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QUAD x FHSI  From time to time and in line with the concept of a Collective Polymath, QUAD studio and FHSI Architects will work together as Creative Partners for signature development around the world.
The collective personnel we propose will bring a wealth of experience and skills to the project and have been carefully selected based on their previous track record on a number of multi-disciplinary designs. The combined talent of two leading international design practices’ excellence in innovative and high-quality design solutions with a strong repertoire of similar large scale multi-faceted project experience in Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe.  FHSI Architects Studio in Perth, Western Australia To know more about FHSI, Please click on the following link: www.fhsiarchitects.com/
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 Annually our office goes on an architectural study trip in search of design innovation. This year, we visit the vibrant city of Shenzhen  Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition (MOCAPE) by Coop Himmelblau
 Reviewing details at MOCAPE by Coop Himmelblau
 Standing in Line for lunch at Mix C City  Centralcon Marriott
 Shenzhen Bay Park
    From Futien CBD to Shenzhen Bay, QUAD studio visited many of Shenzhen's landmark buidlings
15 June 2019 saw the grand opening of Cultural Exhibition Gallery for Suining Jinhua 1958 Cultural District for Greenland Group. By December 2019, the public realm is completed enhancing the sense of arrival into the development. 
 Large glazing panels not only reflects the colonnade of trees in front of the gallery, it also shows the gallery space and the renovated textile factory space beyond.
 At night, the roof profile is accentuated like a pulse of light the that extends across the whole length of the gallery   On the 21st November, Sean Leung of QUAD studio attended LEGENDS: WARHOL/BASUAIT at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. The event is a selling exhibition that showcases the compelling works By Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Marking the two legendary masters’ first joint exhibition in China.
There are few artists who become true legends, and fewer legends who forge legendary friendships. Immortalized in art history is the epochal pairing between two of the late twentieth century's greatest and most influential artists, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Lasting for six years from 1982 until Warhol's death in 1987, the deep, complex and symbiotic friendship was mutually inspiring for the two artists, whose highly distinctive oeuvres have each become eternally emblazoned within the highest echelons of fine art. In honour of these two extraordinary and intertwined lives,
Sotheby's is privileged to present LEGENDS: WARHOL/BASQUIAT, a selling exhibition featuring compelling works by the two artists in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Juxtaposing Warhol's polished pop aesthetic against Basquiat's singular raw expressionism, the specially curated selection powerfully captures the dynamic magic of 1980s New York.
 The Transboundary of New Media Arts – Sensory Canvas Keith Lam is a Hong Kong based Media Artist working from his design studios in Shun Shui Po and Taipei. He is the Co-founder and artistic Director of New Media Creative Studio - Dimension Plus and Composite design space - Openground
On Friday 9 August 2019, QUAD studio was proud to invite Keith Lam to our studio to talk about his life work in Media Arts.  Keith is a creative media artist and is still lectures in most of the Universities and Design Institutes in Hong Kong, his openness to rethink new ideas makes brings him to the cutting edge of new media art. His one-hour presentation at QUAD studio was enlightening and inspiring to the audience of our talented designers.
 “Paintings, with its line - color system, and its versatile organ - eye, discovers the reality of the body. This way of dismantling organs as tools of independent function, merging sense of visual into touch, and vise versa, enabling eyes the ability to touch and paint, and hands to see.” Gilles Deleuze’s statement on Francis Bacon-Logique’s works in “Francis Bacon-Logique de la sensation”  Echo to the curatorial statement, we go to the forest, sense the nature, and paint the nature with our sense and emotion as part of the key visual
 Encounter Once in a Lifetime － Toyo Ito Architecture Exhibition The design elements of Toyo Ito's design —curved walls, recessed lighting, and natural symbiosis—give our theater's patrons the experience of a huge cave. With its organic atmosphere, visitors feel the flow, breath, light, and shadow, and develop their own personal relationship to this public space  In the title Nature and Flow, Ito breaks from traditional architectural thinking with 360 degree panoramic wall projections, hand-crafted elements, and other mixed-theater creations, allowing Ito's creative space to breathe his philosophy. Ito and his team have created a place where visitors can relax in giant, squishy bean bag chairs shaped like cobblestones and immerse themselves in the ambience of the giant cave, feeling a harmonious relationship to nature Admiring the lights with a playful disposition you too can probe deeply into Ito's architectural thoughts that have created this fascinating theater dream
 Heliocentric  Artist Statement “Dao begets One, One begets Two, Two begets Three, Three begets all things. All things carry the females and embrace the male. And by breathing together, they live in harmony…”  Borrowing the architectural form of Shing Wong temple and Central School: Open ended , with a gate and rounded form, “Heliocentric” is a lighting sculpture represents the movement of universe. It dialogues to its history (from temple to school to creative hub) and its functionality (welcoming people connect and learn the universe)
The form of three rounded-shape is also the progress from Dao to Geocentric/Heliocentric and to twist solar system: from flat self-centre concept , to a rotating and circulating universe solar system , and to twisted solar system
 Landscape of City Magazine The cover of a paper media is a painting of time, a work of collaboration, formed and puzzled by aesthetic of era, status of society, history and people at a specific year and date by various ways of presentation  The cover of “City Magazine” is definitely a unique scenery among newspaper stall of Hong Kong because of its large size and stunning cover visual. “Landscape of City Magazine” process a color analysis of its cover from the first to 499th, based on the 4C printing standard CMYK, each issue forms a mountain like landscape according to its CMYK data - this is the landscape of era created by City Magazine. And the 3d landscape be 3D printed into a a three dimensional form and be constructed into “Landscape of City Magazine”, in addition, with the interactive installation, the up and down of the landscape will be scanned into a music
 Shiseido Meet Your First Red  Shiseido believes, if beauty is an instinct, the heartbeat will be the answer: with infra-red heartbeat sensing technology, capturing the moment of emotional move, match up a red of Shiseido Rouge Rouge which makes you move, showing the unique of beauty. 
 Once in a Blue Brain In the past 20 years, Tencent create a unique platform to connect human and technology, as a medium to develop creativity. As a digital craftsman, although Tencent changed its logo serval times, the “Tencent Blue” has never been changed. Blue is always the signature of Tencent.  “Once in a Blue Brain” is a digital craftsmen of brainstorm. Through calculations and analysis, turning the abstract alpha channel from unseeable data into a unique blueprint of creativity
This artwork showing how Tencent’s digital craftsmanship spirit, crafting the creativity hidden in the deepest of our mind to infinity possibilities in the digital age  Oreo Vinyl Oreo is famous around the world as the brand that inspires people to see wonder everywhere. But how about hearing wonder? Dimension Plus introduce: Oreo Vinyl!
Dimension Plus created an Oreo that plays music by replacing the classic embossing with grooves on the cookies surface that work as a vinyl record. We placed these music embossed Oreos in special Oreo Music Packs. Each cookie in the pack plays the Oreo anthem in a different musical style bringing wonder to their ears.  Borrowing the concept and mechanics of vinyl record, the data on the cookie is embossed with a mod which is made with laser cutting and engraving technique. And we wrote a program to transform the music into a pattern. After that, we make it into a laser-engraving friendly format and produce the mod for the Oreo Vinyl production.  For more about Keith Lam and Dimension Plus, please visit his website using the following link: dimensionplus.co/en/index.html
The first building of the Suining Jinhua 1958 Cultural District for Greenland Group is under construction, targeting to be completed by September 2020.  
The building will be used as a gallery to promote the whole cultural district, is located inside a large existing textile factory.  The entrance canopy, designed as an extension of the slanted modular roof structure of the factory, will be a lightweight steel structure floating in the air.  In front of the glazing will be a series of vertical cables, taking the idea of the threads of weaving fabric.
The density of the cables will vary, create a sun shading screen with transitional effect for the façade.  
All these issues create a great base for discussion. Prof. Rodrigo Buelvas and QUAD studio invited a number of panelists from all over the world to attend this discussion:
 Rodrigo listens and try to make sense of all the discussions Prof. Rodrigo Buelvas – SCAD from Columbia is a multidisciplinary designer, creative thinker, and educator. With more than 10 years of industry experience adding educator to his profile. Buelvas is passionate about improving the students’ learning experience, collaborating with stakeholders to enhance academic programs and working with industry professionals for interdisciplinary studies, experimental practice, and community partnership We organized this event to invite different designer from different design traits to spark different avenues in thinking. As a result, we managed to open up many different topics for discussion so many that its too much to summarize, but I managed to capture a few highlights for the design talk;  The audience encapsulated by the difference in opinions of the panelist based on the same subject matter The Exploding City Due to employment opportunity, quality of housing and cost of living, more and more people moving into cities. Today over 50% of the world’s population are living in cities that is over 3.5 Billion people to a point where the city does not function properly anymore. At rush hour, we are spending more and more time travelling to work than we use to. Most cities are hitting maximum capacity so what can we do? I think is it time to rethink how the city functions.  In the ever increasing population of the city, the old concept of living in suburbia and working in the city does not work anymore Cities are formed by their infrastructure and automobiles form most of our modern cities in the world. Today there is too much traffic on our streets, a reason what it takes us so long to get to work. To change our cities, we have to go back to the fundamentals.  We have to consider cities to be more compact and efficient and to do so needs fundamental changes to the infrastructure A mixed used city By combining areas for work, live and play, we can create a more efficient lifestyle. By reducing travelling time to each activity so that you have more time to do what you want to do. Especially in dense cities like Hong Kong and Shenzhen more and more development are mixed used as people truly see its benefits. Office connected to public plazas, retail infused with entertainment and fully connected to your residential apartments.  Megalopolis X is a metaphorical city somewhere in China. Design by QUAD studio in an attempt to address what a future city should entail? Multilevel public realm With the city getting denser, it is imperative to create more outdoor space so that the city can breathe again. David Buffonge explained about Lead8 Harbourloop concept;  Curtesy of LEAD8, the habourloop is a concept to put give the harbour back to the public.
infrastructure system to channel all waste to a centralized waste treatment plant where waste can be recycled or gasified. The energy created by this gasification process can be used to power our city. Research has proven that gasification can be used successfully for district cooling. 
The consumer and the products In a large metropolis, people have a hunger for entertainment and an interesting topic for discussion is how shopping and entertainment has changed in the past decade. With the emergence of online shopping, malls around the world are evolving to be more than “just a shop”. 5 years ago, there was no such thing as an experiential designer.  Today brands are moving more and more into experiential designs for their products. So much so that the individual can live the brand by enticing not just all that is visual, but to target what you like and immerse you into the brand by enticing all your 5 senses. The result is the individual will have an unforgettable memory of the brand in their everyday lives. Shopping malls are now becoming more like experiential epicenters where shops are connected to these experiential nodes focus on a certain individual and what they enjoy.  Remember to be human An interesting topic brought up by Anil Mistry was the idea of not getting caught up with technology and humans are fundamentally social animals. With the evolution of technology and the internet of all thing, remember that we need to stay human and socially interact with each other rather than being consumed into the digital realm of social media. You have to understand that technology is a tool used as a helping aid. It should not control who you are and what you do. Rob Garrett mentioned how people are so encapsulated by a moment to share with you friends in social media that you forgot to experience this moment yourself and we all do it!  During the hour-long Q&A session, there were a couple of questions that were noteworthy;  The Q&A session lasted for over 1 hour with many topics of the future discussed in detail Caring for the aging population. People are living longer and with the increase in the ageing population, how does society cater for them? Most of these people will move into homes where they get taken care of by nurses. It seems a bad way to end our lives. Frankly speaking, our children will grow up having their own lives and living together creates unnecessary friction, but is there any alternative? 
 There was a lot more that was discussed that evening like automated construction and augmented reality, but I leave all discussions open for future discussion on this topic. The evening ended with a short tour of SCAD HK and a drink at Admiralty. If you are interested in our design talks, please like us on Facebook or Instagram or visit this website for future notifications.
 On the 30 June, 2018, The University of Hong Kong invited Archigram to do a Symposium at the University of Hong Kong. On the Sunday after the lecture, I was fortunate to catch up with David Greene in an evening walking around Tsim Sha Tsui on the Kowloon side. It was the first time David visited Hong Kong so everything is new and exciting for him.  Parked outside Hotel Jenn on a Sunday Evening
By the time we arrived in Kowloon side, we parked on the roof of Ocean Terminal. David looked around and said “It’s all reminds me of Blade Runner”. Hong Kong has always been seen as an exotic futuristic city with bland buildings. The architectural blend of façade lighting, advertisement and free movement of people gives the city a Hollywood like preconception of the future to anyone who visits this city.  Skyline of Kowloon from Central As we made our way on to Canton road, David observed that everything was branded from the streetscape to the items people wear, to the phones people use, to the car that people drive. “It’s a city of branding isn’t it?” Everything is brand new, a young society where most individuals seek the newest and the latest trends.  David Greene on Canton Road in a busy Sunday evening
 By the time our table was ready, we gradually changed topic to the ideas behind a future city. According to David, infrastructure is one of the most important components of a modern city. It changes the behavior of a city because transportation allows people to connect more efficiently. In a medieval village, people depended on agriculture or fishing and sometimes they travel to other villages to trade. With the horse, people can go further and further to connect and trade. In the Industrial Revolution where horses are replaced by mechanical contraptions that moves and hence, base on our knowledge of history, the city of the future evolves due to technology. So where do we go from here? We all know that today, there are 7 billion people in this world and over 50% of the world’s population live in cities. The old American model of living in the suburbia and working in the city does not work anymore and especially here in Asia. Every city in Asia suffers from traffic congestion is a very serious way. The only way we can resolve this is to rethink the way the city works in the future.  A common sight of a morning rush hour traffic jam in Hong Kong I discuss with David the idea of developing satellite towns where the use is mixed. Where the office is in close proximity to where you are living. Multi-use public spaces where public realms can be used for different activities during the day. Maintaining a small carbon footprint and a variety of attractions to keep us all entertained. In response, David speculated on the what if? As cities thrive on the infrastructure network, why can’t we do something about the traffic congestion. In the past decade, people are shopping on line rather than going to the high street. People are ordering small amounts of goods with higher frequency. As an impact, there are more and more delivery vans to cater for the demand. FedEx and UPS deliver more than 5.1 Billion packages every year and accounts for 20% of the cities congestion. Streets are not designed for this amount if traffic. Imagine I the future, we used drones as a delivery tool? The concept will require a new way of receiving parcels, maybe, buildings will need their own drone parcel receptor? Apart from drones, driverless vehicles maybe another way of reducing traffic on the road by eliminating emotion from driving creating a more efficient means of transportation.  Imagine I the future, we used drones as a delivery tool? David had another question; “Where does all your rubbish go?” waste is a huge problem and currently Hong Kong has a monumental waste problem. By 2020 the regions landfill sites will be full. As more people feel the lure of city living, the whole world is watching how Hong Kong deals with this waste epidemic. Hong Kong does offload some of our rubbish to China for recycling and currently Hong Kong is planning a waste incinerator on Lantau and looking into food processing plants to recycle waste from commercial kitchens.  Lady moving trash for recycling in Hong Kong Maybe we can learn from Japan? Japan is an incredibly clean and eco-friendly country that is super keen on recycling. Their system is super complex to a point you might call anal. Japan has a 42page guide book for recycling. Garbage is sorted out to burnable, non-burnable, paper, plastic, PET bottle, cans, Styrofoam, newspaper, cartons, unbroken glass, batteries and food waste. Maybe we can design a system that helps us sort all this out automatically As the city is gets less and less efficient, it is only prudent to say that “It is a problem your generation need to solve” said David and it is no easy task. The future is what we design it to be. The solution requires a rethink on the way we live, work and play in a city and technology plays a big part in our design approach. How do we alleviate traffic congestion? How do we manage all the waste? Can intelligent assistants learn one’s interests and habit to a point where they can be more like our companion?  A LAB where experiments occur, a place to explore the future together Technology breakthroughs will ultimately change the workings of the city hopefully for the good. However, the only way we can step forward into the future is to know more about the future and to know more about the future we need to simulate a possible future. Ultimately, we all need a LAB, a platform to research and develop possibilities of a better future before it is too late.  A collage showing journey of exploration in the LAB It was close to 11pm as I took David back to his hotel. We arrive in no time at all. “Hong Kong is a very efficient city” he said. Compared to other cities in Asia, Hong Kong is a very efficient city with an exceptional public transportation system. But as more and more people feel the lure of city living, how far can we go until the infrastructure can no longer work properly? It’s really about time to rethink. I haven’t had a decent conversation with David for over 20 years and it was rest assuring that his views and ideas are still quite cutting edge after all these years. I leave you with a picture taken at Aqua to commemorate this interesting evening with David.  David Greene and Wai Tang at Aqua, No. 1 Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong, 2018 |
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