800mm luxury : pencil tower phenomenon in Hong Kong, China

Abstract

150m2 - 40m2 - 60m3. Pencil Towers are slender pencil-like apartment buildings. They are commonly found in high-dense Asian cities such as Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Focusing on Hong Kong as the context of research, this thesis explored the causes, implications and possibilities of invention in this phenomenon. Pencil Tower is a hyper-specific typology. Typically, the footprints of these buildings are exceptionally small that each floor of a Pencil Tower consists only of an apartment, an elevator lobby and a pair of scissor stairs. The usable floor area of such apartment ranges from 25m2 to 40m2. By means of negotiating with various building codes and economic realities, the act of building such slender apartments within any limited building plots in the city becomes very profitable for developers. The typology of Pencil Tower works well along with various external pressures (historical, economical and legal considerations) of the city. This thesis, therefore, understood Pencil Tower typology as a hyper-specific evolution of building type which is only feasible under these context-specific external pressures of Hong Kong. However, architects are rejected by Pencil Towers. The main concern is that the concept of luxury is non-architectural in Hong Kong. For instance, if an apartment is furnished with high-end bathroom and kitchen furniture, top-rated floor and wall finishing, and an extravagant lighting system, it is called luxury. In an extreme case, architects spend most of their time on choosing which brand of bathtub or what type of finishing to use. Therefore, the main design ambition of the thesis project is to promote an alternative understanding of "luxury living" in Pencil Tower. More importantly, this thesis tried to re-state architects' position in the construction industry of Hong Kong. Eight different apartment units were designed to demonstrate how 40m2 luxurious living environments could be architecturally generated. In terms of a design exercise, the key challenge was to maintain feasibility within the harsh limits.