Rendering the void : The hidden potential of temporary urban vacant space in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, there is a strange land condition. While the government is urgently seeking for vacant land in the New Territories to reduce the housing pressure, there is actually some fragmented lands scattered in the urban area which are remained as void space.These urban voids are being forgotten and are linked to the idea of imperfection and indetermination.

“Empty, abandoned space in which a series of occurrences have taken place seems to subjugate the eye of the urban photographer.  Such urban space, which I will denote by the French expression terrain vague, assumes the status of fascination, the most solvent sign with which to indicate what cities are and what our experience of them is.” Terrain Vague, by Ignasi de Sola-Morales.

The thesis aims to investigate the potential for architecture in underused urban vacant space and fomulate a new concept of the “in-between architecture”.

Contrasting to the occupied and programmed places, vacant spaces can be seen as an opportunity for creative and spontaneous interventions in our city. For the current urban condition, which is over-congested, lacking space for new development, to address voids as possibilities, which are flexible in time and space.

These spaces can facilitate a substantial increase of open space by utilising existing. The available vacant land offers the possibility to create a flexible network of small and large open spaces that could accommodates a range of functions. When put together, these individual fragmented spaces can also contribute to a sustainable development in rapidly growing cities as a connecting mediator of transformation processes in social, cultural and ecological capacities.Also because of the side effect of the crisis in building and finical sectors, in which major commissions are few and far between. The architecture that’s been making news is fast and unenduring: pop-up shops, marketplaces, performance spaces. Time becomes the driven factor of possible use of spaces. It is undeniable opportunity in the temporary.

Example from Melbourne

Method:

1. Research (To Understanding the Urban Void condition in Hong Kong):

Distinguish of types of void: There are different types of site, the definition of the site is basically distinguish them by it’s current status according to the following category

– Physical Condition of the Site

• Sites are unoccupied, open spaces
• Site that have unsealed surfaces with leftover building structures
• Size
• Current activity

– Accessibility/ time/ ownership/ restriction/ availability

• Private/public property
• Period of vacancy

– Distribution/ exposure

• The boundary condition with the adjacent building

– Policy

• Research on relevant policy to tackle temporary vacancy in Hong Kong

Design (2 scale):

• Urban Scale : An urban strategy as a network of varies size of open spaces that accommodates to a range of diverse uses and functions
• 1 or 2 specific void space’s development : With a fix dwelling program and focusing on the it’s relationship between the adjacent architecture within a specific time frame.
• A time spectrum of program would be established

Partytopias In Berlin in 2011

Bibliography:

Terrain Vague – Ignasi de Sola-Morales.

Primitive Future – Sou Fujimoto

AA works, Anti-Object – Kengo Kuma

The Manhattan Transcripts – Bernard Tschumi

Parc de la Villette – Bernard Tschumi

Pet Architecture: Atelier Bow-Wow

Architecture without architect – Bernard Rudofsky

Dekalb Market, Brooklyn, a pop-up mini neighbourhood torned down because of the development