The Analogous New Block

Abstract

No place ever has an absolute existence, a place is invented through the drawing of boundaries. The thesis illustrates the dual face of the intangible border crossing. From the authority’s point of view, the community is reconnected through the completion of the urban blocks. it heals the scar from its colonial past while suggesting a prosperous and utopian city’s future. The repleted block can be read as a form of erasure, paradoxically, through the presence of the urban fabric where it becomes a palimpsest of the disappearance. The community center represents a terra incognita between the two domains, resisting the disappearance of the disappearance. Where it reveals the underlying question about the city existence other than the soil that it is sitting on. Boundary Street was a former borderline that sit between the Qing Territory and British Kowloon Peninsula. The city, other than its name, was nowhere to be found. Although the physical boundary no longer subsists, the void remains as the demarcation of both the existence and disappearance. The community center is formed by a 232 meters long structure that fill up the void space between the blocks. The programs are located inside the adjacent existing buildings while the added premise is left uninterrupted, program-less and uncertain. It is a border that sits between buildings and the street, the ordinary and the peculiar, reacting to the surrounding activities. It is a public realm yet being voluntarily and involuntarily monitored.