HONG KONG, CHINA UrbanISMS: Four Short Stories About Hong Kong

This exhibition presents the city of Hong Kong, read through a set of urban paradigms, and mixed with different registers which include ways of comprehending actual cities in general. The specific focus on Hong Kong is understood and articulated through big conceptual brushstrokes — paradigms of the city. Attributes of the cacophonous urban experience of Hong Kong are explicitly intended to be conveyed in the content and layout of the exhibition, through a mix of voices and their varied means of representation. These Urban-ISMS are presented with different conceptual and technological methods, qualities and filters.
– parametric– adaptive – customized –
UrbanISMS express the varied qualities of Hong Kong’s urban order, through a saturation of visual, spatial and textual information. Hong Kong’s urban attributes were mined to qualify these taxonomies through photographic stills and videos; photogammetry models, diagrams and maps, pertaining to three specific territories in Hong Kong; and three 3D print models and a description of their generative solution spaces. Ultimately, these three territories and the three models sketch out attributes of what constitutes the smartness of the city.
– smart –
As one of the densest cities, Hong Kong exudes a radical juxtaposition between its soft natural topographic landscape, covering 70% of the city, and the hard infrastructure and mass of the city. Evidence also arises of extreme economic inequity and the conflicting forces between planning and emergence.