Becoming AmphibiousBizarre Detail Studio
Sept-Dec 2024 Studio led by Thomas Tsang at Master of Architecture, HKU
In the Bizarre Details studio, we begin by defamiliarizing ourselves from habituated understandings of what an "architectural detail" can be. The studio examines pivotal moments in architectural history where disconnects occurred between design intent and construction reality due to miscommunication, omission, or oversight,
and inevitable guesswork—inherent in partial communication across design processes.
We test our propositions through hands-on material methodologies, posing a central question: do materials possess their own intrinsic intelligence beyond being inert matter?
The studio began with a field trip to Lamma Island...
Through casting, details are explored by
taking the mold forming process as a methodology. Intricate details left by the material formation process emerges when the plaster
solidifies, capturing any movement, dust, and the surface texture of the mold. After
its in a more solid states, I take close observations of the minute details of these seemingly
inanimate objects. Some unintended traces emerges in the
process, didn’t want to take them as a failure, but as a part of
creation.
How are our relationships, perception and matter, redefined in the process of observing processs?
Parallel to the exploration of material formations, this project also emerges as a series of investigations of on Lamma island, envisioning an architectural proposal as a amphibious twin-structure, interchangeable between a boat and
a pier, traversing the waters that separate Lamma Island and Hong Kong Islands.
It exists in a perpetual quest to touch the ever-shifting edge of the water, in becoming, amphibious.
I
start my observation of the island from the perspective of the water,
approaching it from all angles and tracing the contours of the island. (contourline,
power station, chimney, hidden infrastructure, excavate, flatten, reclamation.
I
imagine this twin to be indeterminate state of being, at times entangled, at
times loosely apart, it seeks to define itself by resisting fixed contours and
embracing the fluidity of non-fixed angles. Together, they forge new
configurations, harmonizing with the changing landscape that envelops them.
Asking quesitons of the conventional
understanding that govern the understanding of an architectural detail. Not as
a means towards completion, but embraces a ever-evolving state of becoming. Its
an apparatus, a conduit for guessing and observing, creating dialogues that
traverses the boundaries of site, models, drawings. Its not a finished work but
a vessel for the unfinished. It would rather not to be finished. Is it possible that we can
comprehend the condition of becoming as a detail?
This
twin emerges as as an embodiment of flux and in the process of making, with
unfinished remarks and the absence of detail, questions are left revealed in
the process. Details here are suspended between the realm of imagination and
reality. Straddling the divide between these realms, it resists the lure of a
final completion but seeking to question its surroundings. Here incompleteness
interrogates the expectations of the completion and precision of mass-produced
detail in architectural practice. By leaving loose ends untied, the work wishes
to speaking a language of possibilities.