The public interior: A Social condenser in Hong Kong

Abstract

Since the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, the opportunities for political conversation are diminishing, censorship has been gradually imposed on different means of mass media. In the face of the gradual loss of freedoms, the people of Hong Kong have demonstrated an atmosphere of solidarity through social movements and physical engagement with the city. Under the contexts of top-down political and urban conditions, how can architecture, enable a democratic space that favours political debates and effective communication between different parties? An independent art institution, Green Wave Art, is looking for a new physical platform to gather the artist/cultural community and expand their ways of working with the social scope. The art corporate wishes to fund a place, with intentional openness that provides public enlightenment and entertainment. As they have always been outspoken on political issues, the challenge arises as looking for a space for “underground” activities in the critical condition of Hong Kong today is scarce. Inspired by the act of queering spaces in the protest, the project speculates a new public building typology that takes advantage of an undervalued urban space, which was formerly a car-park building. In the public Transcript, it suggests an alternative immediate solution for the underused building: to be kept and appropriated into spaces for street vendors to occupy the garage floors, which also saves the government from extra costs in demolition and rebuilding. In the hidden transcript, the artists would further re-appropriate the architectural framework provided by the government under the camouflage of the street market, into a free-space that invites political debates and public engagement at the rooftop, where the citizens can lookout and possess the city.