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Island Defender; An Architecture for Ecology

Part 2 Project 2019
Allan Yuk Lun Chong
University of Hong Kong | China
A proposal for the protection of desert islands, and learning to coexist with Hong Kong’s unique landscape, 263 islands that make up the city. These fragile, unprotected islands are seemingly fell of the face of the Earth. Stonecutters Island, Harbour Island, Junk Island, Pillar Island, Mouse Island… Human development with reclamation killed them off one by one.

This thesis is a critique of the existing environmental policy of protecting these ‘Geographical Heritage’, against which an eco-border is set up to perform multiple functions, a Cultivation Border, an Island Archive and a Reclamation Guideline.

Taking the shelter for cultivating shellfish at the border’s structure across a fictional timeline, it eventually forms an ecological enclave in the middle of the sea, which also serves as a filter to purify the polluted seawater for the protected buffer. Throughout the life cycle, shells can be collected, and lime can be extracted as the building material for urban development.

This work recalls the role of architecture as a defender, to defend the island against human activities, and it also suggests alternative act for architecture in the Anthropocene, which teach us how to develop in relation to our environment while transforming the earth’s land.

Allan Yuk Lun Chong

Tutor(s)
Joshua Bolchover
2019
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