Open Building: My design direction
1. Design for change
Even after several architectural movements of the previous 20th century, the dual foundations of both architectural practice remain unchanged. These are programmatic functionalism (traced to the early 20th century) and classicism / classical formalism (traced to ancient Greece and earlier). Here, the first “ism” asserts that buildings can be empirically formulated and functionally classified by experienced professionals; the latter, that buildings exist as stand-alone aesthetic objects, or “monuments”. Both positions overlook the reality of time and relations between people and architecture. In the 1970s Habraken first challenged these ideologies. He saw a building as a living thing, constantly changing over time through the manipulations of people. Architecture is not a simple static physical product which endures to infinity, but instead a growing and changing process. In housing, for example, he pointed out that “Dwelling is after all doing something; it is the sum of human actions within a certain framework, within the protective environment created by man…” (Habraken, 1972:18 a) The key question in building process has shifted from function, proportion and style to control; in other words, “who is doing what”. Habraken’s thinking is significant: it acknowledges the pragmatic reality of any built environment, and potentially shakes the foundation of architectural manifestos since Renaissance times.
2. Design for new reality
Today we live in a rapidly shifting global economy, intensifying cultural exchanges and mixtures and increasingly rapid and intensive material and information flows. The classical models of pure, static, timeless form and structure are no longer adequate to describe the contemporary city and the activities it supports.
Today, we pay less attention to discrete buildings, let alone monumental buildings, when we move about in automobiles, airplane and other vehicles. And even at the pedestrian scale, in a modern city such as Hong Kong, trains and cars tend to disappear underground. More people travel underground with the guidance of text signage than those on the ground surface guided by landmark buildings. Buildings obtained less significant on the visual quality.
Second, communications technology has drastically changed the perception and visuality of architecture. Traditional architecture might often have served as legitimately functional monuments to impress and convey to viewers messages of culture or identity. Today the message of culture and identity, which constantly changes in the rapid globalization process, can be better communicated by graphics via the Internet, for instance.
Third, building technology has shifted from the building as a single, inert and often heavy mass to an assembled kit-of–parts comprised of light, prefabricated elements.
Fourth, in the process of global marketization and its attendant consumer- oriented economy, building form and programme gradually drifted apart under the constant pressure of frequent changes. Here, buildings are not much different from a TV set; both are monotonous in physical form but offer different and constantly changing programmes and images.
Last but not least, building design increasingly tends to emphasize resource management above form-making due to the emergence and integration of environmental science and sustainable development concepts in architecture. The essential issues are how to minimize a building’s resource consumption and waste and maximize its recycling and environmental efficiencies. For example, prolonging a building’s life span becomes crucial to maximizing embodied energy efficiencies in building materials and in construction. Architectural design also aims at promoting environmentally friendly lifestyles.
3. Design platforms of change
Traditionally, as in contemporary practice, building construction and site preparation are separated. Site preparation may include the geological survey, site forming and earth works, road and accessibility provisions, etc. Only then did (and does) a building divide the site into indoor and outdoor space. On the other hand, open building sees no difference between a building and its site. It regards a building as a secondary or complementary sub-site: an artificial site for reconstruction and remodeling. Open building in architecture prepares the generic, anonymous and skeletal physical “ground” for anticipated reconstruction. It merely creates the preconditions for future modification.
Open building as such – which de-form, de-materialize, minimize, and mobilize the spatial envelope around the human body – suggest an emerging 21st century architecture which potentially liberates both the individual and collective body/soul from previous architectures characterized by enclosed, heavy, static, rigid, repetitive, limited and technologically over-complicated and expensive built forms.
My design works are mainly along the following lines:
(1) Operable flexibility
Operable partitions and furnishings are applied to make everyday change of space and function possible. Operability is the easiest, most direct and effective control of spaces from users among all kinds of flexibility.
(2) Architecture-as-Infrastructure
Architecture is integrated with infrastructure, or performs as platforms supporting intensive programs and program changes.
(3) Building-as-Connector
Any urban or architectural problem caused by segregation, fragmentation, isolation or discrimination can be partially resolved, by adding a link, in the form of a bridge, space or building.
One important feature of the high-density habitat as in Hong Kong is that the distance between buildings, or buildings and infrastructure, is so close that they begin to link and merge. It provides a particular historical evolution leading to habitable bridges in a plausible and convincing way. If we merely focus on high-rise buildings, we already note their inherently large capacity, many comparable to that of a small town close to the earth’s surface.
(4) Light and Permeable Architecture
Modern technology has reduced structure and external envelope to a minimum in size and weight. As a result, the remaining static part of buildings shrunk away; and because there could no longer be enclosed spaces, these interlaced and opened up. Hence the structure itself became free to accommodate particular needs and site conditions. The concept of architecture-as-a-stone-monument, as proposed in the 19th century, is gone. As new materials and technologies emerge and develop in different specializations parallel to architecture, the final performance of the building ultimately depends on their successful integration.
(5) A New Unity of the Built Environment
In the last ten years among the most influential disciplines – if not the most influential – has been environmental science. Environmental science influences architecture and urban planning in the forms of new objectives, new aesthetics, and most important, new conceptual programmes. Architecture is seen in terms of a life cycle, in which issues of energy and material consumption, and waste treatment, deposition, and recycling becomes more important than issues of style and form. Architecture is seen as an instrument to manage energy, materials and human resources in relation to the local and global environments.