Sunnie Lau’s research-seminar elective entitled ‘Urban Mobility and Smart Infrastructures’ for the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong challenges students to understand and comprehend the topic of mobility through technology. Urban morphology, density, lack of urban public space is at stake. Through Hong Kong’s particular urban model, students attempt to introduce new urban models and strategies, which enable the inhabitants to live better, work and produce in the city beyond the questions of resilience, urban ecology and big data. This seminar attempts to shed light on sustainable urban mobility and at reducing the physical dependency of urbanites to movement while enabling them to having a better life in high density environments..." excerpt from Professor Nasrine Seraji- AA dipl. RIBA, Department of Architecture HKU, July 2017
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Background
Hong Kong projects an exaggerated vision of compact city, has rendered a unique urban form that breeds superb efficiency deriving from an amazingly intertwined, and connected network of transport and mobility. Similar but different to the super web plagued by the underground, or above-ground trains circuiting that of metropolitan Tokyo's, the Hong Kong model is an unmistakable product of an amalgamated, staggered super high-rises towers overlapped with three dimensionality, resulting in multiple maze of elevated or otherwise on-grade road systems, streets, lanes and what one could imagine for pedestrian or vehicles, of all categories. Extremity in the mixed, intensified land use is more than a historical legacy, which there was little consideration for planning in an academic sense. Today extremity, mixed use, intensity and the 'connected' city (whether it is digital or transportation) have become a buzz word under the sun. |
Now, Architecture has arrived at a crossroad - crushing with a notion of “Industrialization 4.0”, when topics such as Smart City, Intelligent, and Big Data and or Resilient are no longer the cliché buzz word but imminent action. What should the next generation of urban infrastructure be like? Should architecture be seen as a flexible framework to allow changes to happen in much faster cycles?
And how could sustainable urban living be part of these formulae? In particular, what would be the outcome of a city deprived in spatiality, lacking public spaces, social spaces, green spaces, good air, wind and contact with nature or sea, and their like, in order to ease the architecture and urban design struggles to search for a sustainable urban form?
And how could sustainable urban living be part of these formulae? In particular, what would be the outcome of a city deprived in spatiality, lacking public spaces, social spaces, green spaces, good air, wind and contact with nature or sea, and their like, in order to ease the architecture and urban design struggles to search for a sustainable urban form?
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Sunnie S.Y. Lau.
© SUNNIE S.Y. LAU 2017
ISBN 9789887837688
publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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otherwise, without prior permission of
Sunnie S.Y. Lau.
© SUNNIE S.Y. LAU 2017
ISBN 9789887837688
