The challenge of Tomorrow entry by Tony Hin Chun Lai

/2 Comments/in /by

Hudson gate is a reimagined master planning of the Hudson Yards in 2040. It serves as the frontier of the Hudson Commercial District, a major transportation hub for the Midtown Manhattan Region, and the end point of the NYC – DC Hyperloop transportation.

With the new Hyperloop commuters are able travel between DC and NYC in 30 mintues, and hence the transportation system is being compared as the the nerve fibre between the two cities, as it bears enormous political and economical significance. As a designer we make sure the entire Manhattan region sees its significance, visually. A nerve fibre connects between two neurons, and transmits signals to other cells. When a capsule departs from its terminal and enters the transportation tube, metaphorically it is the electrical signal being sent down the nerve fibre to the other neuron, which is DC. To visually capture this, at night a segment of the transportation tube will glow when a capsule is passing through, and this glow will follow the capsule down the tube as if it is an electrical signal being sent.

Despite of its economical significance, the Hudson Gate also bears significance in tackling the increasing hurricane activity and intensity caused by global warming. The Hudson Gate and its transportation both features an exo-skeleton like structure to hold and reinforce the weight. Due to advancement in material technology, this exo-skeleton structure is made with a synthetic material that exhibits properties such as high flexibility, very light weight, and twice of the steel’s bearing strength. This allows architecture in 2040 to grow larger in size and pushing the upper limit of overloading to a new high. With its sheer size, the terminal is able to withstand extreme weather conditions and remain in service under circumstances like hurricanes and snowstorms.

Finally I hope everyone gets to take something from this competition, or even better took the freedom to approach archviz from a different perspective. With all the tutorials and courses you’ve been watching during the lock-down, and with the freedom offered by this competition, now is the best time to experiment with new ideas and perhaps opening up new areas for explorations. Thank you again Tomorrow and Ronen for hosting this competition, it’s a pleasure to be part of it.

Warm regards,

Tony

The challenge of Tomorrow entry by Tony Hin Chun Lai

/33 Comments/in /by

This progress update focuses on nailing down a direction for the form. The purpose of doing this is to explore a form that is futuristic but yet doesn’t give the impression of a Sci-fi building in year 3100 AD. To do so, I have created 12 different forms with different degrees of variations, and they can be roughly divided into 4 categories: The Far Future Sci-Fi Type, The Sculpture type, and the Hybrid type.

– The Far-Future-Sci-Fi type is the ones that you would typically see in movies such as Star Trek or The Martian. I have created 8 Sci-Fi types that I know I won’t be using in the end. The reason why I spent the time in creating them is because, to know what is feasible for a design, we must first know the boundary; And to determine the boundary, we must push the design far enough in the first place.

– The Sculpture type are forms that are driven by symbolic reasons or an architectural style such as Zaha Hadid.

– The Hybrid type are forms that are inspired from the sculpture type, but added a slight treatment to the material to give a futuristic look that is completely within the reach of 2020.

The challenge of Tomorrow entry by Tony Hin Chun Lai

/2 Comments/in /by

Hudson Gate is a reimagined master planning of the Hudson Yards. It serves as the frontier of the Hudson Commercial District, a major transportation hub for the Midtown Manhattan Region, and the end point of the New York – Washington Hyperloop train.

The concept of developing Hudson Yards into a transportation hub initially stems from coming up with a solution to relieve the Manhattan region traffic, by providing an alternative to connect between Union City and Hudson Yards. Therefore in the initial sketches, in addition to the main building above the rail yard, a pair of twin bridges were added. However later I took a step back in the concept, thinking if I were to connect two places, shouldn’t it bear more significance? Also the twin bridges concept didn’t really go well with the main building. As a result I scrapped the twin bridges idea, and reimagined this transportation hub would connect with somewhere much more significant both in terms of commerce and politics – Washington.

The form of the architecture is still in very premature state, neither the transportation tube nor the main building in the sketch would resemble the final concept. But in general, to portray the idea of a frontier and a portal or gateway to something, I imagine it would take on a streamlined, Zaha Hadid-ish form, and a pristine white color. I know in the creative brief of the competition we are advised to avoid something sci-fi, however the idea of hyperloop transportation is completely possible to achieve in 20 years.