STEPS/THRESHOLD Where there is no public furniture in civic places, sometimes the next best thing on which to sit and take a breather is steps or raised threshold. From the pedestrian to the dramatic, these stepped spaces accessible to the public are often used as a spot for respite, a temporary stop to catch one’s […]
Old shop lots, Selangor An increasingly rare sight nowadays, bamboo blinds (or ‘chick blinds’) were a common feature of shophouses, especially those from the pre-war era in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. These blinds were made of long strips of bamboo tied together with strings, and could be rolled up or down […]
Kuk Po, similar to Lai Chi Wo and Mui Tsz Lam, is defined by its coast-to-hill topography, one that stretches from the picturesque expanse of mangrove and reed wetlands, emerging from the long-abandoned rice paddy grid, to the once-productive valley topography nurtured by numerous streams. Endowed with fertile lands and its gateway location facing northwards […]
Mui Tsz Lam is a 20-minute uphill hike away from Lai Chi Wo. An unwalled 360-year-old hamlet predating its bigger neighbour, its two main rows of east-facing rowhouses are also backed by feng shui woods and fronted by rice paddy terraces that once extended all the way down to the coast. By the early 1980s, […]
Lai Chi Wo is the largest and best-preserved of the seven-village cluster of Hing Chun Alliance in Sha Tau Kok. Backed by mountains and facing the sea, its nine-row, three-column walled village layout has ancestral halls within, a temple and school overlooking an open plaza without. Once an affluent education and trading hub, the village […]
Outside of the hyper-dense high-rise compactness of urban Hong Kong, three-quarters of the city’s territory remain relatively rural and undeveloped. There has been more attention to rural revitalisation since the government’s recent launching of countryside conservation policies and funding mechanisms. In 2018, the Countryside Conservation Office (CCO) was established to support innovative conservation of natural […]
Read More… from Architectural Restorations for Remote Countryside Regeneration in Hong Kong
Spanning 140 hectares in the middle of a densely built-up district in South Jakarta, Ragunan Zoo is one of the city’s oldest and most popular family attractions with an affordable ticket price of around USD0.25 per person, which has not been increased for many years. Pre-pandemic, the holiday season would see a record of 196,000 […]
Read More… from Ragunan Bio Park: A Nature-based update of Indonesia’s oldest zoo
Habitat ’67 is perhaps one of the most recognised and iconic modern housing complexes around the world. The Israel-born Canadian architect Moshe Safdie first developed the concept of Habitat ’67 for his thesis while studying in McGill University in 1961 and submitted the project to Montreal Expo 67 two years later, while he was still […]
Read More… from Habitat ’67: Critique on a Classic & Its Modern Interpretations
I have always been curious about what happens after architects leave. For users, the journey of their relationship with the buildings starts after the architects have left. Just like a living being, the building is born, lives its life, transforms, witnesses many events and eventually dies. They undergo changes that the architect may or may […]
Read More… from Charles Correa Now: What happens after architects leave?
A good public space project, especially in a city, is one that is multilayered: weaving one layer of strategy with another to form an intricate network of intertwining, interdependent systems so that together, the project not only resolves the current problems it was supposed to address, but also stitches new programmes that add colours and […]
A landscape architecture masterpiece with cascading layers of planters and terraces hugging a mountain form that is Asia’s largest urban green roof (22,000 square metres), alongside massive retention ponds, beautifully combines form and function to present a possible solution to Asia’s climate and food crises. The integrated design of Thammasat University’s (TU) urban farming green […]
