The Life and (other)Times of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel
Thesis
Dec-June 2024, Master of Architecture at HKU
Thesis Advisor: Suchang
Before the completion of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, this was the
border of Hong Kong. The imminent solution for crossing arises in the envisions
of joining the geographically divided city through an unchanging line. However,
tracing back history, this harbor-crossing project has a segment of unfinished
past. In 1967, when the sociopolitical rupture puts history itself at a
standstill, the negotiation between a bridge and a tunnel also halted. This
suspension was exposed at a watershed of social unrest, a historical point of
indecision, dragging this vital infrastructural proposal into stagnation.
Unsettling this infrastructural imagination from an ordered
chronology, the inquiry excavates the (other) times of the Cross-Harbour
Tunnel’s ontological crisis – a space-time disjunction where it hovered between
a bridge and tunnel proposal. Dwells with this indecisive moment while
situating amid the city’s perpetual flux, how is the not-so-distant past
pregnant with possibilities?
Full thesis report available upon request.
The tunnel could have been a “bridge”?
Unravelling from a historical moment in the year of 1967, the long-held negotiation of the cross-harbour link between bridge and tunnel proposals was abruptly halted amidst social unrest and uncertainties. This disjunction has marked a pause for this gigantic and costly infrastructural project when it hovered between disparate trajectories, this thesis seeks to open portals from the not-so-distant past to reimagine the (other) times harbored within the Cross-Harbour Tunnel’s existence, while proceeding as a parallel exercise to explore the ongoing process of the materialization of a thesis project.
Departing from the reductive notions of reading an infrastructure requires measures that look beyond the quantifiable metrics of time and space, and perhaps demands a renewed understanding of the interdependencies we have with infrastructures. While its engineering timescales can be calculated through numbers that spatializes the passing of duration, the site remains powerfully receptive to the continual re-kindle of imaginations.This thesis intervenes at a pivotal moment in the Cross-Harbour Tunnel’s history – the 1967 suspension of the debated proposal amid social unrest. Unraveling from this paused juncture, the urgency resonates with hesitations around this infrastructure and an indeterminate future. How different moments of pause throughout history reveals their seeming unrelatedness, in repetition.
While infrastructures entangle with our relationship with time, shaping the rhythms of everyday, they also harbours multiple readings of time. Countering a singular narrative, this thesis gradually builds up the agenda by dwelling with readings of time from memories. Rethinking the notion of “troubling time”, this thesis seeks to "trouble time”- to disrupt the ordered chronology that have habitually shaped our build environment and framed our understanding of the city.
tunnel construction dam.
Long identified with efficiency, functionality, and seamless connection, the Cross-Harbour Tunnel’s engineering metrics may have obscured more nuanced relations to the city’s mobility patterns. Resonating with the hopes and anxieties that birthed it, yet containing unrealized potentialities, how might one reexamine the contingent infrastructure-city relationship, not only during moments of disruption?
Excavating overlooked failures and unfulfilled potentials from a seemingly insignificant past of a site-specific infrastructure. Rather than seeking to uncover a clear, alternative historical narrative that challenges and replaces the dominant accounts, the project begins with the “suspending moments” that punctuates a way to reread the history of the Cross-Harbour Tunnel and the city. Failed plans, unfinished visions, and unactualized alternatives reveal possibility in reorienting a way of understanding our futures. It is in the gaps and incompleteness of becoming, new significance takes place.
When infrastructures evolve into a intangible/tangible systems that embodies the interconnectedness between places, they also accelerates us. In the context of Hong Kong, where the city's identity is intricately woven with its infrastructural fabric, these structures assume a significance that surpasses their mundane existence. They rest upon diverse ground conditions, yet, their presence often fades into the background, escaping our notice until they malfunction, undergo replacement, or face the threat of demolition. It is during these moments of rupture that we begin to grasp the contingent connection they hold with us.