The Tower of Two Cities

The tower takes on dual identities, narrating a city that vacillates between two plots: the desire for maximum efficiency and a city seen through the eyes of an artist.

Through an unconventional modular system, the tower can adapts with rapid change.

The grid structure supporting the machines, allow them to be replaced with updated technology. New pods can be installed anywhere along the vine-like structure to suit changing needs; while old pods can be relocated as independent pavilions.

The building is both temporary and permanent, constantly changing with a unified identity. The inflated balloon-like designing process creates unique undefined spaces.

Much like Hong Kong laneways, the lack of specific purpose encourages ownership and creativity. It’s this occupation and re-occupation of spaces over time, even from day to night, which gives the city its rich layers of complexity.

The building derives from two binary opposite aesthetics and program. Vernacular and the exuberant; art and functionality; labour and luxury.

These contradictions offer a cruel commentary on the current wealth inequality in Hong Kong.

However, with labour intensive jobs now commandeered by robots, the pods hope to optimistically foster job equality and idealistic socialism.

The bulbus windows offer a rose-tinted magnifying glass looking optimistically outward to the changing urban fabric and inward to the manufacturing process.

With no human interaction required, the machines are compacted onto a grid structure and left exposed.

At a distance the machines seem to fuse together as a mass and the field of objects appear to compose a solid façade - at closer inspection the porosity of the mass becomes evident and the machines as individual elements can be identified.

The grotesque form of the pods squeezing and ooze out over the boundaries trying to gain any space possible.

The market space at the base of the building takes on a similar aesthetic as the pods, however the bulging windows become more concentrated and theatrical, like the markets itself.

The size of the windows accommodates people on a human scale, doubling as a shelf or seat. Each window frames a different moment and the theatrics of the market become part of the building fabric.

The market space allows for products to be tested and sold on a small scale, before going into mass production.