie-making that turns into a new urban generator.


Kwong Kit Jerry Lam
The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong China

The project follows two main aspects that have given it birth by every meaning: aspect, functionality, flexibility in use, structure, possibility of actual existence. The first aspect regards the site, which has an overview appearance of an “under construction” area, like a fabric texture made of too many materials, some in contradiction. It is situated at the confluence of two different urban typology streets: a main boulevard hungry for architectural evolution, that needs to redefine its density, visual impact, functionality, through the new urban pattern; and a smaller street, part of the traditional Bucharest urban tissue, that feels like a “living museum”, defined by a collection of houses with architectural value and low density. The first question that arises is: how should the living “in-between” be like? In a city where urban development has just begun, where architectural improvement is demanded by the new society, but without harming the nearby “living museum” , eventually highlighting one another, the answer lies in the art of conceiving a lifestyle between collective and individual housing. As a conclusion of the urban analysis, the project proposes a synthesis between the traditional and new-developed tissue translated into 3D plots which compose the model. In addition to this, the answer regarding the living typology requested here, is completed by the second main aspect, which, more conceptually, explains the plans, defines the spaces. It’s about defining the actual meaning of “collective housing” in the way people are affected by it in reality.


“I’d consider a 'collective' to be a group of people who have made a choice to join together towards a particular end, whereas one can be a member of a community without any conscious decision to join it.” 24 January 2009, an opinion from an Internet Forum.


This is an important aspect in defining: private-public area, collective spaces, access spaces, privacy, community. It also gives the rules of division of the interior functions: where the living is located and why. The project consists of 40 living-units: flats, hybrid units somewhere between flat and house, row-houses situated above the ground floor, in the north.


Oana Muresan
ion Mincu' University of Architecture and Urbanism Bucharest Romania




 




 

Ship breaking chamber.

Since the closure of the Royal Docks, Silvertown in East London went from being part of the largest dock in the world to a ghost town, a place of memory. Silvertown ship breaking yard will not only provide the local community with highly skilled jobs but through the creative process of playing, testing, experimenting and reconstructing ship elements, new individual and communal identities for Silvertown’s inhabitants will be created. The project can be categorised into three stages.

Ships are broken up through a complex process which takes place inside the breaking chamber, a specially designed channel for the extraction of elements where the lighter parts are removed first and the heavier structural parts last -- the reverse of traditional construction. Throughout this deconstruction process, elements are extracted either to be recycled through sale at a scrap yard and flea market or to be used for experimental reconstruction.

Jonathan Schofield

University of Westminster London UK

An international competition was set up inviting proposals for the £140M redesign. Despite public consultation, in which 55% of respondents said they didn’t want a new park, it attracted 55 submissions, before a shortlist of six of the usual suspects was announced, cosseted in some very divergent landscaping proposals. These have now been whittled down to two. The winner was supposed to be announced this month, but the jury wishes to see both schemes worked up more. As Malcolm Reading Associates, who are organising the competition delicately put it, ‘clarification in the spirit of the competitive process’.

LSE’s Professor Richard Sennett talks about the ‘need for danger’ within modern cities. I don’t think he means real danger, but raw, urban spaces that are unmonitored, unmediated and uninfluenced by other agendas. Union Terrace Gardens might look rough round the edges, but it’s nothing a bit of TLC can’t deal with. It is a big thing in the urban consciousness to tear up a park that has defined a place for nearly 140 years and replace it with something imposed and alien. I’m no fan of herbacious borders and garish floral clocks- but I recognise their role in the collective memory of the city.

As for the two designs standing, I’m taking a punt. All those ‘desire lines’ criss-crossing the park in ‘Granite suggest the ogsessions of Space Syntax made concrete, and its white triangle of stage reminds me of Niall McLaughlin’s Bexhill-on-Sea bandstand, so I’m thinking Gustafson Porter/ Niall McLaughlin. The ‘Winter Garden’, with its hi-tech diagrid Winter Garden heavily referencing Victorian Engineering as precedent, but looking suspiciously like a rehashed roof of Florence train station and Canary Wharf Crossrail is possibly Foster+Partners and Vladimir Djurovic.

But at stake here is more than ‘good’ design- it’s the nature of the democratic process and the right for a city to decide its future form regardless of commercial concerns. And if it were up to me, I’d think long and hard before losing Union Terrace Gardens in all its dowdy, flawed but public glory.




Source : The Magazine of the Royal Institute of British Architects