diegetic synchronicity (敘事同步性)

MONG KOK, HONG KONG SAR, CHINA

STUDIO: ARCH 8010, Prof. Esther Lorenz, University of Virginia, Fall 2018
PROGRAM: To establish a critical and cinematic framework for spatially understanding the city of Hong Kong, to explore this framework through the production of a three minute film, and to translate this framework into the design of a mixed-use campus for an underutilized government-owned lot in bustling Mong Kok, Hong Kong. The proposal, centered around the design of a new film school and public cinema, also includes a variety of community and commercial spaces such as a youth hostel, an elderly home, a recreation center, and a business incubator. Project duration: One semester.

What is the diegetic relationship between simultaneous occurrences of urban events? Are perceptions of meaning derived from these moments choreographable?

The contemporary city exists in a state of perpetual synchronicity, whereby incidental and serendipitous events and non-events are given a complex stage set through which they can overlap, intersect, and converge: together cultivating a sense of collective narrative and meaning. In Hong Kong, the overwhelming hyper-density of pedestrian activity and circulation, the intense interweaving of programmatic and spatial uses along public circulation corridors, and the multiple planes of elevational articulation facilitate spatial and temporal moments which heighten a participant’s sense of synchronicity within this urban theater. In this theater, however, the participants are both the actors and the audience members, and the mediating element is the spatial and temporal frame.

The architectural proposal comments upon this perceptual phenomenon, and aims to amplify it by envisioning the site as a spatial and temporal microcosm of the city. A host of programs (film school, public theater, community spaces, etc.) are woven together into a network via the extension of the existing elevated public walkway system, which serves as both a system of connective tissue, as well as a fluid sequence of indoor and outdoor (formal and informal) stage sets. These urban “stages,” though comprised of countless individually unrelated stories and incidental happenings, take on the perception of a collective narrative, (and, perhaps even a spectacle on occasion) through the architectural curation of spatial convergences, temporal overlaps, sequential juxtapositions, and deliberately privileged visual connections.