Revisiting the Exploding Metropolis

In 22nd January 2019 at the Magistrate’s Court Room at SCAD Hong Kong, something extraordinary took place. Creative Futurist from all around the world came together to discuss the future of our cities. Our discussions started with what is happening in the Greater Bay Area at the Pearl River Delta, but in reality, the discussion goes beyond a city, this discussion affects every city in the world. As world population expands, more and more people migrate into the city to look for a better life.

The Panelist Being Introduced by Rodrigo

The Audience is a mixture of Design Professionals and those in Academia

A generally relaxed atmosphere as the talk begins

With the influx of people living and working in the city creates strain in its infrastructure. Many questions arise like what to do with the rubbish? Is there enough room to live? How do we alleviate traffic in the streets? With buildings getting smarter, how does technology affect the way we live? Is technology changing the way we experience shopping and entertainment?
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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:
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Hassam talks about how technology and robotic changes the way we all construct

​Hessam Kazemzadeh – Continuum from San Francisco, USA. Formally a Design Engineer at SOM, Hessam is a visionary and innovative practitioner, he works at the intersection of innovation, technology and construction. He has been in the forefront of advancing economical and innovative solutions for building industry. His diverse portfolio features complex building typologies, novel engineering systems and collaborations with distinguished architects and art studios.

​Rob Garrett – Black Sheep Restaurants is a creative hailing from Durban, South Africa, with a background in interior and furniture design. With a sincere passion for all things visual, Rob considers himself a magpie of sorts; collecting things of interest and piecing them together to form cohesive design narratives. As Head of Design at Black Sheep Restaurants, Rob works with a team of interior designers, architects, graphic designers, fashion designers, photographers, videographers and chefs to convey thought-provoking stories through the interiors, branding, and atmosphere of many of Hong Kong’s best restaurants.

Rob concentrate is talk on how humans are distracted by technology and the quirks of city life we choose to live in

Anil makes us all remember to be human in the sea of technological innovation

David concentrated his talk on how technology changes the way we shop and consume and the creation of more public realm in a high density city like HK

​Anil Mistry – Experiential Design Director from United Kingdom has spanned the worlds of Fashion, Art, TV, Design, Comedy, advertising, digital interaction and photography. He has previously held creative director positions with Paramount Pictures and The Walt Disney Company, and since 2013 he has focused on a career as an experiential creative director and consultant. His work sits at the intersection point between design, technology, entertainment, spatial design and human behavior, which he combines to create ideas that change the way people feel, think and behave. He now develops experiential campaigns and concepts for some of the world’s best-known brands – Including IBM, Nike, Canon, Estee Lauder, Apple, Bacardi and Sony

​David Buffonge – Lead8 was raise in the Caribbean and studied in the United Kingdom is an award-winning architect and urban designer with over 20 years of experience in international architecture and urban design. His passion for shaping the built environment and awareness of the contextual influences of a location has contributed to his involvement in the design of many prominent buildings throughout Asia.

​Wai Tang – QUAD studio was born in Hong Kong in 1970 and moved to the United Kingdom in 1972.  In 1989, Wai Tang studied at the Birmingham School of Architecture before moving to London in 1993 to attend MA/PG Dip at the University of Westminster where he was mentored by David Greene of Archigram and received the RIBA Silver Medal Runner Up award for best national diploma project in 1995. He believes that creative world is evolving where designers are becoming more of a polymath. Designers are not one person doing many things rather we are many people focused on one thing resulting to an enriched design solution to our clients.

Wai Tang looks at hanging the city's infrastructure to cope with the ever increasing population of the city

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.
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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.

HarbourLoop a vision to transform the Hong Kong waterfront into an iconic 23 kilometre urban cycle, running and walking network. HarbourLoop will be Hong Kong’s first mobility network prioritising zero emission modes of transit, connecting Hong Kong to Kowloon in a continuous loop. The route exploits the legacy of the city’s world-famous Victoria Harbour.
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​Buffonge believes that there is a pressing need to invest in more people-focused multimodal networks to complement and connect Hong Kong, and promote a healthy and active means of moving around. HarbourLoop applies lateral thinking, Hong Kong’s home-grown design and engineering expertise, and an investment in public realm and transport technology that could lead to the creation of an efficient, flexible and world-class network – a first for Hong Kong.

​Alleviating traffic
To reduce the traffic on the streets, we can increasing different modes of transportation using a combination of mass transit modes like Intercity Rail, Metro and Automated public transport. In a more personal level, if we can devise a system where all vehicles are 100% automated and shared by all, there will not be a need to own a car or even a carpark? We can also alleviate logistic traffic from the roads by diversifying how parcels are delivered either by automated drones or by creating dedicated tunnels below ground for logistic delivery.

To alleviate traffic, we have to create multi levels of transportation, a Super TOD

Gasifying your waste
One thing that a highly populated city creates is waste. I have mentioned this in my previous journals that Hong Kong landfill will be topping out by 2020 and by 2030 China will create 2X more waste that the US. There are many ideas to counteract this problem but one thing that is worth looking at is gasification. What if we can utilize waste to fuel our cities? Apart from glass and metal, all waste can be gasified to 5% of it’s original mass. For this to work, all building will need to be fitted with a waste

​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 new reality
Recently, I have a number of email exchanges with David Greene of Archigram made me aware of the tech evolution; The Fax was invented in 1926, the Telex in 1933 then it took 60 years before the introduction of SMS. Then in the turn of the century, in just over 10 years we had Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, each extending the boundaries of that way we communicate today. The point is, we can only speculate how the future might be with the technology we have today and there might be some invention tomorrow that can change the way we live our future.

We can only design for what we know today. Who know what technology we will have in the future?

​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.
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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. 
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​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;
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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?

“If I grow old and alone, I will rather spend my dyeing days with my close friends and have a good time together” said Anil which is true in some degree and it is a good model for the concept of co-living
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​From Co-working to Co-living?
In a densely populated city, we have to look at way to accommodate more people. One way is to share our working and living spaces. There are many very successful co-working spaces in the modern city. I have been working on an open office for over 15 years and I believe that co-working spaces are quite easy space to adapt to. But in regards to co-living, it is more complex. Most of the time after a hard day’s work, you would like to seek a bit of privacy, some down time for yourself. For co-living to work, the line between public and private needs to be carefully defined so that there is a balance between the two. What spaces can be shared, what spaces are private and what spaces are in between. Personally, unless there is a breakthrough in the way we live, I believe that co-living spaces work better for either people who are single and starting out in a city or the elderly who are alone and prefers company rather than those with a family.

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.
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