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Tools of Engagement
-An alternative way to design
The initial interest of my thesis is, as Hong Kong, the city continually transform to transform, how the residents of the city could negotiate the transformation, what are their roles in the process of changing.
Using research as a starting point, look into the current Hong Kong building regulation system for small to medium-sized development on private properties with comparison of other metropolis cities around the world. By particularly focus on public engagement and participation during the building approval process, the diagrams illustrate how the comments will be taken into account during the approval process.
HK has a linear process, once the plan has been submitted, it goes into a Centralized Processing System, and there is no need for the community input & participation. Compared with HK, Other cities have considered at least some inputs from the community.
To further explore how exactly the residents can involve and participate, I look at a specific site and event which is happening at the moment, which is the Pound Lane escalator proposal. Pound Lane has been there for more than a hundred years. Now the government wants to demolish all the retaining walls, staircase and trees which are there for more than hundred years and replace with more than two hundred meters continues escalators. It is causing a lot of conflicts between the government and the neighbourhood at the moment.
In fact, the community has neither been considered during most of the building approval process nor being informed in a fair way. By flipping through all the drawings and booklets that they give out to the community, it’s not difficult to discover the government’s plans are only response to a few stakeholders within the neighbourhood.
The site plan only highlighted Pound Lane in Red while leaving all others in thin lines, are reducing complexity to take advantage, as if the buildings are isolated blocks, ignores anything richness and texture of the site. It seems to show the escalators will not make any changes to the environment & the atmosphere.
This is a good opportunity for me to begin to bring recognition of the lack of community
engagement process during city transformation into public level.
By talking to the neighbourhood about this proposal, I strongly feel that the community doesn’t have much means for their voice to be heard by the government, other than protest. The community has difficulty visualizing the documents and lack of representation skill to express their opinions. The role of an architect can come in to serve as a tool, to broaden the traditional means of representation in a way it begins to recognize more than just simply the narrative of the government, the developers are offering, to deal with more than one set of voices.
The model shows the site as well as the escalator proposal. I’m not saying the proposal is having no advantages at all, in fact some shop owners like it because it is broadening the footpath and bringing more people into the neighbourhood.
So I begin to talk to different groups of people on site, search articles on magazines, Facebook pages to gather opinions from the Pound Lane neighbourhood. Out of the eleven types of stakeholders I discover within the neighbourhood, I choose three to start with, and begin to explore what exactly within the neighbourhood are important to them, why do they want the escalators or don’t want. Are there any alternative ways to solve the problem.
By gathering information from various means relating to each stakeholders, record their stories and every life within the neighbourhood. I make these models in regard to each stakeholders in the methods which most suitable to represent their stories.
From these models, I want to create architectural interventions against the language of the representation of their stories, and to create secondary, even tertiary connections within them, so that the red dominant primary circulation is not necessary in some places.
These interventions can serve as a type that facilitates the programs each stakeholders are having on the site, as well as to develop more potential programs. For example the interventions associated with the kids, existing condition is the staircase linking the two places, by introducing intervention it allows a larger horizontal plane for the stakeholders.
There are a series of types develop for the stakeholders, in small, medium to large scale of changes to the existing site.
Then I insert these types into specific sites. From each site, I define possible potential components within the site, so the forms of the architectural interventions would be totally determined by the existing programs. And by mixing the types of different stakeholders, it provides the neighbourhood with more attractive programs, easier circulation and better facilities, that create an alternative free of staircase route to go uphill other than Pound Lane.
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