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MODEL ARCHIVE
Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong
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BAAS Year 2 - Fall 2024
SACRED HIGH-RISE
Advisor:
Aron Tsang & Wesley Ho
Student(s):
Kang, Jihoon Johnny
Studio introduction:
After COVID, tourism is slowly recovering, however, it is still far from the peaks in pre-pandemic years. Tourist consumption has also shifted from Hong Kong to its neighboring Shenzhen that offers a huge variety of destinations at a lower cost. Yet, with the global boom of the holistic wellness industry, various hotels in HK have started to explore various wellness or spiritual programs for local and foreign visitors e.g. the wellness residencies at Upper House and PP Service Apartment. Hotel vacancies give rise to the possible insertion of new programs and new additions to drive customers. Hotel visitors come from all over the world with a mixture of cultural backgrounds hence religions. It appears to be an opportunity to offer meditative or spiritual, if not sacred, spaces for them as a wellness feature. Furthermore, hotels are usually situated in densely populated city centers where public spaces are generally scarce. May the sacred spaces in hotels provide a new form of public space for overseas visitors as well as the local community?
Work from home has become a new norm even in the post COVID era. With the proliferation of online meeting platforms and working away from the office during COVID, the importance of a physical office has diminished. Bankers, lawyers, accountants etc. all continue their work from home practice for certain days of a week. Together with the economic downturn, lots of companies are also moving out of office buildings in downtown areas like Central to save rent. So many landlords also sold their office properties at discounted rates as it is becoming very challenging to maintain office tower occupancy. On the other hand, the wellness industry has been booming since COVID. People are becoming more health conscious and that does not only relate to the physical body but also the mind and soul. Is there a potential to introduce religious or spiritual spaces into the underused vacant office spaces while also transforming the private space in these prime locations into public ones?
Using sacred space as an agent, this studio intends to transform the highly homogenous cookie-cutter towers of the city into a unique spatial and urban experience. Through the highly distinguished spatial hierarchy, programs, circulation and formal features of different religious spaces, the pure repetitiveness of hotel or office high-rises are challenged.
The studio serves as a platform to develop a new typology of sacred spaces inserted inside a uniform spatial and structural matrix of hotel or office towers way above street level. It could also be understood as a new public realm floating inside a private structure. Students should consider how such intervention would create impact on the following aspects of the site.
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