Healing Tower

A Bio-philic Lung in downtown Hong Kong

Studio work

Supervisor: Steven Lau

2013 Spring

The University of Hong Kong

The site is situated in an old part of Hung Hom. It is surrounded by a large numbers of funeral services such as flower and coffin shops. There is a deficiency of amenities and public services within the neighborhood and residences in the area consist mainly of low-income tenement housing.

As the site atmosphere is depressed and sorrow, we are proposing a building that can “heal” people’s bad mood. I think “healing” contains two aspects: social healing & environmental healing. Adding community spaces, skygardens can achieve social healing, while smart materials that can clean polluted air, funeral dust can be a method of environmental healing. Begin with a simple rectangle form from a “spiraling garden” is caved from the volume of the rectangle creating a contious spatial sequence with a series of open terraces taht serve as skygardens. Smart material will be applied onto the inner facade of the atrium to act as a “tissue” which can clean the polluted air, generate electricity.