The proposal draws inspiration from 'Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook' written by Adam Frampton. Frampton states that Hong Kong is a city which exists without a ground. Both physically and culturally, as it is built on steep slopes (hence it has no ground plane) and also it has no concept of a ground. In addition, one can observe that density in the city reduces the figure ground relationships that exist in most other cities. As a result, this has a profound affect on how public and private spatial relationships are defined. As taken from an excerpt in Frampton's book, in Hong Kong 'perception of distance and time is distorted through compact networks of pedestrian infrastructure, public transport and natural topography in the urban landscape. Without a ground, there can be no figure either'.
The proposal investigates the ideas of figure-figure relationship in response to this idea of Hong Kong as a city without a ground. In response to the site, we have adapted buildings located withing the fabric of Hong Kong, and recomposed them to form a modular housing scheme by figure-figure compositions. In addition to that, proposal recognizes the ‘pixel’ areas, as stated in the brief, to exist in the skyline and not the horizontal fabric of the city. The pockets of space between buildings shall be taken as our ‘site’ and the modular units will be able to be suspended between the existing buildings.
