Journal: Automation in Construction
Date: May 2021 (accreted for publication)
Publication Date: to be confirmed
ISBN:  to be confirmed
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Abstract:
The use of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies has increased recently, due to the equipment update and the mature technology. For architectural design, especially in digital fabrication projects, more designers begin to integrate AR methods to achieve the visualization in the process. To help unskilled labors for holographic on-site previewing and instruction training, experimental and practice-based studies in AR for the architectural digital fabrication have emerged in recent years. Now, it is a great opportunity to discuss the topic of AR in architectural digital fabrication. By presenting a statistical review of AR technology in architecture projects, this literature review aims to review ongoing research and provide pathways for further research in architectural digital fabrication. This review article is based on information found in journal publications and conference papers in the fields of architecture, engineering, robotics, and digital fabrication, published to date (from 2010 to 2020). The review narrows the literature within these papers by filtering 84 articles through the keyword “Augmented Reality”, “Digital Fabrication” and “Assembly”. The selected articles can be categorized based on the most use of AR function in architectural digital fabrication into an order of the following three classifications with the most significant growth in the last years: (A) AR 3D holographic instruction, (B) AR data sharing, (C) AR for Human-Computer interaction. The information collected from these articles within their classifications is meant to give insight into the current state-of-the- art of AR in the architectural digital fabrication area, as well as to summarize how the topic has matured and developed over time in the research and industry literature. This article has not only analyzed the existing literature but also highlighted new emerging fields in AR research and the future trends of AR function in architectural digital fabrication.

‍Keywords: Augmented Reality (AR), Architecture, Digital Fabrication

Conference: SimAUD 2021, 12th annual Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2021 – Sat, 17 Apr 2021

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Abstract:
The paper aims to address methods of harnessing energy data from a selected building over a period of circa 2.5 months in an attempt to monitor the building’s functions in relation to energy post construction. The case study described in this paper is the outcome of an investigation which has explored digital computation, live data collection, and live data translation during a collaborative interdisciplinary research programme in the UK. For the data collecting methods a customized equipment with low-tech sensory systems have been developed and applied through the use of an open-source programming environment. The outcome of the collection stage has been analysed audibly via JavaScript and MaxMSP, results of which have served as inputs for the visual data translation. The sensory devices and customized operating system have been applied by employing rapid prototyping, essentially fabricating with 3D printing. The research’s method explores the system application for the translation of intangible data into an audiovisual, human perceivable medium.

‍Keywords: Digital representation and visualization, prediction and evaluation in design

English Edition: Eternal City. Rome in the Photographs Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects Milan: Skira, 2018
Italian Edition: Eternal City. Roma nella collezione fotografica del Royal Institute of British Architects with G. Musto (eds.) Milan: Skira, 2018
Date: 2018
ISBN:  ISBN: 9788857239187 (ENG); ISBN: 9788857239187 (ITA)
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Abstract:
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) was founded in London in 1834 for the advancement of architecture, assembling its collection of architectural photographs from the outset. It is now one of the largest in the world. The book brings together a carefully selected set of images from the many thousands the Institute holds of the city of Rome, from its landscape to close archaeological detail, through the intermediate scale of architecture. The photographers featured — James Anderson, Tim Benton, Richard Bryant, Ralph Deakin, Ivy and Ivor de Wolfe, Richard Pare, Monica Pidgeon and Edwin Smith — are exclusively British. Their images date from the birth of the medium to the present day.

Book Chapter: “Avant Garde Aaltos” in Aalto Beyond Finland: Projects, Buildings and Networks, E. Laaksonen and S. Micheli (eds.), Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2018, pp. 105-119
Date: 2018
ISBN:  ISBN: 9789522671516
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Abstract: The contribution of Alvar and Aino Aalto to the Modern Movement, and their legacy for contemporary design, has been explored in detail by many scholars, who shed light on their theoretical approach to architectural processes and the components that informed the design of the Finnish architects. But how did the evolution towards the modern language happen? How were Nordic, classical precedents suddenly turned into an original modernity? The paper suggests a re-assessment of the creative process of the architects, to explain how the Aaltos were able to absorb the most relevant avant-garde work of their time.  It analyses  Alvar Aalto’s undervalued attention to the publications of Le Corbusier, the Aaltos’ travel to Paris in 1928 and the related architectural records in photographs, the correspondence with their close Hungarian friend Moholy-Nagy, and their own experimental photography.

Conference: Slices of Everyday Lives, University of Cambridge
Title: Made in Hong Kong: the (re)production of publicness in cinematic urban topography of contemporary Hong Kong
‍Book: THE EVERYDAY IN VISUAL CULTURE: SLICES OF LIVES, edited by François Penz and Janina Schupp, tba.
‍Location: University of Cambridge
‍Date: 19, 20 September 2019

‍Abstract: This paper explores the (re)production of publicness depicted in contemporary Hong Kong urban cinema. I argue that Hong Kong urban cinema has demonstrated a cinematic urban topography of the city and the fluid urban space engendered by everyday practices.

This raises several questions in relation to what the socio-spatial productions are in the city, and how films represent these transformations of the urban spaces against the particular political, cultural and historical background. In order to demonstrate this, I will draw particular attention to several local films produced from 1979 to 2018 - from Hong Kong New Wave to the Film Development Fund project- to discuss the urban space in two dimensions: the formal urban plan and the informal socio-spatial practices. By mapping the geographical relations between Hong Kong city and cinema and analysing the urban spaces represented in the films, I will examine how Hong Kong urban cinema shows deliberate layers of the city in terms of physical, social and psychological factors. Then, I will shed light on the cinematic representation of the spatial appropriations of public space and the blurred public-private boundary in Hong Kong, as well as the reduction of this fluidity against a consumerism and privatised urban environment.

I will conclude by showing how cinematic materials could be applied in urban studies relating to the historical urban milieu and a chronological study of everyday spatial appropriations in Hong Kong. At the same time, based on a general consideration of the local social background and influences of both colonial and Chinese culture, this study offers an insight and an interdisciplinary visual method to examine the relationship between the urban strategic plan and people’s everyday socio-spatial practices in a dynamic urban context.

‍Keywords: everyday Life, Hong Kong, cinema, publicness,

Conference: AHRA 2020: Housing and the City, 17th Annual International Conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association
Title: 'The Way We Dance': the (re)production of rooftop space in Hong Kong urban cinema'
Location:  University of Nottingham, Virtual Conference
Dates: 19, 20, 21 November 2020

Abstract
‍This paper explores the cinematic representation of the socio-spatial (re)production of rooftop spaces in contemporary Hong Kong, through analysing series of Hong Kong city films. I argue that rooftop, as a peripheral urban space in vertical Hong Kong, has historically provided a material and social environment for everyday tactical practices within its particular cultural and historical background.

In the paper, I will draw particular attention to several local films produced after 1979 - all portraying people’s everyday practices, social structures, architecture and cityscape of contemporary Hong Kong. I will examine the historical context of the appropriations of rooftop space in the city, mainly the Central area and the Kowloon Island, from its colonial plan by British planners such as Sir Patrick Abercrombie, to the Mass Migration Wave. With this urban cultural context and the affinity between the city and the cinema since Hong Kong New Wave, I will discuss the cinematic representation of appropriated rooftop space mainly in two types: rooftop as a playground (He’s a Woman, She’s a Man, 1994, Truth or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat, 2003; The Way We Dance, 2013, etc.), and rooftop as a settlement (such likeProtégé, 2007 and Mad world, 2017). These films depict the rooftop as not merely an extra layer of spatial production of urban space in terms of its physical, social and psychological factors, but also a space of empowerment, through everyday tactics, for the people to reclaim their right to the city against a consumerism and privatized urban context. Then, by understanding the blurred public-private boundary in the Hong Kong cinematic urban topography, it argues that, along with other tactical practices in the city, the appropriations of the rooftop space empower the local people and provide a spatial and ideological basis of the city’s fluid identity, or as Abbas states, of its ‘culture of disappearance’.

Keywords:
Rooftop, social (re)production, cinema, Hong Kong

Image Source:
‍AHRA poster, Image: IBeB, Heide & von Beckerath, Photography: Andrew Alberts.
Still from The Way We Dance, Copyright: Eyes Front Pictures

Output: Research Documentary Film
Title: Coronavirus Pandemic: Making Safer Emergency Hospitals
Theme: Design Implications and Applications that Reduce the Concentration of Airborne Droplets and Aerosols
Director:  Monika Koeck (CineTecture)
Executive Producer: Richard Koeck (CAVA)
External Research Team: Prof Andrew Woods (Cambridge University, BPI) and Prof Alan Short (Cambridge University, Architecture)
Dates: April 2020

The Film
The film was produced in collaboration with Prof Andrew Woods (Cambridge University, BPI) and Prof Alan Short (Cambridge University, Architecture), whose research aims to intervene in the current Covid-19 pandemic with the development of a series of practical architectural design solutions. Monika and Richard have produced a creative research output – using sophisticated digital film and animation techniques – that show how the concentration of airborne virus, experienced by patients and healthcare workers in buildings and makeshift hospitals in the wake of the Corona Virus crisis all over the world, can be significantly reduced.

Funding
The film was jointly funded by the University of Liverpool (Covid19 ODA Response Grant/GCRF) and BP Institute, Cambridge University and forms part of a major initiative to Impact architectural design and public policy in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Awards
The documentary film informed health authorities and governments world-wide. It was presented to The World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva with whom the Cambridge and CAVA & CineTecture team were in direct conversation. The film won the prestigious Award of Merit from 2020 The Impact DOCS Awards Competition in California and won the tve 2020 Global Sustainability Film Award in the digital innovation category "Artificial Intelligence (AI)".

Keywords:
Covid-19, hospital design, airborne  droplets, aerosols

Title: If These Walls Could Talk (Project Report)
Theme:  Location-based Volumetric (3D holograms) visitor experience on UNESCO heritage site
Place: St George's Hall, Liverpool
Dates: June 2019

Much discussion surrounds the creative and economic potential of immersive technologies, such as mixed reality (referred to here as XR). Recently published figures predict a £160 billion global market in the field (Kilkelly/ Immerse UK, 2019) offering the potential to significantly transform economies, particularly within those countries investing in its research and development. Sectors such as architecture, design, arts, culture, engineering, education and entertainment see considerable potential in the ability of mixed reality technologies to facilitate the creation of immersive content and modes of experience, resulting in new value propositions and ultimately new value itself.

Liverpool is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) with protected areas in its city centre and along its historic waterfront; it is proud of its heritage assets (e.g. listed buildings); and has a high density of cultural institutions – yet, it is short on funding. Consequently, as with many other cities in the UK, it is increasingly dependent on its visitor economy. It therefore needs to carefully consider strategies that will enhance the city’s heritage and boost investment, tourism and regeneration. Liverpool City Council is keen to ‘ensure the effective protection of the WHS for present and future generations’ and plans to encourage this by establishing a morevaluedroleandactiveprofilefortheWHSinLiverpool, through its promotion, interpretation and celebration (Anderson J, WHS Management Plan 2017- 2014).

This report describes the process and method of creating the world’s first volumetrically filmed (hologram), mixed reality (HoloLens) heritage visitor experience, purposed-designed for a Grade 1 listed building and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Keywords:
Digital heritage, immersive technology, augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, architectural heritage, visitor economy, visitor experience

Conference: AMPS 2020 Canterbury, Architecture, Media, Politics and Society
Theme: Connections: Exploring Heritage, Architecture, Cities, Art, Media Digital Heritage
Dates: 29-30 June 2020
Journal: AMPS Proceedings Journal Series, ISBN, 2398-9467.

This research aims to explore the use of crowdsourced images and their role in the virtual reconstruction of Cultural Heritage (CH) monuments through retracing visitors’ footsteps in the main trail of the ancient city of Petra. Jordan has one of the wealthiest and most unique CH collections in the Middle East. It has numerous archaeological sites which are distributed across the country. The capital of Nabateans is one of the oldest cities in the world.

UNESCO declared that many cultural heritage sites in the Middle East face considerable threats due to ageing, natural corrosion, vandalism and looting, regional conflicts, mass tourism, hostile urbanisation, random expansion policies, natural disasters, and environmental forces. In terms of the visitors’ experiences, the off-the-shelf devices of smartphones and tablets users guarantee remarkable computing abilities, which are supported by high-end technologies of capturing, geo-location, and high network bandwidth for sharing images instantly. Developments in the 21st century have witnessed the emergence of new types of digital cameras and powerful smartphones which have moved the technology of images capturing to a higher level. Also, the affordable price of these devices made this technology available to many people around the world. All these factors together could make the crowdsourcing method efficient and achievable in representing and documenting CH sites, specifically for those sites that might be already inaccessible or destroyed. There is an enormous number of images on the Internet containing the most extensive and most varied image collection that is collected from different places around the world.

Consequently, this research highlights how the CH preservation domain can take the advantage to exploit a significant available source of visual data from the perspective of 3D virtual reconstruction and digital representation. Also, it investigates the role of crowdsourced images and public domain imagery in reconstructing different CH assets by using 3D photogrammetric reconstruction and SfM algorithms based on retracing the visitors’ movement and their experience within some known trails in the archaeological park of Petra. Finally, it sheds light on the importance of the role of the public in digitising and documenting archaeological sites and valuable monuments through their memories and visits, particularly in the current era, when many historical sites in a part of this world are inaccessible due to wars, regional clashes and aside from the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords:
Crowdsourced images, 3D photogrammetric reconstruction, virtual heritage, virtual travel, Petra, visitor experience,  immersive technology

Conference: AMPS 2020 Dubai, Architecture, Media, Politics and Society
Theme: Rapid Cities - Responsive Architectures: A virtual conference examining design, planning & construction in the modern world
Place: Virtual / American University in Dubai
Dates: 22-24 November 2020

This research project, entitled AR Digi-Component, tries to digitalize the traditional architectural components and combines Augmented Reality (AR) technologies to explore new possibilities for architectural design and assembly. AR and Digitalize components will help to achieve a real-time immersive design and an AR-assisted robotic fabrication process through AR environments. As part of the AR Digi-Component project, we created an experimental design prototype in which designers’ gestures are being identified in AR real-time immersive design process, and a fabrication prototype in which traditional 2D drawings are being replaced by 3D on-site holographic guidance, followed by an assembly process in which robotic operations are being controlled by humans within an AR simulation to enhance the assembly efficiency and safety. In this paper, we are sharing the preliminary research results of such AR-assisted tests, for which we used a UR10 Robotic arm in combination with Microsoft HoloLens as well as in terms of software Rhino, HAL Robotics,FURobot, PX Simulate, and Fologram plugin in Grasshopper, to demonstrate new kind of applications and workflow of AR technology for real-time, immersive design and robotic fabrication.

Keywords:
‍Augmented Reality (AR); immersive design; holographic assembly instruction; robotic fabrication; real-time interactive modification

Prof Koeck has been commissioned by Routledge to produce the monograph "Inhabiting the Image of the City: interspatial encounters between architecture, people and image" due to be published in 2021.

When we ask what makes a city, practicing architects, engineers and planners tend to think of the built environment as a physical construct; a quantifiable organization of space, or as a network of buildings and spaces in which people reside and whose voids they inhabit. Other city experts, such as urban sociologists and economists, tend to see cities as a place in which strangers meet, communication and transactions happen, ideas are formed, and money is exchanged (e.g. Arendt; Habermas; Jacobs; Sennett). But how do people see and make sense of the city when they do not belong to such an expert group? The term image in the title of this book is used in its multiple dimensions; that is, as in the representational image itself, but also as in the image that is created in the context of placemaking-branding activities. The tensions that inhere in this multiplicity leads to a series of questions. What forms our perceived image of the city in everyday, ordinary urban life situations and practices?  In which ways does the image itself intersect with architecture and the city? Do we, in fact, inhabit the image of the city and, if so, how?

This is a book about urban theory, written from an architectural and (moving)-image-making perspective. It explores how we make sense of and shape the city, thereby linking historical perspectives of image taking, representation and consumption with present-day architectural, economic, and creative practices. It draws inspiration from Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City (1960), in the sense that it aims to radically change our perspective with which we see the city. It challenges our often static notion of the image (as physical and mental manifestation) and regards it as profoundly non-static, yet at the same time as the lowest common denominator in a complex system of architectural montage and dynamic place-making. All are concerns that will become particularly important as we move into a future in which virtual (VR) and augmented realities (AR) increasingly “merge” moving images with space and thus challenge our perception of architecture and the city.

Image Source:  1. Illustration of the camera mechanism for the Cineorama, 1900 Paris Expo. Louis Poyet, Scientific American Supplement, no. 1287. 2. The Colosseum, Regent's Park, London (1827-74, "A picturesque guide to the Regent's park".

Title of article: 'Maps and tours as metaphors for conceptionalizing urban place representation for marketing/branding purpose'

Critical views of place branding are emerging which focus on its unexplored consequences on the physical and social fabric of places. These more critical approaches reveal place branding as an essentially political activity, serving hidden agendas and marginalizing social groups. Scholars and practitioners can no longer ignore the need for more responsible and socially sensitive approaches to cater for a wider range of stakeholders, and which fully acknowledge the importance of resident participation in decision-making.
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Warnaby, Koeck and Medway consider de Certeau’s concepts of maps and tours to portray the ‘spatial stories’ of urban places for marketing/branding purposes. The current emphasis on visual representation, encompassed within the ‘map’ metaphor, is we argue, indicative of a ‘top-down’ perspective on place representation. We suggest that de Certeau’s ‘tour’ metaphor more effectively accomplishes the articulation and narration of the actual experience of a locale. We go on to argue that technological developments have enabled the potential participation of a wider array of stakeholders in the creation of place image, and its representation. This places greater emphasis on developing a co-created experience in and of place, with implications for how urban locales are represented, through more participatory, ‘bottom-up’ approaches. This has implications for developing more overt performative dimensions to place marketing, as it moves from an emphasis on materiality (via the static place representation of ‘maps’) to a focus on storytelling and movement (i.e. ‘tours’).

David Ogle’s work featured in: "Sculpture Shock: Site Specific Interventions in Subterranean, Ambulatory and Historic Contexts" published by The Royal British Society of Sculptors.

The book documents David Ogle’s (CAVA) work as part of The Royal British Society of Sculptors’ Sculpture Shock award (2013-2015) for temporary site-specific interventions. This project took sculpture out of the often-clinical confines of the gallery space and into non-traditional environments, with a view to reintegrating art into everyday life. The site-specific interventions took the form of installation, performance, socially engaged and object-based work in media as diverse as light, sound and text into unusual sites: subterranean (the unseen world beneath our city), ambulatory (without physical confines in movement through space and time) and historic (an illustrious building in London).

This richly illustrated publication is contextualised throughout by: Dave Beech, writer, curator and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art; Richard Cork, British art historian, editor, critic and broadcaster; and Sarah Kent, former visual arts editor of Time Out and the ICA's Director of Exhibitions.

Cinematic Urban Geographies book explores many different facets of urban fragmentation through the medium of cinema and the moving image, as a contribution to our understanding of cities and their topographies. At the heart of this investigation is a concern for the filmic interpretation of maps, geographies, landmarks, topographies, and aerial photography amongst other things.

Cinematic Urban Geographies aims to explore the different ways in which cinema and the moving image contribute to our understanding of cities and their topographies. The worlds of maps, geographical studies and rigorous historical studies of cities – such as the Survey of London – are all part of what we would define as the ‘hard’ city: surveys of the urban landscape on the basis of physical evidence, which provides the necessary backbone to any serious urban investigation. Complementing this approach, we argue here that film provides remarkable evidence of the ‘soft’ side of the city, a term coined by Jonathan Raban (1974). ‘The city as we imagine it, […] soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps, in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture’.

In other words, if cinema stands for ‘the soft city of illusion’ which is as ‘real’ as the ‘hard’ city, what are the mechanisms through which this process is realised, and what does it tell us? And how might cinema provide the perceptual equipment to reveal the ‘hard side’ of the city also, and help us grasp the complexity of urban phenomena? What new methodological tools and approaches do we need to devise in order to tease out and elicit the encounter between the ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’ so that architects and planners as well as scholars can benefit from the insights gained?

The publication is forthcoming in 2015 with Palgrave MacMillan and will include contributions by Frederick Baker, Charlotte Brunsdon, Maurizio Cinquegrani, Richard Coyne, Ian Christie, Mathew Flintham, Michael Hrebeniak, Henry Keazor, Richard Koeck, Roland-François Lack, Chris Speed and Chris Barker, François Penz, Aileen Reid, Mark Shiel, Stavros Alifragkis and Giorgos Papakonstantinou, and Maureen Thomas.

Drawing on original documentation - sketches, photographs and the iconic axonometrics - the book explores the creative process of James Stirling: from the early inspirations of Liverpool’s docks to his devotion to Le Corbusier, acknowledging the fundamental role of the partnerships with James Gowan and Michael Wilford. Described by his mentor Colin Rowe as an architectural connoisseur, Stirling analyses the past through relentless observational skills and elaborates it as a source of creativity and as a context to respect. The most eccentric British architect leaves a legacy that is not confined to history alone, but it continues to be paradigmatic for generations of architects to come.

Inspiration and Process in Architecture is a series of monographs on key figures in modern and contemporary architecture. It offers a reading of the practice of design which emphasises the value of freehand drawing as part of the creative process. Each volume provides a different perspective, revealing insights and showing the various observation techniques languages, characters, forms and means of communication.

Digital technologies are radically distrupting our working world. During the Industrial Revolution, workers fought for the right to a work-life blance in which they could perform their eight hours of labour and then leave the factory gates. Today’s information woker labours within a ‘factory’ whose gates never close and work is continuously, tantalising closely to hand. Founder of the eight-hour movement in the UK, Robert Owen, coined the famous idiom ‘Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest’ in 1817. Nearly two centuries later, we have entered a restless, globalised dislocated working era, as the traditional model of the working day fades from view.

Time & Motion: Redefining Working Life presents a unique collection of essays, artworks and experimental design research projects which seek to critique this changing paradigm. Presented in three sections – Labour, Representation and Space – this book explores the cultural, artistic, economic and technological strands that make up our working world, and upon which contemporary artists and designers feel compelled to comment.

Richard Koeck's essay maps the cinematic history of "work environments" in film, giving insight into changing ideologies, architectures and spatial iconographies.

The essays of this book, published in by the Éditions de la Villette (Paris, 2013), are the proceedings of the 17th Rencontres de la Fondation Le Corbusier (Istanbul, Athens and Naples) for the centenary of Corbu’s voyage d’Orient in 1911.

Marco Iuliano contributed to the book with the article ‘Montage d’Orient’, a detailed analysis of a painting made by Le Corbusier in 1918, La Cheminée (The Fireplace): it is a representation of the Acropolis and of the Parthenon – that is considered by the architect to be his first painting. From 1918 until his old age, Le Corbusier used to paint every morning, before spending the afternoon in the architectural atelier. He clearly stated that the key to understand his architecture is his labour as a painter, referring especially at the creative process of the architectural composition. This paper, for the first time, overlaps the evidence seen on the painting with the written description of the temples on the Acropolis made by Le Corbusier in 1911 and only years later published. After a very attentive analysis, also with the aid of a reconstructive drawing, the small table of La Cheminée reveals itself as the assemblage of the architectural elements of the Acropolis and represents a key to the understanding of Le Corbusier’s mental structure, a direct link from the visual arts to architecture.

The essays of this book, published in by the Éditions de la Villette (Paris, 2013), are the proceedings of the 17th Rencontres de la Fondation Le Corbusier (Istanbul, Athens and Naples) for the centenary of Corbu’s voyage d’Orient in 1911.

Marco Iuliano contributed to the book with the article ‘Montage d’Orient’, a detailed analysis of a painting made by Le Corbusier in 1918, La Cheminée (The Fireplace): it is a representation of the Acropolis and of the Parthenon – that is considered by the architect to be his first painting. From 1918 until his old age, Le Corbusier used to paint every morning, before spending the afternoon in the architectural atelier. He clearly stated that the key to understand his architecture is his labour as a painter, referring especially at the creative process of the architectural composition. This paper, for the first time, overlaps the evidence seen on the painting with the written description of the temples on the Acropolis made by Le Corbusier in 1911 and only years later published. After a very attentive analysis, also with the aid of a reconstructive drawing, the small table of La Cheminée reveals itself as the assemblage of the architectural elements of the Acropolis and represents a key to the understanding of Le Corbusier’s mental structure, a direct link from the visual arts to architecture.

Conference: Slices of Everyday Lives, University of Cambridge
Title: Made in Hong Kong: the (re)production of publicness in cinematic urban topography of contemporary Hong Kong
‍Book: THE EVERYDAY IN VISUAL CULTURE: SLICES OF LIVES, edited by François Penz and Janina Schupp, tba.
‍Location: University of Cambridge
‍Date: 19, 20 September 2019

‍Abstract: This paper explores the (re)production of publicness depicted in contemporary Hong Kong urban cinema. I argue that Hong Kong urban cinema has demonstrated a cinematic urban topography of the city and the fluid urban space engendered by everyday practices.

This raises several questions in relation to what the socio-spatial productions are in the city, and how films represent these transformations of the urban spaces against the particular political, cultural and historical background. In order to demonstrate this, I will draw particular attention to several local films produced from 1979 to 2018 - from Hong Kong New Wave to the Film Development Fund project- to discuss the urban space in two dimensions: the formal urban plan and the informal socio-spatial practices. By mapping the geographical relations between Hong Kong city and cinema and analysing the urban spaces represented in the films, I will examine how Hong Kong urban cinema shows deliberate layers of the city in terms of physical, social and psychological factors. Then, I will shed light on the cinematic representation of the spatial appropriations of public space and the blurred public-private boundary in Hong Kong, as well as the reduction of this fluidity against a consumerism and privatised urban environment.

I will conclude by showing how cinematic materials could be applied in urban studies relating to the historical urban milieu and a chronological study of everyday spatial appropriations in Hong Kong. At the same time, based on a general consideration of the local social background and influences of both colonial and Chinese culture, this study offers an insight and an interdisciplinary visual method to examine the relationship between the urban strategic plan and people’s everyday socio-spatial practices in a dynamic urban context.

‍Keywords: everyday Life, Hong Kong, cinema, publicness,