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Inter 6

Urban dwelling densities have profound implications on housing construction process, and urban operational needs. This direction towards high "occupancy density" leads to high performance architecture, with the critical application of innovative design tools and fabrication methods to challenge the overpopulation that cities face these days.

The aim of the project is to reinvent and improve the efficiency of climbing construction methods to generate a new system based on the same rule of growing vertically and reusing the same formwork, but adding flexibility and variation, to be able to generate differentiation and adaptability. The design will be determined by the optimization of the system in relation to the site conditions, the material usage, the programme and the construction sequences.

The ambition of the projects is to make an strategic use of new technologies, and constructive methods, with the invention of a new flexible climbing system to challenge housing in high density contexts, enforcing difference and freedom, using the construction method to invert the skyscraper massing reducing the foot print, using the maximum space available in height. Dealing with existing fabric and terrain conditions, and make way for a multi-layered urban plan programme, that enables different stages of development, and different initiatives to insert and adapt to the urban fabric in different scales. Creating a multiple clustered volumes that opposing the isolation that these complexes are subject to, and avoiding the fortress of the ground level podium, the building is open to the public, both the resident and the visitor. Encouraging partnership between both private and public bodies within the residential programme enriched with a wide variety of commercial uses, and public facilities.

On a building level, the attached, compact dwelling configuration typical from public housing in Hong Kong that leads to low per capita energy and material use associated with housing construction will be encouraged and challenged with the system to create a more physical/spatial and human condition.

Phase 1 – ‘In Vitro’ Deploying fabrication-based design strategies within dense urban environments, we will develop architectural structures that negotiate their spatial and material configuration within contexts of limited resources, infrastructure and space.The aim of the project is to reinvent and improve the efficiency of climbing construction methods to generate a new system based on the same rule of growing vertically and reusing the same formwork, but adding flexibility and variation, to be able to generate differentiation and adaptability. The design will be determined by the optimisation of the system in relation to the site conditions, the material usage, the programme and the construction sequences. Shek Tong Tsui, is a town in Sai Wan on the north shore of Hong Kong Island. Administratively, it belongs to the Central and Western District. In the early 1900s it flourished as a red-light district and came to its golden period. That lasted until the ban of prostitution by the Hong Kong Government in 1935. Nowadays is mainly a low-income residential area with the exception of The Belcher's, high-rise complex, near the University of Hong Kong, with an extensive cooked-food market, and green spaces in the south slopes of Victoria Peak, and the harbour in the north. The site is characterised by its irregular terrain, located in a slope with retaining walls, and recently covered by a large highway extension of Pok Fu Lam road. Consequently, the space has become a residual public space of transition, with new urban planning possibilities. Urban dwelling densities have profound implications on housing construction process, and urban operational needs. This direction towards high 'occupancy density' leads to high-performance architecture, with the critical application of innovative design tools and fabrication methods to challenge the overpopulation that cities face these days. The project will focus in Hong Kong where the conditions are literally extreme: Hong Kong is the built manifesto of extreme density. Hong Kong's housing development is commonly in the form of estates, which are characterised by large sites measured in hectares and towers of 30-40 storeys. The current densities are 2000-4000 residents per hectare of net site area, plot ratio of five and above, 1-2 square metres of communal open space per resident, and 15-20 square metres of gross floor area per resident. These 30-40-storey towers are commonly constructed with the fully mechanised Jump Form System. The use of a climbing formwork system to construct the central core walls and the residential wings of the towers result on the overwhelming extensiveness of repetitive non-ending structures that appears almost surreal in the city. The incisive form of these building is almost always the direct consequence of technical, functional constrains built straightforward. The project intervention will focus on reinhabiting these public urban voids with the flexible climbing system, testing the adaptability to urban limited building land, in difficult plot developments areas, using four different plot areas, assigning the maximum plot area to keep the public space free, and reducing to the minimum the built footprint of the tower, and expanding in height, where there is more space available for dwelling. With the result of 'seven' different towers, which are displaced from their base, forming a curve and coming into contact at certain heights avoiding alienation and promoting community, creating a neighbourhood in the sky, which enhances social interaction. Inside, a variety of housing types, which serves to break away from the traditional standardisation of housing in China. Apartments are formed on the basis of one or more modules of different square metres creating different levels of dwellings that range from a studio consisting of a single module to a large, four-module apartment, far away from the repetitive housing block. The action of densification of this massive complex of programmatic diversity is condensed by introducing communal voids, and giving more importance to the inner façade of the tower, safe from future growth. The result is a vertical labyrinth with interconnecting interior courtyards as public spaces protected from the sun which introduce porosity to the mass. The final development of the projects is a continuation of the previously outlined topics with the addition of considerations for the development of each proposal over time. Assuming there is no single or permanent solution but rather a strategy for adaptation and growth, projects need to incorporate the ability to respond to the needs of their ever-changing population.