Occupy Hong Kong: Blossoming in the Gaps

Abstract

In addition to rapidly increasing political repression in recent years, the people of Hong Kong have long suffered economic repression, facing challenges such as severely constrained living space and world-leading inequality. All this culminates in a growingly defiant demand for human dignity. The thesis design is conceived as a linear park with coworking and co-living spaces on top, where facilities are de-privatized and shared. This is used to test the thesis that decommoditizing space in a pluralistic and multi-layered way helps bring about political and economic agency by fostering free enterprise and free expression. The project employs a few strategies, such as having a central location, occupying the urban void, inverting and fracturing the mall typology, exposing the circulatory systems, accommodating a mix of use and mix of scales, ensuring visual connection and continuity between spaces, and creating means for users to modulate their privacy.