Research Project

The Vertical City: Social Housing in Hong Kong


The evolution of the social housing in HK brings the collectivity to the individuality, eliminating the collective life in the public space in the social housing typology. From the the slab typology to the contemporary tower typology, the reduction in the collective life should be addressed and rethought about. The project aims to rethink about the collective life in the social housing in Hong Kong by reintroducing the inter-immediate scale of collective space in the housing types.

Problem:
How to bring back community in the dense social housing in Hong Kong?

My Role:
Researcher

Contributions:
Researched on the social house properties in HK, analyzed the plans, contributed to the housing report, proposed new social house typologies

Time:
One semester, 2016

00 Context

Design for a Outpatient Healthcare Environment

By regulating the program sets needed for different sizes of apartments, I am able to have flexible unit configurations and re-categorize the unit types based on the depth of the units. There are three unit/corridor typologies. The “N” type means niche, which creates internal courtyard condition. The “O” type means open pocket, which replaces the unit and links the interior and exterior. The “P” type means public balcony, which creates shared collective space. The table shows the samples of stacking various types of “O”, “N”, and “P”. From the table, I chose six types of stacking that have different collective and private space configuration. The six basic samples of ½ wing length, 10 floors are used as the aggregation unit. In this table, I set up the criteria by measuring the (1) public balcony (2) internal courtyard and (3) scale of the community they creates. From left to right, the gradient shows the most collective type to the most private type. The bottom row shows the scale of the community created by the shared public balcony. In this way, the set of aggregations also reflect their scale of community on the elevation expression. site research site research site research

01 Analysis

Outlining the Design Principles

By regulating the program sets needed for different sizes of apartments, I am able to have flexible unit configurations and re-categorize the unit types based on the depth of the units. There are three unit/corridor typologies. The “N” type means niche, which creates internal courtyard condition. The “O” type means open pocket, which replaces the unit and links the interior and exterior. The “P” type means public balcony, which creates shared collective space. The table shows the samples of stacking various types of “O”, “N”, and “P”. From the table, I chose six types of stacking that have different collective and private space configuration. The six basic samples of ½ wing length, 10 floors are used as the aggregation unit. In this table, I set up the criteria by measuring the (1) public balcony (2) internal courtyard and (3) scale of the community they creates. From left to right, the gradient shows the most collective type to the most private type. The bottom row shows the scale of the community created by the shared public balcony. In this way, the set of aggregations also reflect their scale of community on the elevation expression. site research site research

02 Design

Strategies for master plan

Using those building sets, and the network language, the site strategy is to form courtyard of different scales based on the length and width already set up by the building scale. First, set up the ½ wing length (45m) interval x-axis field to prepare for the y-axis cut to form courtyards. There are three major flows for road and circulation in the y-axis, which naturally breaks the site into 2 groups. Tower fills in between the courtyards formed by the slabs to increase density. site research site research We carried out a two-month evaluation process, during which we conducted open house tours, dedicated user group workshop, design meetings and collected feedback via questionnaires and sticky notes. We received 30 survey responses and more than 100 sticker note comments. Feedback analysis let us change several design features and enabled us to attain variance from the MAAB.

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