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Promenade Housing - Branching Architecture

Part 1 Project 2010
Hung Lai Wesley Ho
University of Hong Kong | China
This project questions about the repetitive approach of Modernist mass produced housing typology, in which every flat or floor has the same layout with the same entering experience i.e. the lift core, striving for pure production efficiency.

Also, it questions the contemporary notion of housing complex in Hong Kong like the West Kowloon, where the living complex is built right on top of a gigantic shopping mall and attains its self-sufficiency while cutting off from the context, leading to isolation or privatization of public space.

The goal is to formulate a system that has the flexibility to accomodate a variety of life-styles and living requirements with unique roaming experience that responds to the the ocean view. Furthermore, rather than creating a separate, alien living ecology, mutualism is proposed between the housing system and the city i.e. the city provides the housing with supporting programs (eateries, shops, entertainments etc.) while the housing serves as a new piece of recreational ground and a complementary linkage within the city.

Hung Lai Wesley Ho


The project entitled “Promenade Housing” and submitted by Wesley Ho Hung Lai represents a very sophisticated piece of architectural work. Challenging repetitive, homogenous and profit-driven approaches in conventional housing developments it proposes a new experimental prototype for twenty-first century living based on the concept of Mass Customised Housing. The site for this project is situated on a challenging hill in Dameisha Beach, Shenzhen, China. The scheme is based on a bifurcating branching system that serves as the governing principle on multiple levels of the architectural design. Through the utilization of this diagram the project achieves an exceptional integration of structural, organisational, formal and circulatory principles. The meandering formation highly integrates into the topographical site gradient and provides a great level of interaction with the environment. The design is delicately investigated through drawings and experimental study models and represents an excellent understanding and utilization of contemporary computational design tools and CAD-CAM fabrication techniques.

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2010
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