Individual paper assignment of SM3138 Creative City and Urban Critiques, CityU HK
Notes on the title:
The title is taken from Rem Koolhaas’s final project with his three other peers at the Architectural Association1. The project described an imaginary oasis enclosed by walls brutally placed across the center of London (Figure 1). The oasis would cause an exodus – inhabitants in old London town would be attracted into the oasis, but they would become prisoners – the oasis would imprison them by walls. Although the project connected itself with Berlin Wall, I think there is also an implied association between it and the phenomenon I will discuss.
Figure 1: Drawing of the project Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture
I. The Monumentality of Skyscrapers
The Crossroads in question is the intersection of Queen’s Road Central and Garden Road, which is surrounded by iconic skyscrapers: Three Garden Road, Bank of China Tower, Cheung Kong Center, and HSBC Building. St. John’s Cathedral is located at the foot of these modern giants, which creates aggressive contrast and unique effect.
St. John’s Cathedral, or the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Evangelist, is one of the five cathedrals in Hong Kong. Completed in 1849, it is the oldest surviving Western ecclesiastical building in Hong Kong and the oldest Anglican church in the Far East. Furthermore, in 1996, it was declared a monument of Hong Kong.
In the same decade, the skyscrapers suddenly rose from the ground and surrounded the Cathedral. They are all great architectures, but 150 years of technological development and design development brings astonishing advances to the newcomers: geometrical forms, reflective façades, and huge volumes. The monument from the past, the symbol of the glory of God, becomes so insignificant (Figure 2).
Figure 2: St. John’s Cathedral (at the bottom) surrounded by the skyscrapers
Although the postmodernist designs are as impressive and iconic as the gothic revival style, such scale has its negative side. They block sight with their huge body and change the environmental lighting with their steel-glass façades (Figure 3). Koolhaas described these kinds of skyscrapers as monuments of the 20th century since they raised through their size a kind of expectation that they should be monumental2. They are “Big Buildings.”3
Figure 3: The huge body of Three Garden Road and the Cathedral being abnormally lit by the reflection of sunshine from Cheung Kong Center
The relationship between the skyscrapers’ interior and exterior makes things worse. As a traditional building with only one story, the observer can easily recognize St. John’s Cathedral as a cathedral and watch the activities inside through its windows. In comparison, as Koolhaas pointed out, the interior and exterior of “Big Buildings” are disconnected because of the distance between surface and core so that the façade cannot reveal the content of such buildings.4 Bank of China Tower is a perfect example of such “dishonesty”: Only one out of every three rows of its external glass cells are real windows (Figure 4), and this secret is revealed only through office rent agencies (Figure 5). The coating of the glass enhances such effect with increasing reflectivity, leaving us the texture itself with a slightly distorted reflection of the sky and the surroundings (Figure 4). These two points superficially reduce the skyscrapers’ functions further towards monuments, as they are losing the visual appearance of traditional buildings, the evidence of their inner functions, and the trace of users’ activities.
Figure 4: The façade of Bank of China Tower
Figure 5: The windows of the office inside Bank of China Tower
However, compared to the Cathedral’s monumentality, theirs creates paradoxes. The skyscrapers only serve as an advertisement of the banks (or companies) and city symbols instead of commemoration for ideal or record of significant history. Moreover, the constant change of users and functions inside such skyscrapers does not match the quality of permanence expressed by traditional monuments. The scale is disproportionate in terms of spirit.5
II. The Archipelago of Prisons
Besides the monumentality brought by their scale, the negative effect of skyscrapers expands to the collective space of the city.
High-rise buildings serve as a solution to the disagreement between limited urban space and demand from modernization. Each of the buildings exchanges the air for over one hundred thousand square meters of floor area. However, since the space is mainly used as offices of companies and banks, such vertical extension to the city is not open to the public. This in fact brings “Big Buildings” similarity to the oasis in Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. A large amount of working space is piled up and turned into disproportionate objects placed at the city center by the envelope of architectural design, a large number of people “voluntarily” go to work inside for their desire to live, and the remaining of the city is left in disrepair. The indoor and the outdoor become separated worlds, just like prisons.
What enhances such isolation is the policy about the ground around the base of these skyscrapers, namely the block. They look open but are private areas that belong to the owner of the skyscrapers. The Cathedral shows its generosity by allowing a soldier to permanently rest in peace next to it after the chaos of the battle (Figure 6). In contrast, stone tiles of higher quality are laid around the skyscrapers to mark that some common public activities like filming are forbidden. Combined with a brutal interaction between the façade and the ground, each block becomes a small island with its own laws and competes with other blocks (Figure 7, 8). This area thus becomes similar to Manhattan in Koolhaas’s eye – “a dry archipelago of blocks.” 6
Figure 6: The Memorial Cross with the tomb of the soldier next to the Cathedral
Figure 7: People passing by the “island” of Bank of China Tower, where the enormous pedestal, the small garden, and the stone tiles makes the entire block unique from the city
Figure 8: The blocks of Bank of China Tower and Three Garden Road
As a result, the skyscrapers become the opponent to the city as a collective space. The modern giants swallow the ground and the air that should belong to us.
III. The Tolerance to the Enemy
Kuma agreed that architectures might be the enemy of the society in that they consume a large amount of material and are irreversible in addition to the negative side of their scale mentioned above.7 However, in some other perspective, society needs skyscrapers and the action of construction, so such negative sides are tolerated.
Kuma pointed out the relationship between the economic bubble and postmodern architectures that both appeared in the late 20th century. During that period, the money game became a global phenomenon where corporations and individuals sought to profit by managing stock and investment. Since the price of large-scale buildings can be set very opaque with a package of foreign architects and novel designs, the enormous potential profits attracted both investors and developers.8 Moreover, the tenants of the offices inside the skyscrapers are constantly changing, requesting the space to be neutral and interchangeable. However, when they are seen as commodities, the merchants hope them to have visually iconic features. As a result, the disconnection of interior and exterior happened in the form of postmodernism, and the skyscrapers became more and more monumental.9
Also, as Lu summarized, Hong Kong has its own reasons to pursue high-rise buildings. First, the skyscraper is the straightforward solution to the apparent shortage of land due to Hong Kong’s terrain and territory constraints. Second, the government’s policy directed Hong Kong to be a commercial and financial center, and architectures are suitable, as mentioned above.10 As a result, old buildings give way to skyscrapers except those luckily declared as heritage, like St. John’s Cathedral.
IV. The Unfortunate Result of Capitalization
In the 1920s, the very early stage of modernization, Le Corbusier imagined an ideal city inspired by American skyscrapers. He hoped that the population could be gathered at high-density buildings at isolated points to leave adequate space for open sky, vast parks, and fresh air (Figure 9). He hoped that these towers, with efficient services, could house the workers. He stated that “this is truly an architecture worthy of the times”11 to fit his manifesto “architecture or revolution.”12
Figure 9: The drawing of the ideal tower-cities
Unfortunately, only the point about density was taken by capitalization of society. Skyscrapers at the Crossroads effortlessly surpass Le Corbusier’s vision of 60-story buildings13, but space for the open sky and vast parks is swallowed instead. The city is heading in the direction of Koolhaas’s Generic City: The skyscrapers become the definitive objects that swallow everything else, connected by roads for transportation only.14
The Crossroads in question is temporarily frozen at halfway: the construction of the modern monuments is irreversible, but the declared monuments like St. John’s Cathedral indirectly slow down the trend. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is indeed extending in Hong Kong’s own way as more and more steel-glass skyscrapers squeeze out from high-density streets (Figure 10). The unfortunate result brought by “Big Buildings” is silently expanding.
Figure 10: 1001 King’s Road, a brand-new skyscraper directly facing the famous the famous “Monster Building”, Yick Cheong Building (right)
Notes
1. Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis, “Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture,” in S, M, L, XL, eds. Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1998), 2-21.
2. Rem Koolhaas, “The Frontier in the Sky,” in Delirious New York, ed. Rem Koolhaas (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1994), 100.
3. Rem Koolhaas, “Bigness, or the Problem of Large,” in S, M, L, XL, eds. Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1998), 494-516.
4. Ibid.
5. Rem Koolhaas, “The Frontier in the Sky,” in Delirious New York, ed. Rem Koolhaas (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1994), 100.
6. Ibid, 97.
7. Kengo Kuma, “From Disconnection to Connection,” in Architecture of Defeat, ed. Kengo Kuma, translated by Hiroshi Watanabe (New York: Routledge, 2019), 7.
8. Kengo Kuma, “Field and Object,” in Architecture of Defeat, ed. Kengo Kuma, translated by Hiroshi Watanabe (New York: Routledge, 2019), 18.
9. Ibid, 30-31.
10. Tracey L.-D. Lu, “Heritage Conservation in Post-colonial Hong Kong,” in International Journal of Heritage Studies: IJHS 15, no. 2-3 (2009): 258-72.
11. Le Corbusier, “Three Reminders to Architects,” in Toward an Architecture, ed. Le Corbusier, translated by John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 122-126.
12. Le Corbusier, “Architecture or Revolution,” in Toward an Architecture, ed. Le Corbusier, translated by John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 291-307.
13. Le Corbusier, “Three Reminders to Architects,” in Toward an Architecture, ed. Le Corbusier, translated by John Goodman (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 122-126.
14. Rem Koolhaas, “The Generic City,” in S, M, L, XL, eds. Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, 1998), 1252-1254.
Source of Figures
All photos are taken by myself except those listed below:
Figure 1: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/104692
Figure 5: http://www.regentproperty.com.hk/special_prop_detail.php?ref=RGP014278&type=O
Figure 9: Toward an Architecture, Le Corbusier