A huge void

For the challenge of projecting engagement between the Chinese cities of Hong Kong and Shenzhen, the Triptyque studio has adopted an approach that extends the discussion that arose when its architects were invited by the Guggenheim Museum, New York, to create a fantastic intervention: a void in a Manhattan building.

For the American and Chinese cases, the architects propose an understanding of the contemporary city and the construction of new architectural structures based on the identification of the city as gigantic organic creatures. The fluid form of these beings represents the vital energy of the metropolis and its citizens. It overcomes the force that exists in the conception of purely mineral space, and is the essence of urbanity in harmony with the architectural approach adopted.

As in modern cities, these creatures take on different personalities and continually grow, drawing attention to neighboring sites and connecting with each other through straight lines or curves. Observing these forms and their connections reveals its representativeness, which is the organic nature of space and the movement of human beings who live, work and/or move cities.

It is precisely at the center of this movement that the target of the architects’ project for integration between Shenzhen and Hong Kong lies: an immense void observed geographically in the area surrounding the Ma Chau River, where creaturely energies combine and transmute into membranes that define the single, vast integration zone.

The organic nature of the creatures, their traces and membranes represent, in truth, the forces of the metropolis and its citizens. In every sense of the proposed model, energy returns to the void where an intense radiance is formed, just like a party with music, art and conversation.

In the case of Chinese cities, Triptyque’s imagination extends beyond the Ma Chau River to take the form of a pavilion unfolding in the center of Shenzhen’s civic center. No more than 30 linear kilometers separate this site from the thriving commercial and financial center of neighboring Hong Kong, but the transport of people between the cities only increased after 1999, when political and military control of the former British protectorate returned to China.