An urban caricature
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[Statement] There is undoubtedly an emergence of a massive spree for luxury goods at all levels that triumphant in infesting and changing the role of shopping and its impacts on urban living. The thesis represents a tectonic inquiry on those unaccounted architectural opportunity due to prevalent market reactions against an otherwise aggressive, domination of street facades, their out-of-scale signboards, street level shops and, ultimately street living by a skewed, mono-culture in pursuit of vanity and emptiness, and an exhalation for expensive items.
In the current setting of cities such as Hong Kong, vanity shop has singularized the shopping street scenery, a direct result of a unique tourist-shopper idiosyncrasy, especially in major commercial districts such as Mong Kok and Causeway Bay. Urban critics worried that this daunting experience of homogeneity and the surreal craze for materialism will replace the excitement of unforeseeable and unexpectedness in the pre-existing setting of diversified street-shop experience.
My thesis explores how architecture plays a role in achieving the quality of an exciting urban scene and experience through the setting up of anticipation and triggering of spontaneous imaginations and reactions. Acting as a caricature to, instead of in replacement of, the existing homogeneous street, I have selected a site in Causeway Bay that is among a dense cluster of huge luxurious brand stores, in which my new proposal shall co-exist with the current monotonic scene. [Inspiration] In sight of the emerging trend of lifestyle specialization, Harajuku, a small district in the city of Tokyo, becomes my major study reference and inspiration. It is a shopping district where teenagers look for the experience of being Alice in the Wonderland of they city.
In great contrast to the urban phenomenon in Hong Kong, where city façade is reduced to out-of-scale flat surfaces containing logos and texts, the small scale shops in Harajuku reveal their own character with specialized shop front designs that differ in size , form, proportion and atmosphere. The district is linked by a multi-level, non-directional network that consists of twists and turns, in which visitors experience a continuous switch of anticipation and discovery. [Project] 4 atmospheric scenarios are proposed for the site, in each the specific circulation and spatial strategy reflects the need of shop types, and the journey through the whole complex provides the visitor a diversified experience of small scale urban shopping.
Scene 1
In the first scene, the design is composed of open spaces for shops like yoga studio and tea houses, which are partially shielded from the main circulation for achieving tranquility and a certain degree of privacy. Although the major staircases are hidden, the shielding elements are of inviting gestures, similar for other shielding elements. It is like hide-and-seek between the shop activity and the visitors. Scene 2
In the second scene, visitors are brought into a forest of shop volumes. On the looping path circulating around shop volumes, visitors are surrounded by window surfaces with multiple shapes and angles. Shops reveal their character through displaying their iconic products through window surfaces in specialized size and gesture.
Scene 3
Passing through the existing service apartment through a long corridor, one is brought into a twisting staircase that links up platforms on multiple levels, which further lead to entrances of individual shops. This provides high degree of privacy for the shop and large enclosing surfaces for individual characterized modification. The staircase mutates to form landscape and water channels that enriches the sensual stimulus to further trigger the anticipation and imagination of visitors.
Scene 4
In the last scene near the end of the street, shops are of smaller volumes in which the circulation path intrudes into, incorporating shop spaces into part of the circulation. This invites the visitors to enter the shops to gain personal interaction with the products to look for their own treasures. This reflect the nature of shops such as bookstores and toy shops in which close physical contact instead of visual display is preferred.
Foreseeing the Ground or even 1st level of shop space may be occupied by Luxurious programmes due to economic reality, the proposed scenes are on the upper levels which stitches into the bulk volumes of branded shops on the lower levels. Instead of replacement, by constant referencing to the lower volumes, the design is coherent with, but at the same time a sarcastic criticism of, the urban phenomenon of blankness in the city scene. |