Y u , Y i n g H o Z e n o / M A C I G 2 0 1 0 - 1 1 / 1 3 0 5 0 4 2 1

K o w l o o n w a l l e d c i t y M E M O R I A L T o c o l l e c t a n d r e b u i l d l o s t m e m o r y

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Memory is a phenomenon that is directly related to the present; our perception of the past is always influenced by the present, which means that it is always changing.

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p r e - f a c e

t r a n s c r i p t i o ngeographyhistorycontext

t r a n s l a t i o nhow memory worksresearch methodologyno memory can preserve the pastcollective memory vs collected memorydesign conceptioncultural memorisation

t r a n s c o d i n gschemastrategymemory pathway

r e : t h i n k m e m o r i a l

b i b l o g r a p h y

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p r e f a c eKowloon Walled City (KWC, the City), Hong Kong. It was a small patch of Hong Kong located in the very heart of Kowloon peninsula, historically the centre of Hong Kong. It was technically never in the British mandate or Hong Kong colony, but never de facto controlled by the Chinese either. In some way, it can be called as a ‘country’ within British Colony.

As a territory in limbo, it finally became an incredibly dense city, almost a single building, and covering only 0.026 km² and at its peak apparently having a population as high as 50,000 people. However, due to its embarrassing political position and the security/decaying living condition (as claimed by the Hong Kong government), the walled city was demolished in 1993. Now on the same site, it is replaced by a park with the only preserved structure, Yamen.

The demolition of Kowloon Walled city however drew the international intention. Public voices over the issue of demolition of Walled City were opposing and rival, sometimes. One side claimed it was the largest and the most congested urban space with unique identity in Hong Kong. Another side claimed that the poor condition only created hygienic and social problem. To most foreigners, Kowloon Walled City is always the first reference when thinking of the congestion and chaos of Hong Kong.

It is a disappearing urban space, a piece of memory for Hong Kong people. Surprisingly not many Hong Kong people have visited the walled city where give general public a hearsay image of a place full of crime, drug, and prostitution only. Actually the city, same as other part of Hong Kong, once told us the story of the grass-rooted of Hong Kong society. It also told the story about how creative spaces would be built by hand as a basic survival skill. Together with its exotic historical background and rhizomatic architecture, the city, however, was not valued as heritage to the extent it should be in Hong Kong. Is it possible to make rebirth of the myth which once grew with Hong Kong at its periphery? How can the collected memory of this place be retrieved and why it is important to the Hong Kong Identities?

The thesis is to investigate and explore the relationship between memory and cultural identity in micro and macro scales by the (re-)construction of Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. On one level, it is to formulate the design conception by linking how memory physically work and cultural theory of ‘collected memory’ by James Young to the act of memo-rialisation. On another level, it is also to explore how the memories in various layers/dimensions of the destroyed City to be ‘re-collected’ and develop into the memorial design to the City based on the readings of the historical, spatial, atmospherically and material qualities of the destroyed City. Moreover, it also aims to develop an architectural design as an antidote against the monotones of contemporary habitable spaces and architecture in Hong Kong.

Taking the idea of operations of transcultural remediation by Astrid Erll, the report is divided into 3 main parts: Transcription, Translation and Transcoding. ‘Transcription’ focuses on the research on history, background and context of the Kowloon Walled City and how these information can be extracted to develop the opportunities for the project. ‘Translation’ is to study and analyse different theories about memory and how the meaning of these theories can translate into ideas which formulate the design conception and methodology. This section first deals with how memory physically work and then discusses why idea ‘collected memory’ is adopted rather than ‘collective memory’ for the design conception. It also clarifies why such memorialisation is vital to Hong Kong and what should be memorialised in the reconstruction of the City. ‘Transcoding’ deals with the design project development into final representation as a form of memorial architecture for Kowloon Walled City. It demonstrates in detail what different fragments of memory would be ‘collected’ from Kowloon Walled City and how they influence the form and programme of the architecture and planning of the memorial.

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1 ‘transcription, transcribe.’ (2011). Retrieved 29 Aug 2011, from Cambridge Dictionaries Online: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/transcription?q=transcription

t r a n s c r i p t i o n/tranˈskrɪpʃ(ə)n, trɑːn-/ noun [U], ‘the process of transcribing something, to record something written, spoken or played by writing it down.’ 1

‘continuous transcription of memory matters from old media to new media technology, at the intersection between oral cultures and written cultures, moved from manual script, printed books to multimedia representation.’ (Erll, 2010)

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g e o g r a p h y

Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport (old international Airport)

Kowloon Ci ty

Tung Tau Tsuen Hous ing Es tate

Kowloon Walled City Park

San Po Kong

Ma Tau Wai

Lok Fu Es tateWong Tai S in Hous ing Es tate

San Po Kong industrial area

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h i s t o r y

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A b y - p r o d u c t o f c o l o n i a l h o n g k o n gGeographically, Kowloon Walled City is located at the very centre of Kowloon Peninsular, where the Chinese once believed to bless the life of the habitants with good Fengshui combination, backing with mountains at the north and fac-ing water at the south. The Wall of the City was built right after Hong Kong Island had been ceded to British in 1842 because Chinese governor planned to set up a garrison fort to defend Kowloon from possible British invasion. Thus, the birth of Kowloon Walled City in 1847 actually marked as a resistance to the colonial Hong Kong as well as a physical and psychological symbol of Imperial control to the barbarians in Hong Kong.

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f r o m y a m e n g o v e r n o r t o u n g o v e r n e d c i t yUnder the Second Convention of Beijing, the remaining part of Hong Kong, including Kowloon and New Territories, was leased to Britain for 99 years in 1898, except the Kowloon Walled City. A critical clause in the Convention stipulated that within the Walled City, Chinese government should continue to hold authority in all matters except the defence of Hong Kong. It then transformed the role of Walled City into a symbol of national sovereignty within the perimeter of the colony. In the following decades, due to the unsuccessful attempt to occupy the city by the British coupled with the lack of effective control by the weakened Chinese Government, the city turned into a refuge for new Chinese immigrants out of any authority control.

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The history of KWC is somewhat reflection of the history of Hong Kong, especially after World War II when the popu-lation of KWC increase steadily as that of Hong Kong. With the influx of immigrants from mainland China , Hong Kong was provided with cheap labour for industrialisation and changed its role from entreport to industrial city ex-porting ‘Made in Hong Kong’ product which meant to be good quality but cheap. Different sizes of factories were abundant in Hong Kong, so as in Kowloon Walled City. Numerous small factories and businesses thrived inside the Walled City.

The new immigrants not only provided labour, but also added to housing pressure to Hong Kong from the 1960s. The buildings with 6-8 storeys gradually replaced the original stone huts to cater for influx of people seeking for cheap home. With the increase in housing demand in the 1970’s, the residents in collaboration with Hong Kong developers notorious for exploitative constructive prac-tices developed the plots into all possible maximum and structures, all without approved plans, were built to the maximum height of 14 storeys, sometimes on top of the original buildings. Making use of the political vacuum in the City, these ‘illegal’ developments defied any build-ing codes and planning regulations with the exception of height limit due to its close proximity to the old airport. The uncontrolled growth coupled with the change of skyline in KWC since the 1970s reflected the never-ending accel-eration in property value as well as the housing pressure in Hong Kong, which is still the hottest social issue in nowa-days Hong Kong.

A t a l e o f t w i n e n c l a v e s

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t h e m i r r o r o f h o n g k o n g h i s t o r yIn the 1950s, Triad groups, who bribed the corrupted Police force, gained a stranglehold on the City’s countless brothels, gambling houses, and opium dens in the eastern half of the City. To the outsider, the Walled City was notorious as a haven for criminals and was nicknamed as ‘Ungoverned City by Three Powers (Chinese, British and Hong Kong)’. Although the City was for many years a hotbed of criminal activity, most residents were poor immigrants who wanted to live with cheap rent. They were rarely involved in any crime and lived peacefully on the west side of the City. Some residents even formed groups to organize and improve daily life there.

At the same time, Hong Kong people were generally suffered from corruption while giving bribe to civil servants was a common practice in order to get the work done. Both Hong Kong and KWC people lived under the dark age of corruption. It was not until 1974, when the Hong Kong government set up Independent Committee Against Corruption (ICAC), that the Triads’ power began to wane inside the City while Hong Kong became one of the cleanest place in the world.

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E N D O F T H E W A L L E D C I T Y

Over time, both the British and the Chinese governments tried many times to reclaim its rights to the Walled City but failed. The City was gradually developed into a hyper-density rhizome with its own unofficial system. Politically, it was a piece of embarrassment to both British and Chinese government as its existence proved that both had failed to exercise de facto control on the city and its legal status then became a historical question mark. Thus, they both found the City to be increasingly intolerable. Despite the low reported crime rate in 1980s, the quality of life in the City—sanitary conditions and structural stability in par-ticular - was far below the standard to the rest of Hong Kong. Under the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, it was mutually agreed to end the problem by demolition of the City. With the exception of the Yamen building (which was valued as an heritage), the Walled City was finally demolished in 1994 and then replaced by a Memorial Park in 1995, just right before the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Interestingly, the death of the City marked the end of the colonial rule of Hong Kong.

Although the City has been destroyed for more than 18 years, it is still a piece of invaluable memory of Hong Kong, because it was one and the only urban development taken place with the absence of any official authority. Al-most self organized, it exploited the political vacuum of power on a small plot of land in the centre of Hong Kong, to grow into a megastructure, once the most dense city in the world, filled with unlimited impossibilities and fascina-tion. It may also exemplify the idea of anarchy utopia which offered the hope for individual who lives on his life without any authority intervention.

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C O N T E X T

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H Y P E R - D E N S I T Y By the time it met its climax, the Walled City was an in-terconnected group of buildings, with average 14-16 sto-ries in height. Incredibly the packed structure together with its secret passage way formed strong bonds of the megastructure offering a home up to 50,000 people. It covered an area of just 0.026 square km, once making it the most densely-populated place on earth.

w o r l d u r b a n p o p u l a t i o n d e n s i t y m a p 2 0 1 1

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D E M O G R A P H Y

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a r c h i t e c t u r e ? ?

Literally it was not a piece of architecture but it was. The rhizome grew without prior planning or design. It was a weird-organized City without planners and architects. The Walled City operated its own system and presented an example of architectural indeterminacy, where the ele-ments were constantly changed and adjusted in accord-ance to the community’s need. The flexibility of the spatial, temporal, material and social structures within the Wall enabled it to seemingly expand or contract within the limit as wished.

The proliferated infrastructure and services could mutate and transform in order to territorialize and be territorial-ized. The City could regulate and create inventive ways to resolve its problems, undergoing constant transformations. It adapted to its host, inhabitants, the public refugees, who might be the most flexible groups in Hong Kong.

Construction in the City went unregulated, and most of the roughly 350 buildings were built with poor foundations and few or no utilities. The Walled City may be one of the most complete examples of human architectural symbiosis, where humans could be pictured as tapping into the re-sources of self-organization processes in order to create particular lineages of the built environment. (Low & Tan, 1992)

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l a b y r i n t h i n e s p a c eWithout governmental control, the developers could theo-retically (and practically) occupy any empty space left in the City without considering ventilation, hygiene and struc-tural stability. Consequently, the streets were no longer street because some of the new structure or overhang from existing building would be built on top of the existing lanes. Together with the electrical cable, water pipes and alike ran over its top, the streets were actually a porous, dark and damp network of tunnels where limited sunlight could be reached.

Streets acted as escape routes, circulation, playground, communal spaces, and after all, they were where narra-tives happened. It extended to all part of the city like ar-teries and connected with different spaces and formed the basis of a maze The communal spaces could be shared or private as the boundary between public/private were blurred so as to individual territories.

The city itself was a three-dimensional labyrinthine. No one knew all the streets and passages, except the Postman. Outsiders normally did not know how to move inside the city as only local knew part of the secret.

Deep inside the labyrinth, most of the spaces were win-dowless and clocks and watches were essential to tell the residents the time of the day. Life in the windowless units took place under artificial lighting 24 hours a day, with-out a break, thus opposing the biological clock normally worked under day-and-night cycle. Throughout a day, however, radical changes occurred in the use of the space: what used to be a café during the day became a mahjong den in the evening; corridors and stairways were not only for circulation but functioned also as an interface for play and for communication. This is why the sense of community which developed here was unusual in comparison with a typical high-rise. Often a place was turned into its oppo-site: a toy factory hiding a drug den; military fortifications become a tourist site; a refugee camp becomes the play-ground of criminal gangs; and the latter finally becomes a well-functioning community centre. (Tõnis)

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c i r c u l a t i o n

Circulation has to be invented in terms of carving out the existing space. Carving is an involuted spatial operation on the interiority of the rhizome rather than its exteriority (exterior spatial occupation), the common understanding of the rhizome’s (or any other entity’s) terrain. In that way, it reconfigures the spatial occupation of the rhizome into a labyrinth, an unexpected condition. Carving has a sym-biotic relationship with boundaries - each benefitting from the dynamics of a dialectic, the one existing for the other. (Low & Tan, 1992) Among about 500 buildings, there were only 2 elevators inside the whole city. Therefore, the vertical circulation was mainly by means of staircases. Staircases at upper level may be shared by two buildings and change of stair-way at some level was sometimes unavoidable. As nar-row gaps/skywell formed among building, it was quite a common route for criminals to climb onto the wall and the piping attached to move vertically within cities.

There were mainly 3 layers of horizontal circulation. The interconnected streets formed the lowest layer where an informal network of staircases and secret passageways also formed on upper levels, which was so extensive that one could travel north to south through the entire City with-out ever touching solid ground. All such circulation spaces also dubbed as communal spaces for the people.

The network of rooftops formed the uppermost layer for moving around the City. Ad hoc ladders, bridges and steps connected roofs of various heights, so one could literal-ly walk from one end to the other without going into the buildings below. On top of that, the huge roof also func-tioned as the lung of the City, where the people gathered to play, relax, socialize and breathe fresh air.

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n e t w o r k o f s e c r e t p a s s a g e

The system of secret pathway was a unique character in the City. There was about 14m level difference (about 4 storeys) between the North and South side of the City. To move from North to South, in order to overcome such level different, a network of secret passageway would bring the residents from a higher level to the street level in the very centre of the Walled City through different stairway, corridors or interconnected ‘bridge’. As the build-ings were built without planning, some of the inner structures became inaccessible when new buildings block its way.

In this case, it allowed the negotiation of the mode of circulation between buildings. The owners would then have mutual agreement that a passage would be open up inside the newly erected structure (like a right of way) to get access to certain part of the buildings being blocked, hence these 2 buildings were interconnected at some levels. Finally, to get from one point to another within the City, one would need to go through some buildings, climb the stairs of others- and negotiate the high rise corridors, without really need to go down the street. ‘The meaning of existing streets and lanes had to be grasped in terms of “through” and “not through” instead of connections. Connection is redefined as it can only be understood by looking at the carved passages, which at one level is a labyrinth, and at another level, is about the shortest route to the destination in a network.’ (Low & Tan, 1992) m e c h a n i s m f o r s e c r e t p a s s a g e s

s e c t i o n c u t t i n g t h r o u g h n - s

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w a l l e d c i t y c l o c k

The City did not sleep. It operated 24 hours. Shops, bar-ber shops, clinics has long opening hours and closed when no more customers. Most spaces were multi-functional and uses were different in accordance to time. A cafe in day time can be functioned as a mah-jong den at night. Some business may also hide up some illegal activities like gam-bling house.

All businesses are small-scale and local. No globalized shops or brands were found within the Wall. The virtually unlawful environment allowed small business to survive be-cause they did not need to pay tax and could escape bu-reaucracy (for licensing in most case). It was also known for its high number of unlicensed doctors and dentists, some of who were professional from mainland China but not recog-nized by colonial government. However, the product made or services provided inside the City did not only serve the local communities, but also in most case, they provided a cheap alternative to Hong Kong society. The small facto-ries could satisfy the need of clients with small orders that would not be taken up by normal factories in Hong Kong. At the peak time, 90% of fish ball (the most famous street snacks in Hong Kong) for Hong Kong was produced inside the City.

p r o g r a m m eThe existence of the multiplicity of movement routes, with their uncontrolled development, resulted in a quite even distribution of habitable, social and commercial functions throughout the whole Section. No spatial planning means the programmes would be randomly put together without considering the use. A factory could be found between a clinic and residential flat at 10/F. The social intercourse happened at every level. Programmes located at differ-ent levels served different purposes. The shops or business at ground level served the city people and general public as well as outsiders of the city while the services units at upper floors often functioned as gathering places for lo-cals.

s o c i a l i n t e r c o u r s e

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U t i l i t i e s

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m i c r o c o s m

‘Within Hong Kong, the Walled City played the role of what James Scott calls a “dark twin”: a shadow economy that arises to fulfill the needs that a formal economy can-not meet. The Walled City acted in the role of the weaker, younger sibling for a Hong Kong wary of picking fights with the city’s big brother over the border.’ (Seth, 2000)

The two relationships, China and Hong Kong as well as Hong Kong and the Walled City, are parallels in depth. Hong Kong, now being a part of China, adopts the idea of One Country Two Systems, seek to distance itself in terms of cultural identity from China. For China, Hong Kong acts as the Window towards the international. The mutual con-stitutive though unequal relationship is somewhat similar to that between Hong Kong and Kowloon Walled City. The special political situation enjoyed by Kowloon Walled City made it operated in its own system, which was not appli-cable to its larger enclave is analogous to the capitalist system in Hong Kong somewhat competing to the socialist style of Chinese society.

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1

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“collected memory,” to suggest that memory is a process, an action—it is never a noun, fixed and permanent, but more rightly “memory-work,” a continuous remaking of the past for present needs and purposes. And, most importantly, “collected memory” implies that individuals and groups are doing the “collecting.”

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1

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t r a n s l a t i o n/transˈleɪʃ(ə)n, trɑːns-, -nz-/ [mass noun] ‘the conversion of something from one form or medium into another; 2 (Metaph.) ‘Transfer of meaning by association; association of ideas’ 3

‘important conditions for travelling memory through linguistics and culture territories in general.’ ’ (Erll, 2010)

2 ‘translation’ April 2010. Retrieved 29 Aug 2011, from Oxford Dictionaries Online: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/translation3 ‘translation (5)’ 1913,. Retrieved 29 Aug 2011, from Webster’s 1913 Dictionary Online: http://www.webster-dictionary.org/definition/translation

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h o w m e m o r y w o r k s ?In psychology, ‘Memory’ labels a diverse set of cognitive capacities by which we retain information and reconstruct past experiences, usually for present purposes. (Sutton, 2010) It refers to human’s ability to encode, store, retain and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the brain.

There are three major processes involved in memory: encoding, storage and retrieval. When we perceive different information through senses, encoding allows only perceived items of interest (memorable or impressive event) to be converted into a constructive format that can be stored within the brain. The exact mechanism of encoding the data is still not completed understood but encoding happens in different level. Short-term memory is first encoded from ultra short-term sensory nerves and then, if found useful, it will transform to long-term memory through the process of consolidation and later store in the brain.

Contrary to the general understanding, memories are not stored in our brains orderly, but instead are encoded into small fragments scattering throughout different areas of the brain. Memory storage is therefore an active construc-tion or reconstruction of continuous changes in the neural pathways, and par-allel processing of data in the brain. Memory recall or retrieval, commonly known as remembering, is a process to decode the stored information in our brain in order to re-access the events or information from the past. Hence, when a particular piece of memory is retrieved, different fragments related to such event will be selected, re-linked and re-arranged by decoding to reconstruct the information. Memory retrieval therefore requires re-visiting the nerve pathways the brain formed when encoding the memory and can be understood merely as a reversed process of encoding.

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research method0logy It has been nearly 18 years since the last piece of the Walled City was torn down by the Hong Kong government. Interest in the City has only magni-fied since then; there are books, documentaries, websites and discussion forum threads about its architecture, how it came to be and what it was like living inside, though there are rarely any official surveys, measured draw-ings, formal documentation and in-depth study about the architecture and planning of the City from the Hong Kong government. It is quite sad to note that the main sources of information are documented by foreign authors but not Hong Kong writers. It however shows the majority of Hong Kong people underrated its heritage value due to the lacking of local study and discussion about its context and history at that time.

Since the people from the City has been re-settled and re-housed by gov-ernment to different part in Hong Kong, it posed difficulties to interview with original residents within the time frame. Thus, the research is mainly based on the documentaries, publication, websites and photos devoted to the Walled City. Different narratives could be read with supporting infor-mation to present a new piece of memory fragments.

The model of memory process can then be re-interpreted and designed as the methodology of the research in the following 3 main processes 1. Media production vs. Encoding: the authors and directors encoded the

narratives, experience and feelings of the City into different media of publication including movie, book and photo, based on individual interpretation and style.

2. Archive vs. Storage: filtering and analysis materials scattering from different media

3. Representation vs. Recall: re-connect the related elements of memory and re-interpret as one particular fragment of collected memory of the City.

Through the process of research, certain context or parameters of the City can be distilled and further analysed and then create a Memory Fragment for a specific element to be collected for the City. It was then transformed to one of design parameters for the architectural design of Memorial.

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no memory can preserve the past

It is interesting to note that the brain is not a photocopier so that memory is never the exact of what one experienced. The fragmented nature of memory storage may link up different similar and related image/information with the re-called memory and re-created a new piece of information, which is more or less similar to the actual event. No memory can preserve the past.

Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett suggested that ‘Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole active mass of organized past reactions or experience, and to a little outstanding detail which commonly ap-pears in image or in language form. It is thus hardly ever really exact, even in the most rudimentary cases of rote recapitulation, and it is not at all important that it should be so.’ (Bartlett, 1995) It clearly underscores that the impor-tance of recalling memory is not to find out what, where and who, but how and why. Therefore, the project is not to reconstruct the real replica of the city fabric, but to re-create the meaning of the Walled City to Hong Kong through the re-collections of different memories related to the City so as to arise the public to rethink and reconnect their past to the present.

In 21st centry, Hong Kong is one of the most ‘successful’ globalized metropolis in the world. On the other hand, it results in a sanitized community where the physical past has almost entirely vanished and the fuzziest of creativity in life and space, as found in Kowloon Walled City, has almost disappeared. All people now care money… who cares the herit-age and memory?? It is a high time for people in Hong Kong to revisit their past and re-evaluate the value of the City in relation to blurring cultural identities.

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e mro

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collective memory vs collected memoryPhilosopher Maurice Halbwachs in 1925 coined a term ‘Collective Memory’ to separate the notion from the individual memory that is shared, passed on and also constructed by modern society. Unfortunately, it also suggests a community to read its past as something bringing consensual purpose and understanding but the actual society is not that singular. Instead, the memory of a society should be regarded as combination of memories of its constituents, sometimes contradictory and often competing. As a society is always full of complexity, ambivalence and contradiction, collective memory somehow cannot represent the plurality of the cultural identity of a society. Moreover, the Power or authority chooses and ‘collects’ the memory of a group, or nation and thus shapes what comes to be called ‘collective memory’. ‘The phrase suggests power relationships, and thus politics. Memory and politics and cities are inseparable.’ (Page, Winter 2001)

James E. Young introduced ‘collected memory’ that the many discrete memories are gathered into common memorial spaces and assigned common meaning (Young, 1993). It proposes memory as inherently fragmented, ‘selectively collected’ and, most importantly, peculiarly individualistic. He reminded that a society cannot remember in any other way than through its constituents’ memories.

In Hong Kong, there was no consensual understanding or shared experience on Kowloon Walled City and the collective image of general public in Hong Kong on Kowloon Walled City is somewhat different, contradictory or rivalry to that of those living within the Wall. Officially, Hong Kong government portrayed the City as a degrading slum area with unacceptable hygienic conditions and illegally-built yet dangerous structures. From the media, the City was always described as a criminal hotbed closely related with prostitution, drugs and gambling. It resulted as a common belief in Hong Kong that Kowloon Walled City was a no-go area and people rarely ventured inside the City without any purposes. Very few Hong Kong people had visited the City and understood how the life inside, thus, the so-called collective memory on the City gathered from the general public was actually hearsay without any personal real experience.

To most residents, Kowloon Walled City was a heaven for poor family, small business and new immigrants due to its affordable environment and tax-free condition. Within limits, they were quite satisfied with their homeland and neighbourhood relationship. They also adopted to the self-governed and sustainable system developed inside the City. Most of the City’s activities, like unlicensed factories, dentists and doctors, as well as breeding of racing pigeons, were quietly tolerated by the authorities, despite some law prohibiting such happenings in urban Hong Kong. In some way, it was a special enclave where dreams could come true and impossibilities became possible.

Hence, memories of the City from the eyes for those within and beyond the Wall could be read as two extremes in a way that consensual understanding of its past was hardly achieved. Particularly in this case, it is more appropriate to speak of ‘collected memory’ rather than ‘collective memory’.

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design conceptionThe term ‘Collected memory’ is adopted as the main theme of the design conception because ‘it suggests that memory is a process, an action—it is never a noun, fixed and per-manent, but more rightly “memory-work,” a continuous remaking of the past for present needs and purposes.’ (Page, Winter 2001). Collecting memory is a meaningful ongoing activity for a society to search and, thus, strengthen their cultural identity, passing from one generation to another. And, when considering the fragmented and individual nature of memory, most importantly, ‘collected memory’ can be understood that different members are doing the “collecting” work for individual fragments of memory based on their reading of the events. Such process allows diversity of messages to be delivered and absorbed. ‘Remembering, recalling, and telling the past is an essential human act—like breathing—and was thus the most democratic act even before there was a democratic ideology to name it. But the power to have certain memories heard and seen in public and gain acceptance in the public life of a city or nation is a power held unequally.’ (Page, Winter 2001)

As discussed previously, the fragmented nature of memory are encoded into small fragments scattering throughout different areas of the brain. The ideas are further elaborated with the collected memory and abstracted with the architectural language to form the design concept of the Memorial. The memory of the city could be represented by different fragments and each fragment is collected from the public based on the parameters and context of the object. When these fragments juxtaposition with each other in different layers, an aggregate of memory fragments could provide a new form of memorialisation for the lost city.

In short, the design mainly deals with what and how fragments of memory about the Walled City are recollected from the public (the information found in multi-media sources) and transformed to a piece of memorial architecture.

James Young also claims that public memory and its meanings depend not just on the forms and figures of the monument itself, but on the viewer’s response to the monument, how it is used politically and religiously within the community, who seeks it out and under what circumstances, and how it figures into entering other media and being recast in new sur-roundings. In and of themselves, memorials remain inert and forgetfulness, and are wholly dependent on visitors for whatever memories they finally produce.

By creating a common memory, a memorial creates an illusion of a common or collective memory (Young, 1993). A role of memorial architecture is thus to contribute to a dialogue between memory and history, representing a sign that something “historical” has occurred and a society’s determination to remember it. Memorials are therefore the materializa-tion of collected memory and a mixed expressions of what the members of society should remember.

Places and things associated with events of which people even have no direct experience can then come to prompt powerful memories, composed in part of stories they have learned but moralised and internalised by the imagination as if part of their own experiences. For most of existing memorials, it is very common to engrave/inscribed the name of the victims on a surface or architectural elements to provide a touching and emotional effect. How the artefacts or static object, like name of victims, can be transcoded into a more participatory experience so that the visitor has produce a more related imagination or memory with the memorials? In this way, how the people can re-read the story behind the memorial and closely relates their selves to the story and rethinks their own story. Engraved name of victim can passively tell us individual story about the event. Similarly, the memory pathway can recall us individual experience about the Walled City.

In this regard, the Memorial is to design different spaces by juxtaposition of different qualities collected from public memory, transforming the idea of rolls of engraved names as a static artefact to a sequence of overlapping participatory experiences. The Memorial will grow the fragments of memory from the City. If more narratives are collected from the public, more elements are added to the mass with pathways carved out from such mass. The design is an on-going process to explore the identity with Hong Kong people through the searching of lost fragments of the City from the public, thus, everyone can be involved in ‘collecting’ memory. Theoretically, the Memorial is a ‘collection’ of memories from Hong Kong people about the lost City and also allows the public to participate, experience, remember and identify themselves with the city.

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CULTURAL MEMORIsATIONSome may argue that memorisation of the Walled City is meaningless because its history is not officially documented as a part of Hong Kong main stream history. Thus, it led to the discourse on why Hong Kong people should understand the lost memory about the forgotten city.

Mieke Bal reminded us that ‘cultural memorialisation as an activity occurring in the present, in which the past is continuously modified and re-described even as it continues to shape the future. Neither remnant, document, nor relic of the past, nor floating in present cut off from the past, cultural memory, for better or worse, links the past to the present and future.’ (Bal, Crewe, & Spitzer, 1999). The society can only grow healthier if the constituents understand and face its history and take the past experience as a mirror to analyse the present world. It also helps them to understand a full picture of Hong Kong identities, not only on the ‘positive’ or developed aspects, but also the part of city being neglected or ignored.

Even though Kowloon Walled City was not politically belonging to the colonial Hong Kong, it was socially and culturally connected to Hong Kong. If the public denied its existence, it is analogous to the current situation that people are not aware of the effect of income inequalities in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, students are not taught with local history in school and people interested in Hong Apart from reading books, the best way to study Hong Kong’s history is to explore the old fabric and historical monuments in the city and let them to tell him the old story of the place. The ongoing process to demolish the old buildings in Hong Kong not only de-stroyed part of the heritage, but also prevent the new generations to understand our past. If the government chose to erase the unwelcoming memory (like Kowloon Walled City) but preserve only selected ‘positive’ images of a society, its member would then be risked at accepting false representation of value and identities of the community, thus, losing their sense of belongings to the society. It is especially true to Hong Kong people who are always confused about the identity and get lost between post-colonial soul and Chinese genes. Finally, the society cannot move forward with its people.

Therefore, the act of memorialisation of Kowloon Walled City became vital to Hong Kong because1. Its history was a direct analogue or reflection of the history of Hong Kong. Its birth and death marked the establishment and end of the colony.2. Its nature being neglected by the authorities opens up another possibilities for groups and individuals to doing the re-collecting the memory about the lost City in order to re-

visit Hong Kong’s history at the same time. It allows the members of Hong Kong to rediscover their cultural heritage as well as ethnical identity.3. The change of role of the City also demonstrates the change of Sino-British relationship on the Hong Kong issue over the last 150 years.4. The Walled City and its relationship with Hong Kong provided scholars with a microcosm of Hong Kong’s relationship with China. Hong Kong and the Walled City are mutually

constitutive, though unequally so; China and Hong Kong are also mutually but unequally constitutive. (Seth, 2000)

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MEMORIAL...By creating a common memory, a memorial creates an illusion of a common or collective memory (Young 1993:6). A monument’s role is to contribute to a dialogue between memory and history, representing a sign that something “historical” has occurred and a society’s will to remember it (Savage 1994:130-131).

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t r a n s c o d i n g/tranzˈkəʊd, trɑːnz-, -ns-/ ‘convert (language or information) from one form of coded representation to another.’ 4

‘transcoding of aesthetic forms to comply requirement and conventions of different culture contexts.’ (Erll, 2010)

4 ‘transcode’ April 2010. Retrieved 29 Aug 2011, from Oxford Dictionaries Online: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/transcode

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s c h e m aThe original Walled City covers a huge area of 260,000 sq. metres. There is no intention to rebuilt the actual City by using the whole site as memory cannot repeat the past itself. It also underlined the idea that heritages destroyed can never be re-appeared. Simply saying, the memorial of Kowloon Walled City is a piece of memory architec-ture on a huge landscape. As only fragments of memory could be collected from the public, only part of the city will be ‘re-built’ in the form of architecture which occupied about 1/3 of the area of the site. The remaining area is designed as a public park scattering with small icons rep-resenting different fragments of memory.

How memory is “collected” in the public places of the city shapes public discourses. Different memory fragment rep-resents a kind of qualities that the public should treasure and remember for the Kowloon Walled City.

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S t r a t e g yF r a g m e n t [ 0 1 ]l a b y r i n t h i n e s t r e e t s c a p e

Inside the labyrinthine, there were almost thirty over streets and they laid the grid for the City. The streets were narrow (less than 1.2m in width) and dark due to the obstruction of structure of infra-structure. They provided the impressive first image to all visitors.. The boundary between streets and the surrounding shops/business was blurred. Most shops were separated from the street with roller shutter rather than a physical wall. During opening hours, the shop extended into the narrow street which made it grow into larger fluid space. These narrow passageways were still called avenues even though nothing of the kind had been seen in the Walled City for decades.

The city was mainly linked up by 3 main streets spanning East-West and 5 for North-South direction. This memory fragment is to form the basis grid of the site of the memorial. The main streets are taken from the map and abstracted to form the new path for the landscape park.

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This memory fragment aims to recall the old history of the Kowloon Walled City. When studying the plan of the old Walled City in 1847, it is easy to find out that all buildings were in huge mass and mainly of military use. Except the yamen building, all structures had been demolished after World War II to vacate the land for new buildings. Next to Yamen, Lung Tsun School was another structure remained till 1970s and then transformed to a huge residential blocks on the same block with the same name

The location of main military buildings is marked on the site with a new icon which is designed in accordance with the function in the old time with a new interpretation. The icon may carry function like pavilion, ticketing booth, entrance gateway, parade ground or merely a sculpture portraying its original function. On top of that, each icon is also de-signed as the entrance for the underground pathway to the memorial and link up the Fragment 03. It symbolise the meaning that the visitors should re-read the memory from the old days (the icons) to the heyday (the pathway) before entering the memorial building.

F r a g m e n t [ 0 2 ]h i s t o r i c a l l a n d m a r k

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How one read the memorial depends on which path he takes and experiences to approach the parent building. The memorial is designed with numerous underground pathways with entrances marked by the icons designed in Fragment 02. Each pathway represents a different experience or memory going back home based on different narratives as collected from the residents. It aims to create a participatory function and designed with the qualities found from the streetscape inside the City so that the visitor can feel how the people in the Walled City move around as a daily cultural practice. The long pathway also means allowing amble time for visitors to prepare psychologically for exploration inside the memorial.

The pathways are designed to carve out from underground to symbolize that the existence of the City was quite invis-ible to the majority and the life inside the shantytown was misunderstood as mysterious yet dangerous by the general public. The city was also portrayed as an illegal heaven where many activities should go ‘underground’

F r a g m e n t [ 0 3 ]t r a c i n g w a y b a c k h o m e

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The part of City to be ‘re-built’ is a piece of architecture in closed C-shaped looping around the Yamen and old void above. The building mainly di-vided into 2 parts: large space like Main exhibition hall and theatre at the lower portion and a museum formed by small spaces like exhibition cubicles, seminar room, music club, libraries at the upper portion.

The change of massing reflects the change of size of units inside the city, form single large mass into small matchbox units. The lower portion, forming the main exhibition hall and theatre represents the huge mass in the old day whilst the upper portion reminded the chaos and congestion in the heyday of the City. The reddish brown colour at the lower portion is taken from the colour of the house in the old time and the eaves are designed with refer-ence to the skylight of the old Walled City.

The City then suddenly grew into an uncontrollable manner and it can be represented by the exploding mass on the design of the form of museum at upper portion. The idea to represent the density and chaos of the City is to collect all elements taken solely from the city and brought them together in a random order. To represent the unpredictable growth of the city, fragments like metal caged balcony, illegal facade, staircases, temple, water-well, ladder, signage, trunkings and ducts, streets and so are collected to form a huge aggregate up to a height of150m P.D. which is the limit imposed by the aerial line. The random skyline resembled the chaotic rooftops in the Walled City.

To go for more chaotic, the slope and steps portraying 2 original streets: Old People Street and Tai Chang Street are put inside the museum to pro-vide main circulation to link up fragments of different small spaces. The circulation pattern is attempted to create similar labyrinthine feeling to the visitors so that they can make their own way to explore the exhibits.

The mass, the form and the programme of the Museum is intended to show an aggregate of memory in a chaotic order. The unpredicted skylines re-spond the rhizomatic growth of the original city.

F r a g m e n t [ 0 4 ]d e n s i t y , c h a o s , r h i z o m e

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Yamen is the only building left in the Walled City due to its historical value. In the old time, it was the local bu-reaucrat’s office and symbol of the Chinese Empire power. Within the yamen, the bureaucrat administered the gov-ernment business of the City, including local finance, capi-tal works, judging of civil and criminal cases, and issuing decrees and policies. Its location and architecture did not change much during different phases of City.

It was perpetually dark inside the city, except at the old Yamen, which remained untouched and never been built over forming as a hole in the doughnut. After it ceased to function as a governor’ office since late 19th Century, it was used for several other purposes, including an old people’s home, a refuge for widows and orphans, a school, and a clinic. Thus, Yamen is also the most important social oasis located in the very heart of the city serving as a kind of community centre. The Void is important to the City as it was the main source of sunlight and air drawn into the nar-row lanes inside. In the day time, elderly people chatted while children played in the open space around Yamen. It recalled different memory to different people living at different level.

The Void was shaped by the growth of megastructure, which varied in quality from time to time. Thus, the architecture is designed to loop around the Void so that the visitors can move around the roofs and revisit the void and view Yamen at different levels. The role of Yamen has never come to be so dramatic without embracing by the surrounding packed buildings. It actually tell how the city growth from small vil-lage to a hyper-dense city.

F r a g m e n t [ 0 5 ]y a m e n a n d t h e v o i d

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Some of the most common plan and elevations of Hong Kong public and private housing space are studied. The findings are that they look quite similar with the following qualities: minimal public spaces, central core, similar unit design and functional elevation. Hong Kong is full of hous-ing tower blocks with similar monotonous design and the living spaces are incredibly small but expensive. The tight building codes and regulations and market-dominated real estate industry killed almost all inventive ideas.

Inside Kowloon Walled City, the living units were also small in size but creative and every inhabitant took part in space intervention in order to get a better living environment to suit for the constraint condition. Spaces were highly flex-ibility to adjust and change from time to time according to the society’s need.

This memory fragment is collected from the Hong Kong public to represent the monotones of Hong Kong Archi-tecture, contrasting to the chaotic but interesting spatial qualities in the City. The offices and permanent exhibi-tion space is designed as a separated mass derived from the design of typical housing units with repetitive facades and it is only accessible by separate circulation core with elevators, staircases and waiting lobbies, similar to that of any residential blocks in Hong Kong. Visitors moving inside this part can be reminded of the boredom of their daily returning home experience, which make a strong con-trast to the moving experience inside the exhibition cubicle spaces.

F r a g m e n t [ 0 6 ]h o n g k o n g c o n t e m p o r a r y s p a c e s

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memory pathwayDue to lack of land, housing is the most concerned issue in Hong Kong, which is closely related to the economical, po-litical and social discourse. To most of them, the representation of HOME is merely an image of small flat in high-rise apartments, closely packed together in the city fabric. Similarly, with 50,000 people at its climax, Kowloon Walled City offered a basic shelter but home to more than 10,000 households, under congested, insanitized and difficult condi-tions.

The memory trace back home is a very individualistic experience, and everyone should have one in his mind. The mapping of the route back home is to study the experience and memory spatially and atmospherically. Each map-ping forms a fragment to the memory of the whole walled city, which form a basic to collect the memory. It forms the concept of designing a Memory Pathway

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m a p ip n gEach memory pathway is individual fragmented memory of the City, however, when more and more are collected, the inter-related and complicated system would result like a labyrinth, a new representation of the Walled City.

The mapping exercise of the characters taken from the book may give some idea about how different qualities includ-ing light and shadow, dampness, smell, noise, shadow, chaos, density, colour, openness and enclosure interrogated inside the spaces. They are the elements to re-present the memory.

m a p p i n g

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p h o t o i n t e r r o g a t i o n

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r e : t h i n k m e m o r i a lOne of the underlying ideas of the project is to tell the society that destroyed memory and heritage is impossible to rebuild, like the Walled City as well as cultural identity. And the public should be aware of what they have possessed and of how they should treasure/preserve because cultural identities represent the dignity, integrity and core value of one community. One of the intrinsic value that the city should be valued as a heritage is that it grew as an urban creature with a lengthy evolution process that various intervention are continuously taking place by the users. However, even through representation, the norm and qualities of such evolution would not be re-appeared as the richness of historical context the destroyed city once possessed. It was something that a planner or architect cannot design with such unpredictability. Thus, even for a memorial, it can only record part of the lost memory, only in fragments and it can never recall the true essence.

Furthermore, it is also to arise some concerns for further discussion of the value of heritage. Is it determined by the authority or the public at that time, or left for the people in newer generation to re-read their past based on the contemporary perspective? As we all knows, memory will fade away as well as change when we have more related experience, and it is never exact the same event we once experience. As in the case of Kowloon Walled City, it was not valued as a heritage at that time because the public, without full understanding the City, chose to hate it only based on the negative images related crimes and dangers at one point in the history. No one really re-evaluate the City based on its special historical, social and cultural value that also represents the dignity and identity of Hong Kong. It was also the political power to choose to erase the symbol of historical embarrassment from the city fabric and actively ’encour-age’ the public to forget such mistake in history. Thus, the study also attempts to show some example that the society should continuously re-visit the memory so that some of the missing heritages can be re-evaluated and the cultural identity of the community can be sustained.

As a memorial for the City, the project shed some light on the memorialisation design works now as opposed to histori-cally and how the monument is less ‘fixed’ as a marker of history and provide a more participatory experience for the member to remember on their own within the framework of the society. For the memorial design, it is also related to how the people in the community think about the history at different times. The meaning of the past, as well as memory, actually changed as the people use their knowledge and perspective to read the event happened many years ago. Thus, it is also subject how the people read the past as times went by. This study shows how a retrospective memorial design for that the memory once forgotten can be achieved in order to recall the nation’s attention on the cultural herit-age. It is also applicable to monuments for recalling the memory once misunderstood or neglected by the society, that requires the public to re-evaluate.

Theoretically, the main design concept is how to collect the memory fragment from the public and the study should in-volve. Due to the time constraint, the method for collecting the memory in this study for a master course is only limited to a passive mode that can only be worked out through readings and watching documentaries and it only demonstrates one methodology for memory collecting. However, if times allows, the approach can be in a more interactive way in the research process, like interviews with ex-residents inside the City and holding some workshops and seminars with general public Hong Kong so that the members in the society can be involved and doing the ‘collecting’ works for the fragments. Through such process, the people can also remember and re-visit and re-evaluate the past, both on the sense of a society or individual.

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b i b i l o g r a p h yBooks1. Bal, M., Crewe, J. V., & Spitzer, L. (1999). Acts of memory : cultural recall in the present. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.2. Bartlett, F. C. (1995). Remembering: a study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.3. Benton, T. (2010). Understanding Heritage and Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.4. Carter, E., & Hirschkop, K. (1996-97). Cultural Memory (New Formations). London: Lawrence & Wishart.5. Girard, G., & Lambot, I. (1993). City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. Surrey: Watermark.6. Lu, K. (魯金). (1988). 九龍城寨史話. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing. (Chinese)7. Miyamoto, R. (1997). Kowloon Walled City. Tokyo: Heibon-sha.8. Pullinger, J. (1989). Crack in the Wall: the life and death. London: Butler & Tanner Ltd.9. Young, J. E. (1993). The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Menaing. New Haven and London: Yale University.10.九龍城探検隊. (1997). Kowloon Walled City: Illustrated (大図解九龍城). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten (岩波書店). (Japanese)

Journals1. John, C., & Jan, A. (Spring - Summer,1995). Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. New German Critique, No. 65, Cultural History/Cultural Studies , 125-133.2. Page, M. (Winter 2001). Radical Public History in the City. Radical History Review, Issue 79 , 114-116. 3. Seth, H. (2000). Hong Kong’s Little Dirty Secret - clearing the Walled City of Kowloon. Journal of Urban History, Vol. 27 No. 1 , 92-113.

Web Resources1. archidose. (2005). Kowloon Walled City. Retrieved Aug 29, 2011, from a weeking dose of architecture: http://www.archidose.org/KWC/2. contributors, W. (26 August 2011 18:30 UTC). Memory. Retrieved 26 August 2011 18:30 UTC, from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.ph

p?title=Memory&oldid=4468597743. Low, L., & Tan, A. (1992). Kowloon Walled City . Retrieved Aug 29, 2011, from ice - ideas for contemporary environments: http://icebloghk.blogspot.com/2010/05/kowloon-

walled-city.html4. Rosendahl, A., & Liu, B. (2010). Robinson Crusoe & Kowloon Walled City. Retrieved Aug 29, 2011, from Robinson Crusoe & Kowloon Walled City: http://arch1932010-

kwcandcrusoe.blogspot.com/5. Sutton, J. (2010). Memory. (E. N. Zalta, Ed.) Retrieved from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/memory/6. Simen. (n.d.). Kowloon. Retrieved Aug 29, 2011, from enthusiasms.org: http://enthusiasms.org/post/8294521417. Tõnis, K. (n.d.). Intervention dissected. Retrieved from Ehituskunst Estonian Architectural Review: http://www.ehituskunst.ee/en/12/4142/tonis_kimmel_interv

Web Conference1. Erll, A. (2010). Travelling Memory: Remediation across Time, Space and Cultures. London.

Documentaries1. Choy, K., & K.L., S. (Directors). (1979). Hong Kong Connection: Kowloon Walled City (鏗鏘集:九龍城寨) [TV programme].2. Lee, C. (Director). (1990). Aira of Kowloon Walled City (龍城詠嘆調) [TV Programme].3. Lee, N.-y. (Director). (2010). The History of Hong Kong II Episode 3: In Between the Kowloon Walled City (香港歷史系列II之寨城內外) [TV Programme].4. Lau, L. (Director). (2007). Hong Kong History Decode Episode 5: Kowloon Walled City (解密百年香港5:城寨風波) [TV programme].5. Lee, P. (Director). (1989). The Law of Love [Motion Picture].

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