The Kowloon Walled City was an anomoly in Hong Kong’s history: a tiny (0.016 sq.mi.) enclave owned by China in the middle of British Hong Kong. I can’t help but notice the uncanny resemblance the city has to the ancient walled structures of the Hakka Chinese.
This video takes you through the market stalls and walks you through the city. At 6:00 you enter the narrow, dark paths that crisscross the walled city.
Further to my original post, What happened to: no more wars, no more walls?
Bryan Finocki from Subtopia writes of the new wall of capitalist exclusion, in reference to the myriad of walls going up in our world, mostly between wealthy nation-states and their less fortunate neighbours. In our capitalist system, goods and capital are allowed to move freely, but migrants cannot. For the corporate elite and their companies, this is essential to distance themselves from the growing inequities between the rich and the poor.
We’re now beginning to realize that the current system of capitalism generates and distributes wealth in a highly unbalanced manner. But instead of addressing these issues, the champions of capitalism (most notably the States and its corporation-states) are blocking the problem out.There have been a number of unexpected consequences to the walls being constructed hastily around the globe. Read the rest of this entry »
Introduction to the Stilt House
Mies Van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in a flood, Preservation News
The stilt house is a home raised on piles. This form originated in aquatic areas over water or in areas of unstable soil such as marshlands or floodplains, but has since been adapted to land-based dwelling units as well. Stilt houses were common in the Alpine region during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, as well as in pre-Columbian South America.
South American Palafito Stilt House
As vernacular architecture, stilt houses still are common in parts of South East Asia, Papua New Guinea, and West Africa. Common stilt housing typologies found around the world include the Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia Kelong, Hong Kong Pang Uk, Papua New Guinea Stilt House, Thai Stilt House, Vietnamese Stilt House, and South American Palafito.
Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye home
The modern movement adopted the idea of the stilt, or pilotis, and brought the concept into present-day building. Mies Van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House is raised with a frame five feet above ground to separate the home from the floodplains on which it is built. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye is a poignant example in the use of pilotis to raise the house in a non-aquatic setting.
Toronto Sharp Centre for Design @ OCAD, Will Alsop Architect
Contemporary architects such as Will Alsop have adopted the stilt to open up public space at the ground level in buildings such as Toronto’s Ontario College of Art and Design. And finally, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans’ rebuilding effort, many homes are re-adopting stilts as a method of keeping away floodwaters.
Pang Uk homes in Tai O Fishing Village, Chau 2007
Qizhong Stadium from above
The Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena in Shanghai is the largest tennis facility in Asia and was designed specifically for the ATP Tennis Masters Tour.
The Burj Dubai, to be the tallest building in the world, is now finished construction of its 152 storey. At its current 564.9m, it has surpassed Toronto’s CN Tower, and will eventually reach 818m high.
Both the tower and the city have been lambasted by architects and urban planners as an unsustainable model of development, and a process of transformation happening at too quick a pace. The Toronto Star’s Christopher Hume decried that the building was “yet another nasty-looking petro-money monster in the United Arab Emirates”. Its too bad North America, much less Toronto, has nothing like this to compare to.
It is surprising that after the kyoto accord, countless negotiations and discussion among developed countries about sustainable initiatives, that the first initiative for a fully sustainable city would come from china, a country much-maligned for its massive pollution problems.
I don’t have the answer to that question, but I do think we’re making the same mistake just decades ago with the monumental architecture of the ’60s. A mistake not in style or planning, but with the ideological extremism that is arising again - this time with carelessness, or what one may term carefreeness.
In what could only be described as an orgy of the latest highrises, hotels, museums, starchitect creations, the new Las Vegas for the world’s middle class is rising. It’s intriguing to see how this new city that’s pretty much been built from scratch in the last decade will age - gracefully? Or become ridden with slums filled with the immigrant construction workers - many of whom are from the Phillipines and other East Asian nations?
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