Ambrose Yiu

About

CIVIC SCHOOL
A Project of Political Participation for Hong Kong

Hong Kong is undergoing a profound political crisis. People have made clear their distrust of the police and the government system at large. The uprising demands the rethinking of people’s participation to public life and political decisions.

Far from retreating in simplifying solutions or escaping in utopian speculations, the project accepts such challenges by investigating the relationship between power, space and institutions through architectural means. Acknowledging that the protest is a collective act of re-appropriation of space against the ruling power and that architecture tends to institutionalise the energy of the revolt into codified norms and behaviours, can we design architecture as an instrument to continuously challenge and renew the exercise of popular sovereignty? Instead of imposing or celebrating power, can built-form be a device to engender debate?

In light of the discussion proposed by ADS10 on the School as the paradigm of knowledge production and exchange, the project assumes political participation as the ultimate form of “building common knowledge” and architecture as its necessary frame. Indeed, debating ideas, organising space and acting in the public sphere we exercise those very faculties that make us human, our common ability to produce by thinking, relating and making. However these processes need a form and an organisation of space to happen and become collectively recognisable, shared and potentially challenged.

The project proposes a Civic School for Hong Kong, an infrastructure and a stage for popular participation, a platform for the continuous renewal of the social contract. The design assumes the paradigmatic form of a cover, made of metal portal frames and transparent roofing. The cover identifies a portion of the urban ground where collective gathering can happen in various forms and scales: its transparency speaks of an open and unpredictable relationship with the city, while its presence provides a symbolic and material stage for political action. 

The Civic School replaces the existing typology of the Municipal Complex, introverted and imposing public buildings that were conceived less to foster civic awareness than to impose the governing power. The project takes the district of Sham Shui Po as a test ground for the idea, which however is meant to reproduce across the whole territory, constituting a civic infrastructure for democratic participation. The infrastructural and performative character of the project reflects the idea of an open-ended relationship between form and life, city and citizenship, where architectural projects can only frame but never predict the potential outcome.

MA Architecture
ADS10: Savage Architecture – Building Common Knowledge
Tutors: Gianfranco Bombaci, Matteo Costanzo, Francesca Romana Dell'Aglio & Davide Sacconi

Contact

Degree Details

Statement

Ambrose was born and raised in Hong Kong. He received a scholarship and studied for his Part I education at the University of Hong Kong. Graduated in 2017, his projects were exhibited in the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism & Architecture (Hong Kong) the year after. He came to the UK in 2018. At the moment, he has completed his Part II Master degree at the Royal College of Art.

The architectural experience of Ambrose has been split between the UK and Hong Kong. After graduating from his Part I, he had a year-out working experience in Hong Kong. During summer 2019, he joined and took part in exciting projects at an architectural practice in London. He has so far worked on education, residential, commercial and cultural projects. He was also a member in the model-making team for a recent international competition entry by Sir Peter Cook.

He sees architecture as a medium, which bears the potential and responsibility of transforming communities in a positive way. A certain degree of spatial ambiguity in designs could sometimes render interesting outcomes of how end-users appropriate the spaces. That is also the fascination architecture can provide, being not only a celebration of design ideas but being built ultimately for the people at the same time.

Ambrose is currently based in London, eager to take up new roles in the architectural field.

An Overview: The Cover as Civic Infrastructure

An Overview: The Cover as Civic Infrastructure
An Overview: The Cover as Civic Infrastructure

Democratic participation in Hong Kong might take the form of a yellow metal portal frame and transparent polycarbonate. A simple gesture that frames a void while letting the light, the surrounding facades and the entire city freely penetrate its distinct atmosphere. The cover acts as a piece of civic infrastructure for permanent negotiation, leaving the space underneath the roof, its organisation, its use, its value, open to the will of Hong Kong’s political community.

Archival Study: Architecture and the Protest

Archival Study: Architecture and the Protest
Archival Study: Architecture and the Protest

The thesis started by studying the Kunsthal of Rotterdam by OMA through the lens of the archetype of the Palace and with the idea of exploring the collective rituals of political rallies. Representing in a perspective section the museum completely re-appropriated by a new use allowed to both analyse the spatial principles of the building as much as investigating the sequence of rituals that constitute the protest in their relationship with space.

The Context: Testing Collages in Hong Kong

The Context: Testing Collages in Hong Kong
The Context: Testing Collages in Hong Kong

The instrument of the collage allowed using the material elaborated in the studies on form and ritual to open a direction for the project. By using fragments from OMA’s Kunsthal, Casa del Fascio by Terragni, and the Mill Owners’ Building by Le Corbusier, the set of images speculates on the idea of inserting a civic school in the densely built environment of Hong Kong. The presence of infrastructure characterises the relationship with the city, while the internal organisation tests various spatial arrangements for collective gatherings of different scale.

The Archetype: Digital Cast Models

The Archetype: Digital Cast Models
The Archetype: Digital Cast Models

The design is a composition of parts. The abstract form of model suggests the possibility of reassembling the pieces, in accordance to the evolving needs or different conditions.
The composition is structured in three categories of elements, according to their scale and temporality: the cover and the ground constitute the fixed infrastructure; large objects provide gathering spaces of various scales and forms; small objects and furniture brought by the participants contribute to the transformation and appropriation of spaces.

An Inspiration: Infrastructure for the Collective

An Inspiration: Infrastructure for the Collective
An Inspiration: Infrastructure for the Collective

Using the image by Lina Bo Bardi’s design for an outdoor exhibition in São Paulo (1958), the collage visualises the idea of the cover as a civic infrastructure that is open for interpretation by the community. Through the gesture of covering the ground the project pursues the idea of collective as the outcome of shared responsibility and permanent negotiation between individuals.

The Composition: Common Roof

Sectional Perspective: Common Roof
Sectional Perspective: Common Roof — The sectional perspective provides a technical description of the building form as much as a glimpse of the collective rituals that it can host. The project organises a choreography of gatherings around three elements under the roof: the Stage for collective representation; the Forum of large gatherings; the Frame structure for the civic library, the market and the citizens assembly. The openness of various elements suggests that the building can simultaneously host separate events in different spaces as well as working as a unitary space for massive gatherings.
Plans: Exceeding the Plot
Plans: Exceeding the Plot — While the cover fully occupies one plot, the project of the ground exceeds its boundaries by transforming the street into a semi-pedestrian zone that suggests the possibility for the gatherings to expand throughout the city. The project defines a number of possible elements that organise the space under the roof such as the Forum, the Stage and the Frame, which houses the fresh market, library and the assembly of the citizens. However these elements could change overtime to suit the needs and the desires of the emancipated community.

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The Project: Scenes of Appropriation

The Forum
The Forum — The Forum is a space for mass gatherings protected by the canopy. Generic furniture and objects represent traces of people, suggesting the conflation of celebratory moments with everyday life. Residents living nearby can also oversee the whole space, which makes them, and by extension the whole city, part of the choreography collective rituals.
The Colonnade
The Colonnade — The Colonnade marks the threshold between the canopy and the street. The large columns of the cover are echoed by the structure of the Forum’s stands. The rhythm of the space suggests a linear movement along the street which is counterpointed by the activities happening in the pocket: spaces to meet, informal market stalls or even just a few tables and chairs suggest an everyday re-appropriation of the space for small daily encounters.
Political Decision and Civic Participation
Political Decision and Civic Participation — The roof of the Frame hosts the citizen assembly, a more formal space of meeting and political decision that, however, remains spectacularly open to the view of the surrounding buildings: more than a symbol of transparency and bureaucratic efficiency, an invite to active participation. The civic library is a key element for the exchange and production of knowledge, offering a resource for political awareness and turning research into an explicit act of civic participation.
Acting under the Same Roof
Acting under the Same Roof — The open arrangement of the ground floor offers the possibility of various compatibility activities: from market to sport, from cinema to theatre or other form of performances. The roof turns generic activities into the quintessential political moment: “acting under the eyes of others”.

An Infrastructure of Our Times: The Civic Lighthouse

An Infrastructure of Our Times: The Civic Lighthouse
An Infrastructure of Our Times: The Civic Lighthouse

The cover as civic infrastructure provides the stage for countless possibilities of public gathering. Architecture frames people’s needs, desires, conflicts and ambition in a space of permanent negotiation where citizens shall be responsible for collectively deciding the destiny of the site. The project acquires the symbolic dimension of a civic lighthouse, providing communal organisation and a reference point that every Hong Konger can always return to, in the struggle for political change in everyday life.