You will be graded on including photographs as documentary evidence of your work. Upload the following:

1 overhead view and 2 side view perspectives drawings AND any preliminary designs made

3 or more photos of your building model from different angles (including wide angle and close up photographs)

Written Reflection:

Explain who your design is for. Who makes up the particular community? (You may have to do some research or think back to Ms. Chan’s talk)

Our design is built to accommodate the refugees of Hong Kong who often are put on hold and don’t have proper homes or space to live and comfortably enjoy themselves. Sometimes they need to scrape their way through, but our community center will provide housing as well as schools and proper entertainment facilities for them.

Explain what your design is inspired by. What ideas and inspirations helped shape your design? Use specific examples from your model to share.

We wanted to give a cool, clean look to our buildings that blend in with the rest of Hong Kong but with a nice twist. We started with some small ideas, like having tall buildings and a large field to play in, until we were inspired by the Hong Kong flag’s flower, and decided to make out buildings in the shape of the petals around a round field.

Explain where you envision your design to be located (in Hong Kong) AND how that shaped your building design (Think back to Mr. Leung’s talk)

I envision it being located somewhere with very busy cities, so the refugees can go visit other places and be able to access other resources that we don’t have available. So somewhere like Kowloon.

Explain why your building is relevant. What needs are you meeting and how are you doing that?

Our buildings meet many standard needs like housing (4 of our 5 buildings are purely apartments) while there are also education centers, exercise rooms, libraries and medical attention in the other buildings to help the refugees meet their everyday living requirements. There’s also a field and walking area in the center for people to stretch their legs and interact with each other.

On the tops of the buildings, there are greenhouses that can provide not only beauty but also can be used to grow food.

How are you addressing the need of beauty in your design? (How is your design contributing to making life more beautiful?)

As I said, the greenhouses above can provide some beauty (we added some small flowers there, if you can see) along with a nice, bushy field to walk around. I guess all the buildings themselves are pretty, with large glass windows to look out of with a modern design. (We didn’t get time to make them though, so you can’t see in our model.)

What design element are your most proud of?

I’m proud of the petal shaped buildings because they were really hard to bend and create, and the glasshouses on top were also hard to stick together without looking too messy. We had to create the petal shapes out of foamboard, two for every building, and then glue paper to form around it’s shape. It took a lot of time and patience. And the glass was harder, as we didn’t know how to stick pieces together without it looking weird/obviously messy (like sticking tape on it.) It did end up looking pretty messy, haha, but we had to spend a long time holding the pieces together and waiting for the glue to dry.

What design element needs further refinement and improvement?

I think our glasshouses could need some work as their edges are not smoothly aligned. And I think if we had more time we could put in some more peek-in rooms, like we did with a library on one building.

In your opinion, how important is architecture? Provide a definition of architecture and explain its relevance in your life and in our society.

How important is architecture? Well, technically buildings will function the same, despite pretty or not pretty. We could all have square, brick, boring houses and it’d function the same way. But is it interesting? The beauty of architecture is the fact that it brings great beauty to buildings. It gives character to each shop, home and complex. Architecture, good architecture, is what makes looking outside worth doing.

Who is it for?

It’s for the students of HKIS to play in, including the middle schoolers (to play basketball or soccer) or for the lower primary (to use the playground/space.) It can also be a place for people of any age to gather/use for school activities.

What is the design?

It’s designed somewhat circle-like, all the stairs leading down to it, and it’s very centered in the school so it’s easily accessible and noticeable. It’s very large, making it easy for many people to gather there. It also supports the floors above it with poles and holds a place for a playground and basketball hoops. And because it’s in the center, everyone on every floor can notice what’s going on in the amphitheater at any time.

Where is it?

It’s in the center of the HKIS school, below the first floor. Many stairs lead down to it, and the classrooms of each floor circle around it.

Why was it made?

It was made for the students to play in, and also a space for the entire school to gather if necessary. It’s ideal to resonate sound and easy for everyone to see the middle because of the ways the stairs/layers are stacked on top each other.

Do you notice anything that could be improved about the space? Add your critique about the space.

The stairs leading down to the amphitheater are scary when you walk down them. There’s some normal, short stairs but next to it are large, widely space stone stairs and it’s probable that someone could trip/misstep because of the wide gap between stairs and fall down the stairs and hurt themselves/others/their belongings. Maybe have the small stairs’s sides extend sideways, getting rid of the large stairs?

Upload a photo(s) of your selected architectural form.

Who is the architect? Where is it located? What year was it constructed? What materials were used?

It was designed by I. M. Pei and L.C Pei, who used glass, steel, aluminium, granite, and reinforced concrete to build it in April 18, 1985. (It opened in 1990.) It’s currently located in Central, Hong Kong.

What is the history of the architectural form? What is the purpose?

It’s composed of triangular frames to build a tall glass building marked with ‘X’s across it. It’s form was actually based off of bamboo to represent “livelihood and prosperity.” (Though sometimes it might look like a meat cleaver, so it’s nicknamed  “一把刀” (which means ‘one knife.’)

Share memorable features or stories that make it more interesting to you.

One of the reasons the architect chose to handle this project was because his father used to be a manager of the Bank of China.

Also, it appears in the film Battleship, where an alien ship crashes into the building, causing it to collapse and kill many. It’s also shown in Star Trek: Voyager as Starfleet Communications Research Center.

Upload final images of your project from different angles for your final post for the unit

Evaluate your overall work by examining your idea (how did you develop your idea to completion?) and technique (how successful was your technique?)

I started with the idea of questioning our set beliefs: How do we know if God is real? Is religion just an attempt at bringing our own answers? Or some sort of explanation why we’re alive? To give purpose? Also the quote on one of the first pages inspired me and I really wanted to include it into my artwork, causing me to use the speech bubble and draw the human. The idea slowly developed and along the way I decided to cut out important words to show the overall feeling of the piece along with adding at the bottom of the book the ‘Question Everything’ statement to help inspire others, and cutting out a circle in the ‘God’ part of the title to show a bit of a curious sneak-peek if looking at my artwork.

I used the cutting knife a lot, cutting into the book pages an cutting out shapes or around words. I think my cutting technique and skill was probably not very neat, as there is a lot of rips around the edges and the lines sometimes are crooked, but I think I did an overall nice job. The pasting and painting of the book were fine and turned out the way I wanted. I feel, overall, pretty proud of my project. It as very interesting (especially with my controversial topic) and I hope to do it again soon.

Upload a photo of your book project so far.

What are you doing to transform the book?

I’m cutting into the book (making a large rectangle in it) while leaving a few words that I feel are significant to the novel sticking out of the borders to help show the overall emotion of it. Afterwards, I plan to paint the background page of the book (I’m not so sure about that idea though) and then use my cut-out of the human profile (I might color it black) to glue into the book, with the speech bubble (saying “isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”) to be hung over said person.

How are your ideas original?

I’ve come up with the idea on my own, after seeing many other different book-art evaluations. I’ve been inspired by other photos and I’ve actually taken the idea of ‘cutting a rectangle into my book’ from one of the photos I saw where the artist did that, so I guess technically that idea isn’t original. But I saw how some people make 3D structures and decided to make my own 2D cut out of a person, and decided to cut out a speech bubble of the quotes as I thought it’d be cool for someone to say the quote.

What techniques are you using to create your sculpture? (Collage, newspaper form, diorama, etc)

I’m using layering (as the layering of the pages/the words sticking out) and painting the background (I was thinking of using watercolors and sprinkling salt on it to show a cool effect?) And also I’m using the simple cutting-and-pasting techniques.

Evaluate your craftsmanship – how much care and attention to detail are you putting into your sculpture?

I’m gonna be real honest, I don’t think my pages are cut really nicely. The first few are cut neatly with straight lines, but as you get lower the pages are a bit more ripped or the lines aren’t as straight. I guess one could interpret the messy cutting as ridged panic or uncomfortableness, as the book is talking about how God doesn’t exist?

But overall, I think it looks okay. If you don’t look too closely, the edges of the book look fine. I’m probably not as careful as I should be when cutting out the pages because I don’t have a lot of patience, but.

Evaluate your time management – how are you using your time?

I think I’m using my time pretty nicely. I’m almost done with my project, I just need to paint the background/figure and it all together. I try to use my time efficiently when working on projects.

What improvements could you make?

Besides finishing it? I could definitely make the pages of the book’s edges cut neater, because there’s bits and pieces sticking out. And the circle I cut out in the cover of the book (in the O of God) is not really smooth and could use work.