Athens Revisited | The Re-Occupation of Abandoned Spaces

Looking for a potential site, and interested in the reclamation of leftover or abandoned space, I revisited the area around the refugee village. My aim was to better understand the scale of abandonment and reoccupation that has been happening in the area of Ambelokipi. What I found was that a sort of divide existed between the abandoned sites in the area, the institutional buildings such as the EU Justice Court and Police Station, and the residential neighborhoods. It was as if the abandoned sites were at the core of a circular area that was enveloped by institutions and further enveloped by surrounding neighborhoods.

The area around the refugee village proved to be filled with abandoned lots that gave the idea of a potential site that used to have tons of character. A former football stadium was now completely locked but has been reclaimed by a basketball league that has created a gym for themselves underneath the old stands. An abandoned school and park block were now eerily empty but that showed wear and of a former life. A parking lot was desolate of any cars, but was once part of the lively nights of home football games. These were the types of areas that surrounded the refugee village and got me intrigued in the area as a potential site. 

Athens vs. Hong Kong | Urban Sprawl vs. High Density

Having visited Hong Kong and having done preliminary analysis of the rooftop slum conditions in Sham Shui Po, I started to think about our next studio destination: Athens. What would I be able to compare in the two cities? Would I even be able to compare them? The two cities economically are distinctly different with Athens on the verge of collapse and Hong Kong only booming more and more by the day. Physically, they can be considered polar opposites: Athens sprawls out into an endless landscape horizontally while Hong Kong soars upwards into the sky vertically. But even in these distinctly different cities, similarities can be found. The social and demographic issues that arise in Hong Kong, became evident once again in Athens.

Both cities have issues with slum conditions. In Athens, this can be seen in the rooftop slums of Gerani as well as the refugee village in Ambelokipi. I chose to focus on the conditions at the refugee village as a comparative analysis to the character of slum conditions I had been finding in Hong Kong.

The area of the refugee village exists as a series of urban block forms built up but abandoned. As the government waits to decide what to do, people seeking homes have come in and made illegal dwellings in these blocks. Some are privately-owned, and others quietly taken over by small communities. From the exterior, the structures appear like dilapidated blocks. The image is one of complete destruction with the outer core punctured by bullet holes from air raids, window shutters hanging crookedly as if to be falling off the structure, and windows boarded up with wooden slats. But when you get on the inside, you enter a whole new world: a city within the city.

As we enter the building, the stairwells smell of piss and you can hear people consciously locking their doors as you climb higher and higher. Wires hang down the central atrium of the stairwell to supply electricity and water to each dwelling unit. It looks like a complete slum. But as you get the chance to see one from the inside you see something different. The spaces can be considered real apartments and are completely refurbished by the owners. The rooms are minimally furnished, but it is definitely a manageable size room with a full plan layout. Unlike the slums in Hong Kong, here people had plenty of space to live. 

Hong Kong Day 8 | Comparative Analysis of Tai-O versus Rooftops

As the week started to come to a close, I still hadn’t been able to make it out to Tai-O. But as I did research last night I realized I really had to make time to see this small fishing village on Lantau Island. The village is known for its stilt houses and strong fishing culture, and from word of mouth of other Urban Design classmates it was well worth it. Eager for an early start so that I could cover Tai-O and still make it back to Sham Shui Po to see it active on a weekend, I got up at 7 am. The journey to the village was a forty-five minute ferry to Lantau followed by a forty-five minute bus journey through mountains that definitely had a play with my stomach!

Tai-O itself is a very small town with one main market street filled with tourists, and the rest a very residential area almost unventured by anyone other than locals. I definitely got many stares as I wandered through the meandering streets and alleys with my camera and sketchbook in hand. I am so happy I made it out to Tai-O though! Located in a very secluded area, the town itself is made up of hundreds of homes that appear to be made of metal and reflect beautifully in the water. As a comparative to the rooftops, the village was a nice example of another slum-style condition but this time happening on the ground level of the water rather than the sky level of the rooftop. The alleys reminded me of those that you find in Sham Shui Po, and the overall “slum”-feel of the place was similar to that of the rooftop communities, but there were also some nice distinctions between the two. As I ventured further and further away from the tourist area, I felt more intrusive but found myself so intrigued. It was obvious I didn’t belong here when a few local schoolgirls came up and asked to take a photo with me – they were so excited to be practicing their English! In this way, it was similar to the rooftops in that you really get a sense of community and feel like an obvious outsider.

Comparative Photos | A Story of Similarities and Contrasts in Sky vs. Ground Slums

1. Overall Appearance

2. Alleyways Between Structures 

3. Paths of Entry

4. Structure

5. Materiality 

7. Grounding

8. Construction

9. Joint

After Tai-O, I returned to Sham Shui Po to complete the last of my mappings and then met up with a few students to make sure to see Victoria Peak before we leave Hong Kong tomorrow. I knew I had to do this because it would be my biggest regret if I came to Hong Kong and didn’t see the peak….sadly the day was super foggy and the view from Central was better, but it was a nice little adventure to end my last night on! 

Hong Kong Day 7 | Accessibility of Rooftops

HK Day 7 | Accessibility of Rooftops

Starting to notice patterns within Sham Shui Po, and what to look for when trying to identify if a building has rooftop communities, I started to assess how the rooftops are accessed. Focusing on the nine block region I had specified earlier in the week, I began to re-walk the streets and take photos of the different types of staircases and what types of buildings they belong to. I noticed three main types of stairwells: the most common is one that curves away with the structure and wraps back upwards, the second is a setback stairwell that has a short corridor before the staircase further towards the rear of the building, and the final one is one that goes straight up from the street level.

(sketch to come)

The Stairwells | Three Distinct Types

Type A | Curving Staircase

Type B | Setback Staircase

Type C | Straight Staircase

Also, although a few were accessible from the streets, many also had doors in front of them. 

What was interesting was that I quickly discovered that the conclusion in the rooftop book where it says that a secondary staircase is often used was not correct. Most rooftops were accessed from the main stairwell from the streetside. However, as you moved towards central Sham Shui Po you did sometimes find that staircases were moved to the sides of the buildings and accessible via alleyways. The best reasoning for this was because the street side was always given up to the storefronts. 

Hong Kong Day 6 | Mapping Rooftops + Development of SSPo

After returning from Happy Valley last night, I began to map out the blocks between Cheung Sha Wan Road, Nam Cheong Street, Tung Chung Street, and Yen Chow Street in my sketchbook. My aim was to spend my next day and a half mapping out the rooftop communities that were visible from the street and then compare these to google Earth images once I return from Hong Kong. As I began to wander each block obsessively marking out the rooftops, I also began to notice patterns in building typologies and accessibility related to structures with rooftops on top of them. I also noticed that three types of rooftop conditions exist: an embedded structure that appears to be part of the existing building, a rooftop structure that is a continuation of the façade condition, and a superstructure that is slightly setback from the rooftop edge.

(sketch to be scanned)

Spending the majority of my day mapping, I then met up with the Xi, Rosemary, Pooja, and Charles at the local community center in Sham Shui Po for an interview with the director. We were open to ask him any questions we wanted, and although he knew little about the rooftop communities, his information was very useful. He mostly shared with us a very detailed history of the development of Sham Shui Po and why it is unchanging.

Here are a few notes I took from the meeting:

• the oldest buildings in Kowloon are located in Sham Shui Po
• Sham Shui Po is mostly on landfill added to make Kowloon larger
• the first street of Sham Shui Po was the original embankment of the sea before the landfill of Kowloon with the original settlement of Sham Shui Po being a port city
• with the landfill, Sham Shui Po lost its waterfront | a sad development as much of the original residents used to work along the industrial water but now have to seek work elsewhere since the large factories have moved to mainland China
• the Cantonese dialect has existed in Sham Shui Po since the beginning since almost all residents are from Mainland China
• immigration in and out of Sham Shui Po is constant | Hong Kong is a place that could give opportunity to those of poverty until they have enough money to move elsewhere (it’s almost like a vicious cycle)
• since Sham Shui Po acts like a temporary holding area, development is at a constant stand still because the flow of people in and out is too constant to deal with effectively
• two other temporary holding places exist in Hong Kong | Yau Ma Tei and Tai Kok Tsui, but these districts are mostly for foreigners not Mainland Chinese immigrants 

The meeting was very informative and played in nicely to my ideas of potentially connecting Sham Shui Po back to the water through a sectional city, starting with connecting the rooftops and then moving down towards the waterfront.

In the evening, I decided to see another side of Hong Kong by visiting Mong Kok. Mong Kok is a very special place and my trip would not have been complete without it. The area is filled with lights and signage; the best way that I could describe it was like being in Times Square times ten. It becomes almost disorienting and it feels like daylight on the streets. 

Hong Kong Day 5 | Inaccessible Waterfronts + Rooftops Night

Having started to take in Sham Shui Po, I had been looking at maps last night and became interested in trying to see just how far Sham Shui Po lies from the existing waterfront. This tied back to my ideas about connecting the rooftop level with the water level, and juxtaposing rooftop slum conditions with fishing village conditions.

I began my morning by walking from Apliu Street and the MTR station towards the water. As I got further from central Sham Shui Po, the mood changed completely. Compared to the hustling and bustling city center, the area between Lai Chi Kok Rd and the West Kowloon Corridor was almost dead. It was very evident that on the street level this was a quieter, less visited part of town; but in its upper level conditions it was still very much connected with the character of central Sham Shui Po and had rooftop slums visible on almost every block. Located on the borderline between the West Kowloon Corridor underpass that separates Sham Shui Po from a retirement development, a few parks, and the waterfront; these nine blocks of Sham Shui Po became of great interest to me. They express the different building typologies consistent with rooftop slum communities, contain a few urban renewal projects, and create a nice compare and contrast condition to central Sham Shui Po. I enjoyed the potential of being able to create a neighborhood feel in these nine blocks, while still trying to bridge the divide between them and the chaos of central Sham Shui Po.

The sectional change from the last block of Sham Shui Po, to the underpass of West Kowloon Corridor, and the Tung Chao Street Park reminded me of our David Grahame workshop and the idea of hidden heterotopias. Beneath this bridge is a local market that is seemingly unvisited, a true pity for such a beautiful space. As you enter the park and look back, you can see the rooftop slums peeking over the underpass: a nice image of transportation and infrastructural development versus poverty and slum conditions.

The Underpass Condition | Sham Shui Po Boundary

From here, I continued my walk towards the waterfront leaving behind Sham Shui Po and having to take several detours to gain access to the harbor. It was obvious that this is not a connection that designers ever wanted to establish as you pass through two parks winding through paths and then take a sky walkway across another highway and finally make your way to the waterfront which is very industrial and void of people.

To find your way back, you must go below ground and through the Nam Cheong MTR station to head towards the central streets of Sham Shui Po. The boundary between Sham Shui Po and the water is clearly defined as a transportation route given to North-South access along Kowloon rather than East-West access for local residents to the harbor. 

Having experienced the inaccessibility of the waterfront, I made my way back to Sham Shui Po to meet up for the meeting I had arranged to visit one of the rooftop communities. I had already tried a few times to make my way up random staircases in Sham Shui Po to gain accessibility to the rooftops, but I was either stopped by locals getting angry with me as I was intruding on their personal space.

Rooftops at Night

The rooftop visit was quite eye-opening and reaffirmed a lot of the information I had received via the book from Stefan Canham and Rufina Wu. However, being there in person also made me see the rooftop communities differently than how I had seen them when I left. My first models of the rooftops were quite abstract, open floor plans of the density. But being there in person you realize that this density continues into the tightness of the corridors through which you pass to gain access to each home. I also noticed that the materiality of each rooftop slum is almost uniform made of sheet metal, not of a variety of different materials as I had first interpreted. In addition, my research had made it appear that per rooftop, the size of slum homes is quite uniform. However, the variance in size of rooms on each rooftop is quite large, with some being two or three times the size of others. We also learned on our visit that residents share communal bathrooms and kitchens amongst one another such that their home is normally simply one large room with a refrigerator and small table on one side and a bed and smaller furniture on the other.  But the biggest impression I got from the visit was that the corridors and 3-d quality of the rooftop slum communities is that it is like entering into dark tunnels with small bits of light directing you to the entries to each slum unit. In a way, it made me think of what I have always thought it would be like to visit the Thermal Baths in Vals by Peter Zumthor. There was something unique about this space and the contrast between light and dark that I enjoyed greatly. Perhaps this was only because we visited at night, but I definitely want to try to capture this feeling in a model or drawing to express what I felt when walking through the community.

As the day came to a close, we left the rooftop slums and went to Causeway Bay to join the rest of the Urban Design course and watch the horse races at Happy Valley. Having left one of the most extreme spaces of poverty I think anyone can experience in Hong Kong, and moving into a completely separate world of wealth and foreigners was a strange feeling. Happy Valley was almost all Americans or English speakers, or wealthy Chinese men gambling on horse races : I felt a bit disgusted that this type of disparity could exist so blatantly. 

Hong Kong Day 4 | Sham Shui Po + OMA Visit

Having spent the first few days taking in Hong Kong and exploring other aspects of its culture, I decided to go see the district I was most interested in : Sham Shui Po. When I got off the metro and crossed to Apliu Street it really was like entering another world. We saw technology markets, walked through alleyways, and explored entering tall structures such as the Dragon Center to try to get views of the rooftop slum communities. What I liked most about Sham Shui Po was that it was very obviously a non-tourist area. Considered the poorest district in Hong Kong, the streets are lined with market stalls selling everything from technology to LED lights to fabrics, interspersed with the occasional staircase that brings one up to the housing of the building above. 

When one enters the Dragon Center, escalators take you up higher and higher into this nine-floor shopping center. The view outward to Sham Shui Po becomes a story in itself: one of the poverty of the rooftops visible through the modern and industrial glass façade of this new development. The image really is worth 1,000 words as you wonder how developers can create a building so out of touch with its surroundings.


The Rooftops | From Street Level 

Using my first day just to wander and take in Sham Shui Po, we made our way back towards the MTR to head to Central where we had a meeting with OMA. At the meeting we were exposed to two of the new projects of OMA: one to propose a new design for the existing MTR stations and one for the Stock Exchange in Shenzhen. The proposal for the MTR stations seemed very fitting at first, filled with new advertisement boards and with a new roof design that would make MTR station entries very visible from the street; but it also was quite terrifying. To see the influence of the clients’ vision on the design, it was no wonder to me anymore that I found the amount of advertising in Hong Kong overwhelming. The entire scheme considered new spaces to advertise Adidas or other companies to the thousands of passer-by. It did, however, also take some interesting new approaches to how to organize the circulation in the MTR stations, which I appreciated having already felt lost many times trying to find my way to a particular entry or exit in the madness of the MTR stations in Hong Kong. Post-OMA we reconvened as a studio and enjoyed a delicious dinner in Central where we discussed our projects and tried to make a plan to see particular sites together if people were interested in the same space. 

Hong Kong Day 3 | Fishing Culture in Stanley + Aberdeen

Interested in potentially juxtaposing my research on the rooftop slums in Hong Kong with fishing villages, I decided to devote my first day to understanding the importance of  water in Hong Kong culture. I had already been exposed to it a bit yesterday in Lamma, but I knew from previous research that Stanley and Aberdeen, located on the southern side of Hong Kong Island, also have strong connections to the “sea culture” in Hong Kong.

Stanley Market - "Tourist Trap"

Traveling with two classmates from other units, we began our explorations in Stanley. The local bus took about an hour, leaving the hustling streets of Kowloon and entering the outskirts of Hong Kong Island. The bus ride there was quite exciting as we were exposed to drastic contrasts in social class and building typologies. Along the route, we passed many large superblocks, but as we got closer to Stanley it was obvious that this side of Hong Kong was different.  The streets grew more quiet, and the cars around us smelled of upper class, mixed in with the occasional local bus traveling the winding roads through the mountains. For the first time, I saw houses located within the mountains rather than tall towering structures for residences. It was also early on this bus ride that I saw my first rooftop slum close to the western edge of Hong Kong Island. The stark contrast between these two images in my mind was a bit surreal.

Aberdeen Harborfront

Stanley itself was very disappointing, a tourist trap at best. The only thing to really see in the town was a local market, but even this felt extremely unauthentic. Having been disappointed by Stanley, we bought ourselves frozen yogurts and took the bus back towards Aberdeen Harbor. Aberdeen Harbor was a much more exciting part of town! The harbor was notorious for holding the Dragon Boat races once a year, although we didn’t see any dragon boats around. Instead, we saw a small boating village alongside the waterfront. Every house was raised on stilts and had its own fishing boat and fish restaurant. Adjacent to the row of homes was a large fish market that had just closed down and was getting cleaned up. With the sun going down, we wandered through the market, surrounded left and right by hundreds of fish condensed into small tanks in which they were bound to suffocate and just waiting to be handed off to the trucks coming through for collection. Our day almost over, we made our way over a sky walkway after the market and into a small neighborhood where we caught the local bus back to Central.

Restaurant in Aberdeen Harbor

From Central, we took the MTR back to our hostel and gathered a group to experience Temple Market and the street culture of Dai Pai Dongs. It was an interesting market, and the food was delicious, but I was not convinced this was a real Dai Pai Dong experience as everyone around us was obviously tourists and it felt unauthentic. 

Hong Kong Day 2 | Lamma Island + Filipinos

We began the day by traveling by ferry to Central District to watch the well-known event that many of us had researched before the trip: the take-over of HSBC by Filipino maids. The spectacle happens every Sunday, but it was far greater than I could have ever imagined. From the research, I thought that the Filipinos just remain below HSBC; but in fact they gather all over Central District: beneath the sky walkways, underneath building alcoves, in plazas, and the list goes on. Every corner we turned, more Filipinos were informally gathering in public spaces. The experience was splendid to observe, and it mad me miss my Filipino nanny back home who feels like family. I tried to take in the moment, able to recognize some of the words in Tagalong as the women took over the street level; playing cards, eating food, and laughing hysterically with one another.

As afternoon approached, we met up with the entire UD program below the HSBC building and headed to Lamma Island. The journey to the ferry posed an interesting experiment: can we get to the ferry terminal only using elevated walkways? Indeed, the answer was yes. The experiment made me realize that my initial research on Hong Kong Island, and the loss of the human scale at street level to the transportation, was an important layer of Hong Kong culture. The juxtaposition of this realization and the informal takeover of the street level by the Filipinos emphasizes the need for human scale to be reconsidered in Central (a point well on my mind as I am reading Jan Gehl’s Cities for People).

Forty-five minutes later, we arrived on Lamma Island. Lamma is located just to the southwest of Hong Kong Island and is notorious for its beautiful hiking paths and local fishing culture. We entered Lamma through a small village on the waterfront, with a few stilt houses and a marketplace. From here, we hiked to the other side of the island where we were told there was a delicious seafood restaurant we had to experience. The paths meandered and the slope only seemed to get higher and higher, I started to think a requirement of the trip should have been to be fit J Although the path was grueling at times, the views were well worth it. The best part of the journey was happening upon a beautiful beach where we decided to relax for a small period of time and take in the scenery. I enjoyed the view from this beach because on one side you had the scenic mountains with the sea behind, and on the other the mountain was taken over by a factory. Although the trip did not feel fully related to my project, I enjoyed being away from the city and experiencing another side of Hong Kong: a more relaxed, hiking environment with few residents and simple structures. 

Hong Kong Day 1 | My First Impressions

As we drove in to Hong Kong on a local bus, I was excited to see the city we had been researching for weeks now. Turn by turn there were new large superblocks to be seen, towering above the beautiful mountainous landscapes. As we got further into the city, the traffic picked up and the possibility of ever finding our hostel at Chunking Mansions felt minute.

The Chunking Mansions are, to use China Mieville’s words, truly a city within a city. The building is recognizable by a giant flashy gold sign from Nathan Road and only able to be entered after being bombarded by local tailors, camera salesmen, and purse-makers screaming for your attention. Once inside, you feel slightly disoriented as you enter alleys filled with vendors (most selling phones or food) and search for the elevators to the building block you need. It is evident that everyone inside these halls knows each other somehow, and is a part of a tight-knit community. An obvious outsider, I felt quite uncomfortable and intrusive.

Having survived the debacle of getting almost students and their luggage up an elevator, we checked in to the Australian Guest House of floor 16. Once we checked into the hostel, if one can even call it that, it was time to rest off the jetlag. I had been halfway across the world from Mexico to DC to LHR to Hong Kong, crossing too many time zones to count: it is safe to say my body was exhausted.

  

I pondered about my first impressions of this large city, skeptical about whether I would grow to like it. From my first impressions, I had not found this my kind of city: the thousands of people in the streets was overwhelming, the faded colors of the superblocks made them appear quite mundane, and the amount of advertising and technology seemed endless. I’ve never been one for a fast-paced city, but I could tell this is exactly what Hong Kong is and fell asleep hoping that I would find its charm sometime soon. 

Winter Break | Rooftops in the Yucatan + Art Exhibits in DC

While on vacation in Mexico, we were driving through the Yucatan and passing through many small villages opposite to full-scale resorts. The contrast between the rich and the poor here was very evident, but I am writing this post because I also noticed that rooftop conditions exist in Mexico. In these smaller villages, many people used the rooftop to hang their laundry and had small porches on them with a bench or two.

T+64_, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro 2010

I also managed to see two small art exhibits when back home in DC over the holiday. The first was an installation at the Corcoran called Where We’ve Been, Where We Are Going, Why. The Australian artists, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, experiment with Lego pieces to make maps of particular places in the world and their density maps. The work they do includes using consumerist culture and materials we find on the shelves everyday as inspiration points for expressing where we are going and the hold that globalization has on us, as people.

A Boy for Meg, Andy Warhol 1962

The second exhibit was in the National Gallery of Art in DC, and was a display of Andy Warhol’s early work titled Warhol: Headlines. The exhibit was part of a larger awareness project on the National Mall of Andy Warhol and how he inspired many pop artists after him. It displayed mostly how he made his early works and the effort he put in to recreating newspaper headlines in a new way by often leaving out words he found created a bias on the story. Although not so relevant to my project, it was nice to see the obsession he had with trying to get it right.