Some Aspects of Urbanism
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Case Studies: 3 village upgrades
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Case Studies: 3 urban enclaves
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Density Studies
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Human Encounters
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Smart City: a sustainable form of urban living
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The walled village as a unique urban typology is significant to the making of the city, compact, rectilinear, with pedestrian ‘streets’ inside a protective enclosure; characteristics of the Kowloon mall as much as Kat Hing Wai. What has been ignored in the pursuit of infrastructure and modernity is the traditional approach to people-centred design, planning, construction, sustainability, environment and materiality. The following case studies prove that this interpretation matters and is possible.
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Case Studies: 3 village upgrades
I have seen no example of a restored village house or cluster updated for contemporary living. The following examples demonstrate the possibilities and suggest a potential future role for village buildings.
1: The Work of Standard Architecture in Cha'er Hutong, Beijing
Cha’er Hutong, Beijing. Plan, and installation at Venice Biennale 2018.
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The Beijing hutongs, a parallel to the valled villages in terms of being a specific form of walkable urbanism with similar architectural form, have like the New Territories suffered at the hands of uncontrolled property development, but significant areas remain. The issue here again is one of rising property values forcing gentrification. Standard Architecture have designed several projects for the hutongs, each looking to validate the existing context by rebuilding without relocating the residents, upgrading without losing the community, conserving and ensuring continuity without parodying heritage, and ensuring cost effectiveness and affordability. New interventions comprise structures that slot into the existing fabric, sit under roofs, infill gaps and wrap around trees. They provide micro spaces, squeezing housing and sanitary improvements into left-over spaces, adding community facilities such as an art space (8m2), a library (9m2) and playspace, which enable social interaction and sense of community to develop. They are distinctly modern, but respect the historic setting in an attempt to create what the architect Zhang Ke calls a regional revival. Standard Architecture have designed several such projects for the Hutongs, small interventions which do not start from a tabula rasa, gradual not cataclysmic investment (note 180).
2: The Work of Amateur Architects in Wencun
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Wencun. Plan, and installation of materiality at Venice Biennale 2016.
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Working with the vernacular relies on fully analysing it first. In Wencun Village, Fuyang, Amateur Architects have created an urban scale fabric using 3- and 4-storey courtyard buildings with houses above workshops. The blocks follow the line of a stream, canted in response to its twists and turns, and unified by the use of natural materials working with the vernacular tradition. Rammed earth, yellow clay, bamboo, wood, grey limestone, clay tile, and plaster contribute a simple but elegant palette which can be rolled out to surrounding villages (note 181).
3: The Work of John Lin and RUF in Jintai Village, Sichuan
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Jintai Village, Sichuan. Plan, and model at the Venice Biennale 2018.
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Where more newbuild is inevitable, it can be provided to high density whilst respecting traditional urban patterns. At Jintai in Sichuan Province, an earthquake-replacement village designed by John Lin and RUF (Rural Urban Framework) works with traditional village typologies and materiality to which concrete structure enables flexibility, some open ground floors, earth sheltered roofs and stack-effect natural cooling (note 182).
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Notes:
180. Notes on hutongs derived and quote from AR/Williams (2015)
181. Notes on Wencun derived from AR/Dong (2015)
182. For further information see: http://www.rufwork.org/index.php?/project/jintai-village/. The project provides 26 houses over 4000m2, 154m2 per house, but it is not clear if the overall includes community space.
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Case Studies: 3 urban enclaves
Low rise high density residential architecture can create useful and beautiful urban space. The density is given – this is important; as a comparison the walled village of Sha Po Tsuen provides ~500 (small) apartments/ha, the nearby new tower development of Park Yoho Venezia 110 (large) apartments/ha. The density of conventional suburban monofunctional developer housing in the UK is 20-30 units/ha.
1: The Work of Peter Barber in London, UK
Peter Barber in London. Rochester Way, Greenwich, view from W. Donnybrook, plan.
Regenerating an old street pattern with social housing, the Donnybrook quarter in London provides private yards around a public T-shaped ‘square’. Live-work units face the high street. Individuality is given to each house by the courtyard configuration and by the mix of patio glazing and tiny windows. These moves serve to break the mass of building and humanise the block. 42 houses are built on 0.3ha; 140/ha, plus mixed use (note 183).
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Donnybrook is just one of several built and projected schemes by Barber which provide high density urban living in low-rise and often constrained site contexts; refer also to McGrath Road (165 units/ha), Graheme Park (250 units/ha), Tanner Street (127 units/ha) and Rochester Way (90 units/ha). Barber’s polemic for the city is articulated in speculative projects such as “Mud Village”, a 70mx70m block of 50 houses cut by alleyways around a central square surrounded by agricultural land, and “100 Mile City”, a 4-storey mixed use ribbon around London linked by streets and squares.
2: The Work of Ash Sakula in Newcastle, UK
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The Malings, Newcastle. Plan and view from South
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Roofs and gardens step down to the river bank at The Malings social housing in Newcastle, the five brick terraces ending in slightly taller tower apartments along the riverfront. Individual houses interlock forming a shared heart around communal gardens and streets. 76 houses are built on 0.5ha; 137/ha (note 184).
3: The Work of O'Donnell and Tuomey in Dublin, IE
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Timberyard, Dublin. Plan and view from South East
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Addressing a busy street with a brick frontage including corner towers of 5 storeys above mixed use, this predominately 4-storey social housing project regenerates an old street pattern around a central courtyard. 47 houses are built on 0.2ha: 235/ha, plus mixed use (note 185).
Notes:
183. Notes on Donnybrook derived from Young (2006) and site visit.
184. Notes on The Malings derived from Priest (2017) and site visit.
185. Notes on Timberyard derived from Ryan (2009) and site visit.
Density Studies
Housing density is a big issue in Hong Kong. Conventional logic says higher rise equals higher density. However, comparing the density of walled villages to the density of speculative high rise apartments in the New Territories appears to reveal that building high with highway infrastructure and manicured landscape grounds is no more land efficient than high density low rise retaining communal civic open space.
Sha Po Tsuen and Park Yoho Venezia
Sha Po Tsuen and Park Yoho Venezia, Kam Tin.
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Sha Po Tsuen is a Punti house-wall type walled village, subsumed in Small House properties but still visible on the ground. Within the footprint of the original village there are approximately 200 apartments. Around a further 200 ding wu apartments are dispersed inside the village development boundary.
Park Yoho Venezia is a new apartment development next to Sha Po Tsuen. From Wikipedia: "PARK YOHO is a large-scale medium-density residential project designed by Lu Yuanxiang Architects." The Park Yoho Venezia phase provides approximately 500 apartments, together with a large vehicle drive, access serviceways and private leisure amenity. A condition of planning consent for the project was the preservation of one of the former fishponds as a wetland habitat area, the remaining ponds having been filled in to make way for the development.
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Comparison
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Studies of these two adjacent communities find the traditional 3-storey village is around three times more land efficient than the 12-storey tower scheme, with plenty of space around for access and landscape. Leslie Martin in 1972 reached the same conclusion, that towers were three times less efficient, noting that:
"Since skyscrapers do not use central land very efficiently, the only sense that high buildings make in nucleated centres is in terms of real estate speculation. In terms of accommodating built space on urban land they are extravagant and irrational gestures" (note 186).
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The comparative density of a village, Sha Po Tsuen, green outline, compared to an adjacent speculative developer tower project, Park Yoho Venezia, blue outline. The thinner blue line represents a marshland area protected under planning permission for the larger Park Yoho masterplan – a portion of this also could be added to the Park Yoho Venezia land-take.
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Notes:
186. Notes on density derived from Martin (1972).
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Human Encounters
Entrance to Lam Hau Tsuen. Space to sit and chat, play games, cycle, hang the washing out…
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Hong Kong is generally perceived as a high rise compact city, with a consequent low energy consumption compared to other world cities. It retains an ‘urban convenience’ with varied activities close by, but is under threat in the New Territories as speculative estates of car-dependent gated high rise apartments emerge (note 187). The intensity of a walkable district promotes human encounters and makes for successful functioning and liveliness, vital to society and the city:
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"Sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow. (note 188)"
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Consider the comparative entrance sequences of a traditional walled village and a contemporary apartment – which offers the most “small change”?
Encounters: a comparison of the entry sequence of (L) a walled village with (R) a modern apartment block. Light and space? Encounters? Conversations? Community? Belonging? Urbanism? Architecture?
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Notes:
187. Notes on density derived from Shelton et al (2011). They quote the decline of suburbs in the US as younger generations reinhabit the city centres seeking vitality, and the Japanese ‘Combini’, convenience stores.
188. Jacobs (1961).
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Smart City: sustainable urban living
What sort of communities do we want to build? With their restricted space, illegal extensions and dodgy services the Hong Kong walled villages easily attract stigmatization as slums ripe for clearance, but do offer an affordable and efficient use of land, human scaled urban spaces, pedestrian safety and a proven alternative to planning norms. Their survival of must be recognised, not purely for remaining fabric and monuments, but as works of a distinctive and sustainable form of urban living. The village prototype in its urban-agrarian circular economy offers potential as a “Smart City” urban typology through adjacency, proximity and self-sufficiency. Adjacency means less energy waste and less reliance on infrastructure. Proximity means less need for personal transport making public transportation and journeys on foot more viable. Proximity also brings human interaction, from which we derive our cultural traditions and heritage. Self-sufficiency means food production on-site, productive use of land, less transport, more employment opportunities, productive lifestyles and reduced dependency on flawed global food industries.
Wang Toi Shan Wing Ning Lei. The forecourt, a place for meeting and transactions – the canopy shelters a small café bar. The gatehouse foreground was built in the late 17C and restored in 1981. The green fence left protects the fish-filled moat.
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As a representation of culture and tradition, the walled villages are unique, with a strong sense of shared space or extended “one home”, and belief in an “imagined community”, the primacy of the clan (note 189). As pressures for development in Hong Kong ever intensify, traditional houses in particular are at the brink of extinction, and it remains to be seen if anyone will step up with a rescue plan. Together their most enduring quality is as urban prototype, a historical tradition which could answer the imminent typology of residential buildings in the city, that is, urban architecture.
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"With the dual benefits of technology and hindsight, we must take the ancient urban model and remould it for our times; not in order to romanticise the past, but in order to seek its wisdom" C.J. Lim (note 190).
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Chik Chuen Wai, a communal piazzetta has been formed in front of the shrine, equipped with an oven, chairs, tables and lanterns. A canvas tarp provides shelter from the summer heat and rain showers. The urban space may be a by-product of house demolition.
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Notes:
189. Notes on the idea of “one home” and “imagined community” from personal interview, Ng (2019).
190. Quote from Lim (2019).
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