Spatial or Social Preservation? - West Wing, Hong Kong

Preservation is a delicate issue in a city like Hong Kong, which is reinventing itself in a rather frequent cycle, creating radical paradigm shifts every 20-30 years. In that process of restructuring the city, the West Wing and Government Hill came under threat of demolition: A colonial, governmental cluster, built over the period of British rule over Hong Kong. With the Hong Kong Advisory Board closing this latest outrage of the public on this process of destruction and reinvention by granting the Grade I status of a monument, an uneasy silence fell over the debate on what to do with that premise in the future.

I always liked that building as it one of the few buildings in the city that embraces the fact that it sits on a steep slope (most of them tend to ignore the topography and just create a new flat ground). The West Wing is offering multiple levels of entries and acts as a sectional device at the foot of the mountain that becomes the Peak. On the points of interface between mountain and building, there were a few public anchor points, that are specifically highlighted architectural and volumetric: A retaining wall that extends into the ground lobby and a cantilevered box in the middle of the building, that acted as a canteen and event space. It is not necessarily a mind blowing building, but a modest proposal for a modern post war architecture.

Most importantly however is the fact, that the building hits Queen's Road Central at its front end, the most central of all Hong Kong roads, forming the spine of the CBD of the city. Its back end leads into an extensive green zone that contains the zoo, Hong Kong Park and eventually leads towards the Peak and its nature reserves around. The urbanism is fascinating around the building. City on one, nature on the other side. The West Wing is the wedge between the two. Unfortunately it is a hostile one as it is programmatically detached from both.

As usual in the debate about preservation in Hong Kong, it is not the architectural value that makes the building worth it, but the social condition it created and are now considered part of the collective memory. In case of the West Wing it was the public consultation counter (the first of its kind in a governmental building) and the cantilevered box that was hosting parties for young people once in a while. It made the building a very public space in the eyes of the people. It nearly introduced participative opportunities for the community. I guess this memory is growing stronger every day especially as the current government lacks the will to offer participation for the public. Neither is it willing to create opportunities for young people or emerging entrepreneurship.

When we were approached to do a proposal for the West Wing, we were wondering how we can enhance social conditions spatially. And how can we then make those spatial potentials social again. We wanted to transform the building, yet preserve its functional status as a public incubator inside a governmental compound.

Our proposal was a most simple one: We introduced an escalator that connects the lower urban fabric with the mid-level of the building that contains the cantilevered box as well as an upper plaza. Connecting the public spaces inside and outside the building by an external circulatory system manifests the social and public value of the building and allows to open the building for more civic functions (in fact as it used to be).

Unfortunately the building will be given back to the government and the legislative counsel which will make it highly unlikely to be open to public ever again. Being a security fortress now, the building will finally be a very hostile one to the urban fabric. The question remains if a demolition of the building would have not been more beneficial in the end as it would have introduced commercial spaces as well as civic functions to the site. Even more unfortunate at this point is that the initiative which was fighting for the remain of the West Wing is silent since the building is preserved. And this although the West Wing is even more demolished and stripped of its social function at this point.

Although spatial preservation is guaranteed, the building lacks its socially relevant dimension by converting it to a state of privateness and disclosure.

In regards to the debate whether or not West Wing deserves a Grade I Preservation status, our Louise Low has presented an article to the public to the debate in April:

 A Modest Proposal

A casual urban wanderer through the verdant hillside along Battery Path, behind the HSBC tower, may look up and wonder about the curious building perched at the top - its facade has not been usurped by giant billboards, display merchandise do not crowd its windows, its structure is unadorned by LED lights. In the midst of the shimmering edifices driven by commercial and economic impulses, it silently advertises itself as a concrete anomaly in the vortex of heavy traffic, a fort against the flux of alluring goods and money.

The staid West Wing, together with the Central and East Wing, is part of the conglomerate of former Central Government Offices (CGO) in an area marked as “Government Hill.” 

Plotted at a fengshui-blessed axis to the Government House and the Court of Final Appeal, it housed the body of the Civil Service workhorse tasked with the straight forward mandate of safeguarding the interests of Hong Kong and its people. The psyche geography of the triumvirate as guardian is etched in the undulating topography of Government Hill.

Built in the 1950s, the CGO’s abandonment of the florid, conservative neo-classical colonial tradition and embrace of post-war Modernism paved the way for Hong Kong's first steps towards an image of the City as reflected by the "International Style" movement, harbinger of new social and political ideals. The symbols of state power and class structure gave way to a more global and egalitarian aesthetic.

Spartan minimalism and structural exposure spoke of an honesty, integrity and openness, of a more idealistic era when "government" seemed closer to the ordinary lives of people as mirrored in its modest, streamlined architecture.

Meticulous documentation in defense of its essence can be found in a sensitive publication by CUHK, “The Greatest Form has No Shape” and on the website “http://www.governmenthill.org/”, with embedded videos of significant emotional impact - an interview with the former Director of public Works, Michael Wright, describing the assiduous search for iron-free granite from Diamond Hill, as well as a silent film of the construction crew, both men and women, hewing stoically, shaping the land’s destiny with the same tenacity and fierce determination of those used to “eating bitter” - scornful of obstacles, unfazed under the blistering heat of mid-summer.

These will likely be all that is left of the history and collective societal memory embodied in these structures should current government plans to sell and redevelop the much coveted site forge ahead.

While the announcement of intent tiptoes nervously around talk of more profit accruing to government coffers, the debate hinges on the relative “lack of architectural merits” of the buildings. Some find them “ugly.”

Indeed, they are “ugly” among the diamond-cut designer towers in Central the way a well-worn white cotton shirt is “ugly” next to highly embellished, lavish designer fashion.

Grim, austere, dour, astringent, stern, stark...a monastery whose architecture conveyed the clarity of purpose, that of chaste, dedicated service.

The aesthetic of simplicity and humility is understandably anathema to the current vogue for flashier architecture. It evokes a nostalgia of a different Hong Kong society. It offers a provocative contrast, and a rebuke to excesses. 

As night follows day, the pendulum inevitably swings. 

The economy of the past decade, inebriated on free-flowing liquidity and bubbly real estate, sprouted fantastical, mega-budget, iconoclastic architecture of an irrational exuberance in important cities all over the world. The precipitous fall of the ill-fated $1.2billion Millennium Dome of London and the Experience Music Project of Seattle from feted trophies to mocked effigies come to mind. 

As bubbles burst and the hangover sets in, have our eyes made the necessary, timely adjustment in the cold light of day to judge with dry lucidity an architecture from a more sober age while under the lingering influence of the taste for intoxicating monumental follies?

From the perspective of preservation, does aesthetics even matter? Styles emerge from the history of a society, and the imperative of history is to record and narrate past truths, to capture their meaning for the unfolding present and future.

Buildings are not preserved based on market worth, maintenance costs or beauty but on the merits of their social meaning, singularity, urban memory and historic relevance.

Examples of preserved modernity include Tel Aviv’s “White City” which was awarded Unesco World Heritage status in 2003. In recognition of the need, the World Monument Fund launched “Modernism at Risk”, an advocacy and conservation program for Modern buildings in 2006. (see http://www.wmf.org/advocacy/modernism)

It is no surprise, then, that a government which now prides itself on its business acumen should offer up more bargains. After all, Hong Kong is the proverbial shopper’s paradise, the erasure of its history and a lobotomized memory is but a small price to pay for fattened public coffers. 

As what’s good for big business is good for Hong Kong, an unlimited Plot Ratio and GFA should be offered to the highest bidding developers who may jointly build, market and sell as much as they may possibly wring out of the site. Whom but the most endowed, wealthy and powerful elite in Hong Kong deserve the right to move into Government Hill? 

Finally, this symbolic demolition of the last frontier between the public and the private will no doubt be an event as celebrated in Hong Kong as the Fall of the Berlin Wall. To maximize proceeds, the government could auction the buildings piece by piece on eBay to serial sentimentalists or enterprising opportunists who flip them for even greater gains. It is not that the remnants of these buildings and what they once represent should not be consigned to the dustheap of history, but why should every last stone not be parlayed into payoff?

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Claudia Wigger, Matteo Biasiolo, Celine Clivaz, Jorge Gil Suarez, Sevan Spiess

© 2013, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

The Frauded Architect - Great New Project in Qatar

Too good to be true - a warning for the architect in general:

We have been approached via email by a company (Bapeqs Group) from Qatar, which asked us if we are interested in designing a shopping mall in Qatar. It sounded like a great opportunity: USD 60,000,000 budget for 12,500 sqm, sustainable design approach with targeted green certification. Of course we were interested.

Yet we were concern how they got to know us as you don't do multimillion dollar business with somebody you don't know at all. For sure Qatar is booming, far away from us and they do have a lot of architectural practices in the region. Our repeated question on how they came about to contact was finally answered with: Our CEO instructed us to contact you after his last trip to China.

It was suspicicious that no connection could be made to anybody we know. Too good to be true. However we stupidly caught us already thinking about some sketch design ideas and talking to an environmental consultant who had a branch office in Doha as well. It is the stupidity of the architect that makes him do these irrational moves. It must be the urge to create that overrides logic and reason. 

We were asked to submit a brief office CV and introduction and they told us they scheduled a meeting among the board of directors to discuss, which architect to select for the project. Eventually they selected us as the appointed architect and issued a formal letter stating their choice.

Around that time a befriended architect, who is exclusively doing non-commercial small scale work with no commercial experience whatsoever, asked me if I had experience in working in Qatar. He received this email about a shopping mall design. He was getting rather excited about it, yet tried to maintain a face of skepticism, but was very keen to believe it could be true. I surely realized that moment how blinded I have been for the moment: my ego was pleased when somebody wants to work with you. I felt reassured that my work is great and globally relevant if somebody contacts you from the far outer regions of the planet. What a dumb and puny nature is the common architect (such as myself).

However, with the new information of unlikely coincidence, I was getting curious on how this would end and why would somebody do this? What's the catch? Our environmental engineer told us to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

I received an email by the client to invite us to Qatar with up to 5 people. They informed us that Qatar has strict requirements for architects. Every company that wants to work in Qatar has to register with the AARCQ first. The registration comes with a price tag of USD 2,100, wired via Western Union. So here was the catch.

Luckily I am a stingy person so I contacted the client that he should bear the costs of the registration, upon which he replied that they spoke to the AARCQ, which passed the responsibility of fee payment to the architect only. 

Luckily I was cured mentally enough already to decided to play that game a bit longer for at least gaining some entertainment and laughter from the incident. I contacted the AARCQ myself and ask them for advise on how to deal with the registration fee and this is their reply:

"Thanks for contacting us. The Architect's Accreditation Registration Council of Qatar represents the architectural profession in Qatar. It is engaged in producing an extensive series of practice, management and law reports on matters related to architectural practices and building in Qatar generally. One of its main functions is to initiate, define and assist in the implementation of program and co-operation in the development of architectural education, practice and research in Qatar. It is mandatory for an international company to register with  AARCQ  to proceed a project in Qatar. For your registration  follow the link below for the registration form

http://aarcq.org/registration_form.htm

It is your duty as an Architect to obtain this we do not allow client to do this because may client hide under their architects to register  draftsman AARCQ international Verification officer to Asia  is in United Kingdom , this will help make the Verification faster with help of the international verification officer we will be enable to issue the certificate within 7 working days.

Please note that all international registration payment is through western union money transfer, it is written on the form. The complete address and the name of the verification officer that will pick up the funds on our behalf  is below , make the payment  in favor of the person stated below.

Name:- James Morris

Address:- 17 vibreville Street, London 8 DE, United Kingdom

You can call him now on+447012929027 

I hope to hear from you , thanks for contacting us."

I was wondering after such an email, if anybody would ever be so naive to pay as a foreign firm to an address in London on behalf of a government body of Qatar for a project in the Middle East? Apparently and sadly there are such cases. An Internet research shows that this fraud has been ongoing for a few months now (NL-Architects also wrote about this in their blog): 

http://nlarchitects.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/dream-assignment…-or-419/

I contacted the so called client again and asked them to bear the fee while we do the submission. He returned with the following email:

"If you can not handle this  we can not do another thing. Did for we pay for your school fees for you to become and architect why is this so hard  for you. For us  to continue you have to do it yourself"

I finally returned his email with the following self-satisfactory answer:

"I contacted the AARCQ already and they gave me a recipient address in London to pay the registration fee to:

Name:- James Morris

Address:- 17 vibreville Street, London 8 DE, United Kingdom

As they don't seem to care who pays the fees, please kindly transfer the USD 2,100 on our behalf to the person in London. Send us the western union slip and we will do the submission of the documents."

To conclude:

I was surprised by the professionalism of the fraud and want to take the chance to warn other architects about this. 

These people really put an effort in with creating websites and hold up a conversation for quite some time. At first glance everything looks slightly plausible. 

I think they do understand us architects rather well: vain to the bone, in desperate need for recognition, blindfolded to fraud due to the immense competition in our profession worldwide and the need to grasp any opportunity that occurs. Already we do competitions for free, so why not pay a registration fee for a project. We willingly give away freebies and undermine our competence as a business. So why not doing a fraud that targets the naivity of the profession as a whole? Luckily we got away with a good laugh. I hope that this post helps others to not fall into this trap.

PS: This was our final email to the "client", concluding our conversation. Obviously there was no answer ever again:

Hi Mubarak bin Ali,

Thanks for your email. 

I tried to contact the AARCQ again to waive the fee for us as money cannot be transferred to a foreign account on behalf a government body. 

As it says on their website that the AARCQ is a statutory board under the ministry of works and housing, I have taken the liberty to contact the ministry of interior of Qatar to verify the payment procedure. It turned out that there is no such ministry of works and housing or the AARCQ. 

I am afraid to inform you that you have been scammed by some filthy individuals who want to fraud honorable clients such as yourself. 

Luckily nobody has been harmed financially up to now. As there is also no need to register our company in Qatar according to the ministry of interior, we can go ahead with the project for now. We are looking forward for a successful collaboration. 

Please book the tickets for 4 of our staff as well as accommodation. As the flight is longer than 4 hours, international business practice requires business class for the directors (in our case 2 people). As we need to understand the local conditions better, we would suggest to stay for a total of 4 days. 

Please let me know what information you need to book the flights. 

Thanks

Construction Log March: SZXC - Completed

With more than a year delayed due to us unknown circumstances...

...finally one construction site less.

Concept Model for Lighting Concept

Planning Concept

Lift Lobby

Main Corridor

Reception

Reception Counter

Lobby Lounge

Lobby Lounge

Floor Plan

Company Logo

Conference Room

Conference Table

CEO Reception

CEO Office

CEO Table

CEO Table Detail

Female Toilet

Male Toilet Washbasin

Male Toilet Washbasin with Mirror

Male Toilet Cubicles

Manager Room

Meeting Room

Corridor

Second Reception

The design is an office interior for a commodities and finance trading company, based in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. For their corporate headquarter in Shenzhen, we were asked to design the project for a cellular office organization within a high-profile building in a prime area of the city.

Located in a central core office, the floor is separated in units for lease and a main office which houses two sub companies of the corporate holding. With two entrances on the other side of the core and 20 over office and meeting rooms, the orientation within the space is rather confusing. 

We designed the project by putting the main focus on ceiling and floorplan as an enhancement and representation of the circulation system. The ceiling is guided by light troughs which lead to publicly accessible rooms. The floor is a direct reflection of the ceiling with rough and glossy surfaces. 

To differentiate the two entrances to the office, the character of the finishes transforms from metallic to organic, from corian, aluminium and glass to wood and leather.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Claudia Wigger, Matteo Biasiolo, Celine Clivaz, Jorge Gil Suarez, Juliana Kei, Sandy Lee, Olgierd Nitka, Sevan Spiess, Lien Thanh Gruetzmacher, Jacky Yp

© 2013, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

ICE reinvents COATS displays

In 2012 we were asked to redesign a display system for COATS. The company provides high end threads with a range of more than 10,000 colors. Samples are placed in garment factories all over the world. We were confronted with their current cabinet that is a tightly packed drawer system. Being very difficult to find the right color from within all the different drawers, the system was quite inefficient at both time efficiency in finding and searching the right color samples as well as presenting the color system as well as the quality of the company in the right way:

We were looking for a concept that makes the display easier to use, easier to view as well as easier to compare and find colors within. We decided to design a column where all tread cones will be visible to the exterior. In order to be able to compare different colors and thread qualities, we designed the column as an interactive system of stacked plates which can rotate agains each other.

The column becomes a visual graphical device as well as an interactive object, far more easier to use than a sealed cabinet.

One of the agenda of the display was to be more space efficient than the storage cabinet. We introduced a Kanban system, which holds two cones in a container, while one acts as a reserve. With the built in storage system no further space is required within the factories and samples can be easily replace once they are used.

Team: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Claudia Wigger, Olgierd Nitka

© 2013, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

Challenges of Hyperdensity and Vertical Urbanism

Hong Kong has one of the densest urbanized areas in the world. Densification has been consistently pushed higher over the last 50 years. From the traditional chinese shophouse dwelling which barely exceeded two stories and created a low rise high density, the density in metropolitan areas of the city reaches for domestic use alone up to plot ratio 10 nowadays.

While the traditional urban density consisted of low rise high density structures, a building had a large surface as space, serving as a public interface and semi public realm. In urbanized areas buildings were mainly shophouses with 2-4 floors of which the ground floor was commercial and public space for the inhabitants of the building. Its floor ratio of public and private space was around 1:1.

The challenge to the densification of the city is not the fact that buildings get taller. The challenge is the ratio of public space to private space, which disadvantages the public space exponentially. Even more, the building codes favor prescriptive measures to maintain public spaces (indoor or outdoor alike) at the bottom 4-6 floors. It implies that the city is not divided anymore by the plan layout of roads but by a sectional division of a small and condensed public city below 6 floors and a massive private city up to 50 floors above that datum. The floor ratio between private space and public space (as per maximum allowable number of floors for each area) shifts to a 12:1 ratio in the current metropolitan environment. As street profiles remain the same within redeveloped areas, the increased density affects the quality of the urban environment.

The implications on the city are huge and visible all over the city. Recent transformations are accelerated by the construction of new MTR lines around the city. The effects of the density are affecting especially those old areas of the city that have evolved along the hillsides: Smaller streets and thinner blocks are dictated by the topography. A random urban quarter in Sai Ying Pun around the Centre Street Market - one of the oldest districts in Hong Kong - shows the dramatic effects of the density increase in relation to the narrow road network:

The pressure on the street and the ground floor level as a last resort for public space for an dominating privatized city above is immense and leads to a deterioration of the built (and unbuilt) environment. 

Yet the basic sectional configuration (of public and commercial space on lower floors, private space above) has remained the same up to today, the ratio has shifted dramatically in favor of the private space. 

The question arises if the regulations are too traditional for cities that shift towards a high density environment? Particular in Hong Kong, the reality of the regulations is of prescriptive nature rather than descriptive, leaving little room for flexibility and adaptability of architecture. 

Understanding the commercial driving force behind the maximization of private (sellable) space, yet with limited space for public and commercial activities left, the management and distribution of those should be revisited and made more flexible in favor of a better sectional condition of the vertical cities. 

Being great supporters of hyper densification of our metropolitan environments, our design practice is always confronted with the limitations of the building codes and their simple plan oriented codes. The acceptance the plan itself as the main planning guideline ignores the complexity of high density environments; a complexity which affects plan, section, profiles in a more challenging way with way more negative side effects than it would do in a low density environment.

The question remains why vertical and sectional zoning has not been introduce yet as guidelines for a high density environment. For the benefit of improved living conditions and better urban environments, two dimensional planning has to consider more the reality of three dimensional potentials. Vertical Urbanism has been the focus of our commercial practice as well as of our academic research.

Solutions we are currently investigating as a feasibility study are the potentials of updating sectional planning parameters for high density environments, such as introducing a verticality ratio as well as vertical parcel lots:

© 2013, ice - ideas for contemporary environments

ICE wins prize for VNTA Headquarter

It has been a while ago since we won an award for our entry to the international invited competition for the new VNTA Headquarter in Hanoi, Vietnam. VNTA is the telecommunication authority of Vietnam. We were invited last year to participate in this competition with international large scale firms with us remaining one of the last three finalists. In the attached picture our model is to the right (downloaded from the internet, not really representing the model in its details).

After seeing the final judging results we realized that the client had a choice between two very similar schemes (ours was one of them). Yet our muscles are limited compared to the muscles of one of the largest architectural practice in the world which won the project.

What this competition revealed to us is that we either compete on that level in terms of investment beyond the project and design or we shift to boutique style small scale projects. As the later decision would defeat the purpose of the setup of our company in the first place. Hence we are currently struggling about which way to go further with dignity and integrity. It is a long way to go still...

Team ICE: Ulrich Kirchhoff, Louise Low, Minh Le Van, Claudia Wigger, Matteo Biasiolo, Jorge Gil
Environmental: Cundall
Local Architect: Trinity
Renderings: Lifang

© 2013, ice - ideas for contemporary environments