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 Thesis Statement
Trace back to the history of windows were just holes in a wall in its earliest time. Later, people learnt to cover windows with animal skin, paper, cloth, or wood. Shutters that could be opened and closed came next. Since always, windows were built to protect the inhabitants from the elements outside and serve as a mean to transmit light and air. Such opening constructed in a wall or roof to an enclosure underlying a very important role: a medium to communicate between the outside and inside.
Take a walking tour from any part of Hong Kong can always bring you a glimpse at the cross-section of local life, a uniquely Hong Kong experience – overdosed repetitive and standardized windowscape, where window is regarded as an object that being framed and spanned with glass mounted to permit opening and closing, transmit light, and ventilate air.
Over time, we have been neglected the potential of windows can bring us, it is a new era to rediscover and examine the value and rich experience that they offer to both individually and socially – identify the significant of windows, and reveal their appeal as a way to contribute to the betterment of architecture, cities, and society which has been underrated for centuries in modern architecture theory.
WHAT
Description of Project Intended to Test the Thesis Statement:
Should there be a difference between windows in the church and in the office; between living room and bedroom when climatical factors and human behaviours are supposed to be different?
Questions raised to test the thesis statement:
1. Is it only a redesign project of windows?
2. Is it to design and invent a new typology of windowscape?
3. Is it just to make the facade more interesting instead of repetitive and dull windowscape?
4. How it is named as a revolution?
5. How to compensate the low cost brought by the mass production of standardizing windows?
6. How could it be possible of not falling into the trap of GBP?
Thereby possibly leading to the birth of a new window concept to replace the standardized window typology.
HOW
Methodological Processes/ Outline of Research/ Design Experiments:
Document different typology of windows currently exist in Hong Kong with actual measurement in accordance to different categories, for example building ages, types and values, etc. Analysis climate factors affecting local context in Hong Kong, i.e. wind direction, solar radiation, solar path, length of daylight, urban heat island effect, microclimate, etc. Understand and observe human behaviors and settlement inside and outside of the windows.
Compare different window samples in various regions with different climate conditions and of various programs, i.e. temple in Sri Lanka, factory in Brazil, office in Finland, book store in London, dwelling in India, etc. Examine an existing site composing different kinds of program in Hong Kong. Experiment how the new windowscape would change the spatial and tectonic arrangement of architecture, and would influence individual and social behaviors in the city.
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