Housing of Last Resort
—
Living in 100 Decibels
Adaptive Systems
in Sub-divided units
Master Design Studio
in collaboration of Prisca Hui
This studio addresses a prevalent yet hidden housing type of Hong Kong’s social and physical conditions of urban poverty — the Sub-Divided Units (SDUs). A large population dwells in these substandard living conditions due to the government’s reliance on land sales as the main income source. This results in disproportionately high cost of housing in the private market and lack of public housing supply which made cage homes and SDUs the only possible choice for marginal low-income groups.
This project consists of three parts —
(1) an ethnographic research on the SDU residents in Aberdeen, one of the districts with a large SDU community;
(2) co-design of an intervention to address the immediate challenges faced by the families we are directly in touch with;
(3) that responds to the wider socio-economic phenomenon of SDUs
One of the reasons why SDUs are not considered as a permanent housing is the inability to provide adequate living conditions to the occupants. Not to mention the unit size, the unit being studied is no exception to the environmental problems found in most of the SDUs — poor air ventilation, noise and light pollution etc.
Windows can be defined as puncture on walls, openings with glass panels installed, and the façade. Windows are “privileges” to SDUs, many rental listings listed “windows equipped” as one of their features. This ridiculously outdated mindset is comparable to the 1696 window tax introduced by William III of England when people are taxed on the sizes and number of punctures at their homes, consequently making windows a symbol of social status. In Hong Kong, the building regulations stipulated that nature light and ventilation are required for all inhabitable spaces such as the living room and bedrooms.
For our proposed strategy, we explore the function of windows to tackle the mentioned environmental problems, beyond an architectural element that frames view. There is an abundance of underutilised windows in the SDU studied — rarely opened and entirely foiled. This offers a potential to study the effects of windows at different scales as a component and how minimum intervention could be made to maximise the comfort level of the unit.