work-in-progress research notes about Cultural Architecture, Institutions & Public Space
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From landmark architecture to everyday space
Our understanding of “cultural infrastructure” is usually the landmark architecture like the museum or the opera house, such as this case of the Lincoln Centre in New York City. Built in the 1960s, it is a grand structure sitting on the high plinth as a “cultural palace”, which is isolated from the urban context and…
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Culture as Shared Experience (Performance in Public Space)
Lecture for cuhk SoA elective 5731A – Architecture and Cultural Practice Before we begin this week’s discussion on performance in urban space, it would be helpful to revisit the two types of cultural participation based on the distinctive role of cultural producer (performer) and cultural consumer (audience). Typical participatory art invite the audience “to join”…
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Cultural Participation and its Agency
Lecture for cuhk SoA elective 5731A – Architecture and Cultural Practice Cultural architecture is a container of public and cultural activities. The previous discussion on the idea of place in urban planning demonstrated a return of cultural institutions to focus on public engagement in recent decades. As civil awareness arise and state cultural budget decline,…
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The Idea of Place in Urban Planning
Lecture for cuhk SoA elective 5731A – Architecture and Cultural Practice The previous session laid out an overview of our investigation that positions Cultural Architecture as not just an object. An important concept embedded in it is the idea of Place – besides the physical environment, it is the intangible memory for individuals or collective…
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Cultural architecture is not a building
Lecture 1+2 for cuhk SoA elective 5731A – Architecture and Cultural Practice This image reminds us of period drama set in 19th century Europe, where many scenes of courting and socialization were happening in the theatre while the performance was a mere backdrop. At that time cultural activities were the few public occasion for people…
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Untapped resources at cultural venue
Project Brief for the current research: Experience Cultural Public Space | Key issues and problems Most cultural buildings in Hong Kong are publicly funded, where the cultural institution carries a public mission and its space is by essence public space. However, this is a type of urban space that is often bypassed in the public…
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The study of public life
Research Background for the current project: Experience Cultural Public Space | There was a paradigm change around mid-20th century in urban design and planning, from the Modernist top-down planning manifesto to a concern in human-scale urban experience. Urbanist such as Jane Jacobs advocated an observational approach to learning about how the city works (1961). This…
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From static to dynamic experience
Research Methodology for the current project: Experience Cultural Public Space | The proposed research will consist of three stages in response to the project aims. Stage 1 is a spatial analysis of existing conditions, followed by a fieldwork stage to investigate public space user experience, and a final stage to analyze data collected and to…
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The decade-long making of Cultural Centre
In February 1974, a Cultural Complex sub-committee under the Standing Committee of the Whole Council of Urban Council was setup to coordinate the overall project that was originally under three separate Select Committee (Museum and Art Gallery Selection Committee, Recreation and Amenity Select Committee, City Hall Select Committee). As the master plan was drafted by…
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Key players on cultural infrastructure
Cultural architecture is often celebrated for its distinction in design to the credit of the architect. However, as we unpack the idea of architectural landmark as a public institution, we would find many more factors in its making beyond the architect’s drawing board. This brief review of public offices involved in cultural infrastructure development serves…
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The inception of a Cultural Centre
Inaugurated with a full month of celebratory festival in November 1989, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre marks its significances as the cultural and architectural landmark of the city’s most prosperous development period at the end of the 20th century. The project span over two decades in its making, from early proposals of a new museum…
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Why study HKCC?
Since the time of its opening in November 1989, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre (HKCC) has been a subject of debate as the new cultural landmark of the city. Situated along the Victoria harbour front, it was criticised by the public for its windowless facade, while initial acoustic quality of the concert hall was also…
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The Cultural Centre typology
The Cultural Centre is a new building and institution typology developed during the post-war European welfare state governance, where culture was regarded as a social instrument with same standing as sanitation or education. Public building is an embodiment of the policy, and the physical space often reflect the institutional intention. With the intention to provide…
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Museum, Theatre and the Cultural Centre
Since the time of Enlightenment, cultural activities and its institution has played an important role in the formation of modern democratic society. Museums, theatres and cultural centres were perceived to be the public space that engage people in civil society, although nowadays they are in competition with market forces that produce other urban public spaces…
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3 stages of HK Cultural Development
The state-support cultural development in Hong Kong can be understood to begin from the post-war period in the late 20th century. With an influx of immigrants from mainland China since the 1950s, the population of Hong Kong has reached two million, for which increasing effort was placed on social provision by the colonial government, mainly…
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Reading public space through plan drawings
Cultural architecture is usually discussed in terms of its formal aesthetic or symbolic meaning, and the actual experienced space receive less attention than the exterior imagery. Urban experience is often studied in social science, although only with marginal connection to the design and programming of architectural space. Therefore, a renewed perspective to look at the…
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From Palace to Museum: an imagination of the ideal cultural space
From the Louvre to St. Petersburg’s Hermitage to the Forbidden City, some of the most significant museums in the world were palaces of a previous dynasty. For its representation of grandeur or its political or cultural significance, today we would still use the “palace” as an adjective to describe impressive cultural buildings. Through the evolution…
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Cultural institutions and their public space
The “Parthenon of Books” is a full-size replica of the Athenian temple built with thousands of forbidden books to symbolise free speech, created by conceptual artist Marta Minujin for the documenta 14, in Kassel, Germany [1]. Visitors not only view the installation but also experience it as a public space. The artwork’s dual capacity in…
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Double Commodification of Cultural Public Space
The K11 is a real estate brand promoting a vision that says “Lifestyle through Art”, created by Hong Kong developer New World Ltd[1]. Their latest flagship project, K11 Musea, is a hybrid of mall + museum, filled with contemporary artwork and staffed with curators for the art collection and public programme. It was their intention…
Keep readingThe multiplicity of Public Space
The concept of public space has a common understanding in daily life, as the space where everyone could enjoy. We can easily identify open spaces like the park or the street as public, as well as the interior of civic or cultural buildings such as the library or the museum. Furthermore, commercial establishments such as…
Keep readingThe making of green infrastructure
Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle | Weiss/Manfredi Introduction: Grey to Green Infrastructure The Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park is a project conceived by the Seattle Art Museum in the late 1990s, as they seek for expansion venue to house the increasing sculpture collection. The 3.4ha project sits on the former Union Oil Company of California (Unocal) fuel storage…
Keep readingDissolving Boundaries
Gifu Media Cosmo, Japan | Toyo Ito The library has evolved far beyond the static storage of books, just as knowledge dissimilation has progressed from a privileged activity to a public act with multiple dimensions. Comparing to other cultural facilities, the library is regarded as a more important social infrastructure as it is free and…
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threshold 內外之間 