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First Hong Kong Biennale | |
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Heavy Things Seem to Float in Air | |
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First Hong Kong Biennale Opening Up Open daily and with free admission, the show's models and multimedia works are giving visitors a special peek behind the architectural scenes, plus a better understanding of issues just now coming up in dinner party conversations and newspapers around town. Many designers feel that the gesture is long overdue. "Generally architects don't speak to the public enough, and Hong Kong has limited venues for architects to express themselves publicly," says Jonathan Solomon, an American architect working at a local university. "What this exhibition does is not be concerned with commerciality, but [to engage] in speculative work, noncommercial projects to generate new ideas and thinking... Hong Kong has never had that level of interest before." In one room an exhibit by the Hong Kong planning department looks into the ongoing revamping of an old airport space, Kai Tak. Once infamous as the airstrip that had pilots on their way in grazing clotheslines of the Walled City of Kowloon, the airport function was relocated off the site in 1998. For the first time the Hong Kong government consulted the public at large about the use of the space, and though the process has started to drag, the government has listened to a number of key demands, one being that no more land be reclaimed. The public angle has been repeated since then for other big new developments: the West Kowloon cultural district, a huge chunk of land across the harbor from the central business district; Tamar, a new government headquarters; even the biennale venue itself, soon to be reworked by Herzog and de Meuron. Urban Voids One of the most controversial exhibits came with a high-wattage forum, featuring a clutch of China's brightest "starchitects." MAD Architects cofounder Ma Yansong of Beijing, Urban China magazine editor Jiang Jun from Guangzhou, and Urbanus cofounder Wang Hui from Shenzhen, among others, were asked to look at stagnant Hong Kong plots and come up with schemes for their better use, from an outsider's perspective. These proposals were then presented to a panel of Hong Kong-based critics. The aim wasn't to get the projects made, but to get people — especially those in high places — thinking. Designs ranged from a scheme by standardarchitecture's Zhang Ke for the West Kowloon district — a skyscraper made from terraced rice paddies — to Ma's wacky "Animal Resort" for the Central Waterfront. They all sparked strong responses, particularly from one corporate developer and a Legislative Council member. Both questioned the involvement of architects in politics. A scheme by Liang Jing Yu of Approach Architecture Studio saw Kai Tak — which he notes is 1.3 times larger than Monaco — leased out to Israel or Taiwan, or used to start a new city with an experimental political structure. "Our problem here is the lack of difference," stressed architect Laurence Liauw, associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and organizer of the forum. "We need debate and we need difference." Exploring Place and Culture A number of other exhibitions around the station worked at reviving the city's soul — or its cultural credentials. Hong Kong-based Oval Partnership suggested new directions for the central business district, which it says has been "etched by enormous capital flows… shaped into an urban isolated island, hardly intimate, and lacking in spirit." Other exhibitors interviewed residents for their memories of a neighborhood, or looked at grassroots community projects overseas. Hong Kong's distinctive bamboo scaffolding inspired several tributes. One was an installation by Hong Kong's William Lim (CL3 Architects), who called it "the unsung hero behind the construction of the city." Three Asian architects — biennale co-curator Thomas Chung and Zhu Jingxiang (both with the Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Cheung Yu (SMC Alsop) — looked into starting a citywide festival each July with opera troupes and temporary bamboo-and-timber performance spaces. The idea, they said, would be to bring back a tradition while uniting the community through something constructive. Activism was also on the table. Local artist Kacey Wong designed a tiny mobile home on the back of a bicycle and brought in a street-sleeping friend to highlight the plight of the city's homeless. Members of the H15 Concern Group presented their award-winning redevelopment scheme for their own neighborhood, focused on Lee Tung Street, also known as "Wedding Card Street." An old cultural landmark built of tiny shops and tenement flats, the street has been slated for "renewal" and eventual gentrification. The group's proposal mixes older tenements with revamped buildings in a dumbbell formation, and aims to keep the community network intact. The show seems to have had little or no contact with its Shenzhen sister, posing questions about its tag as a bi-city biennale. Many of the exhibits are also hopelessly academic, highlighting the difficulty that many Hong Kong architects have had in clambering down from the ivory tower. Still, as the first event of its kind here, the biennale has stimulated new lines of thought and opened new communication channels among architects, artists, government officials, and the people on the street. An exhibit that helps get open dialogue going in today's China can surely be commended. Discuss this article in the Architecture Forum... Jo Baker is a freelance design and travel writer based in Hong Kong and San Francisco. Publications she writes for include Time, The South China Morning Post, and Hinge Magazine.
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