Social Condenser Extraordinaire: the Municipal Services Buildings of Hong Kong
This project proposes to analyze, and showcase to the broader public the extraordinary yet underrecognized body of indigenous public buildings in Hong Kong for the everyday, known as MSBs today, constructed largely in the 1980s and 1990s. Conceived of as urban nodes for public amenities including the market, food stalls, the library, and sports facilities, they have come to physically and conceptually manifest the civic ideals and climate adaptivity in one of the densest and most neoliberal cities in the world. Under threat by development today because of their central locations, this project is one of the first, to formally re-examine and showcase a selection of indigenous everyday public buildings of Hong Kong.
This project proposes to analyze, and showcase to the broader public the extraordinary yet underrecognized body of indigenous public buildings in Hong Kong for the everyday, known as MSBs today, constructed largely in the 1980s and 1990s. Conceived of as urban nodes for public amenities including the market, food stalls, the library, and sports facilities, they have come to physically and conceptually manifest the civic ideals and climate adaptivity in one of the densest and most neoliberal cities in the world. Under threat by development today because of their central locations, this project is one of the first, to formally re-examine and showcase a selection of indigenous everyday public buildings of Hong Kong.
- 2023
- Grantee: Ying Zhou and Fai Au
Ying Zhou is an architect and urban theorist teaching at the University of Hong Kong. Her research on heritage conservation, architectural reuse, gentrification, and creative cities culminated in the book Urban Loopholes: Creative Alliances of Spatial Productions in Shanghai's City Center in 2017. She is concerned with architecture’s agency in the civicness of the city. Her current research looks at how the burgeoning of art spaces manifest the shifts in the arts ecologies of East Asian cities. Her writings appear in Critical Planning, Urban China [城市中国], LEAP [艺术界], Art Journal, and she has exhibited at the Rotterdam and Shenzhen Architecture Biennales, Munich’s Haus der Kunst, the Swiss Architecture Museum, amongst others. She earned her BSE at Princeton, her MArch at Harvard, and her PhD at the ETHZ.
Fai Au is an educator and practitioner in architecture, teaching at the University of Hong Kong and leading his design practice, O Studio Architects, the winner of 2020 Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard. His research focuses primarily on the topic of high density city living, congestion, gentrification, and social inequality. He is the co-curator of 2017 HKSZ Bi-City Biennale of urbanism\Architecture (Hong Kong). His design and research works have been featured in exhibitions including Venice Biennale, Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, PMQ 10×100 Exhibition, “REVEAL 2: +-x÷” Exhibition, “Past Present Future – Tracking Hong Kong” Exhibition and Agoras Green Architecture Exhibition. He received his MDes from Harvard, BArch from RMIT and MA (Philosophy) from CUHK.