Pixel Wall / HKU Department of Architecture

Architects: HKU Department of Architecture
Location: Tuen Mun Park, Hong Kong S.A.R.
Design Team: Abdul Yeung, Cheng Xiao Thomas, Guo Jia Jeff, Mao Yiqing Tim, Tiffany Leung of HKU Department of Architecture
Project Year: 2015
Photographs: Abdul Yeung, Cheng Xiao Thomas, Guo Jia Jeff, Mao Yiqing Tim

Organizer: Art Promotion Office, Leisure and Cultural Services Department of Hong Kong
Course Supervisor: Wang Weijen, Jason Carlow
Fabrication Consultant: Ricci Wong

From the architect. When the phrase public space is mentioned, places like park, plaza, courtyard, or even pocket space in alleyways immediately come into people’s mind. These provide opportunities for people to gather, to meet, to engage in activities and programs, which are the main attributes of public spaces; to encourage public interactions.

Our site is located in a large open plaza in the park. Through our observation, it fails to develop its potential of providing good public space for people. By installing our intervention on the site, not only does it serve as an attraction to the crowd, but it gives the plaza its definition and theme. It also allows people to interact with our intervention and generate different activities and programs within and around the structure.

By using the construction method of stacking with standard modules, the intervention helps loosely define spaces of different sizes, enhancing the potential dialogues amongst them. The reflective materials placed on one side of the modules help to create dual-effects of the structure: as a wall with perforations to divide space on one hand, and build up virtual images of the plaza in relation to the real plaza environment on the other.