GSA Showcase 2021

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The “Rights” to reclaim The City

The second investigation will be located in the city district. This time other than understanding the “rights” of the people in the public space, I must also take into account of introducing an intervention that does not disrupt the commercial side of the space like the retail shops as the owners themselves paid rent and too have the “rights” to the space.

The second exploration aims to create an experience of freedom of using the public space in the buzzing city, at the same time incorporating an engaging shopping experience for the people and the owners.

Moving forward, much of the documentation of the people in the city may be domestic workers, however this project does not revolve designing for them but rather just studying the way they inhabit the city and ask why do we not inhabit it the same way? To clarify, this project is not targeted on any specific community in the city but rather the people of the city in general.

Lucky Plaza

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The Street and the Shops

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Inhabitations of the City

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I went back to a similar approach as phase one where i traced and study the posture of the city inhabitants.
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However, the city inhabits differently as I see a sense of overcrowding inhabitation.
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Modules of inhabitations

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A sketch of the potential outcome with the inhabitants using the space

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The site chosen for this phase is Lucky Plaza as I felt the place had lost its “rights” of public inhabitation as shown there were signs placed around preventing the people to inhabit the public area. This may be due to the recent pandemic.
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The whole stretch of the street level was documented from 1 -4 order. This is important as the shop placement, context (eg. clothes, food, etc) and vacancy will dictate the placement and context of the intervention later on.
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It is amazing how the people of the city could fully utilised any structural elements as a form of inhabitation. One thing to look into will be this sense of overcrowding as space constraint is one of the factor of the city.
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Therefore I used this technique of boxing to understand better the boundaries and space needed for this series of crowd inhabitations which derived off a case study from the Excrescent Utopia by Milo Ayden De Luca
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The idea is not to box the people up but just to see what series of modules can be configured base on the postures.
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Moving forward with the modules, it is explored on what it can be by becoming a platform, a frame, a block depending on the functionality and experience intended for the section of the street. I will look into applying and configuring the module with the shopping street photos documented at the start.
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The installation for the street aims to provide both inhabitations and an engaging shopper experience for the inhabitants so that it is a win/win for both shop owners and inhabitants. However, this, failed in a way not being more subtle with its large frame like structure which can be further refined.
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