Introduction

CORE DEFINITIONS (dictionary):
“The central innermost or most essential part of anything”
“The central and often foundational part usually distinct from the enveloping part”
“Basic essential or enduring part of an individual, a class, or an entity”

The studio will focus on CORES - and CORE VALUES.

In a world where architecture can no longer afford to be idealistic (in the best case) or wasteful (in the worst case), but is essentially imprisoned by a combination of hermetic building codes and the insatiable greed of developers to maximize profits and squeeze the last square inch of sellable area out of a fixed plot ratio, the CORE becomes literally the central issue in the design of a building, as codes and efficiencies culminate here.

It cannot be sold or rented (or even occupied), and therefore determines a building’s gross floor area efficiency. At the same time, the CORE manifests most aspects and requirements of the building codes: access, exiting and services – the life-support systems of a building.

Instead of envelopes, surfaces and superficialities we want to get to the CORE – and look at ways in which the invisible part of architecture determines typology, uniformity, and the architectural landscape of our cities.

Hong Kong is the CORE CAPITAL of the world… its entire existence is dependent on – or made possible by – the existence of the BUILDING CORE. Its extreme density of physical structures and human population would be unthinkable without the invisible magic of the building’s vertical distribution system, which, however, remains completely invisible to the human eye. We want to strip buildings and look at their bones, their spine.

Our studio will focus on identifying, understanding and analyzing different types of building cores. We will look at what cores are made of, and what governs the core’s parameters – technically, legally, functionally. We will investigate the relationship of cores to the actual building massing, usage and efficiency. But we will also look at the impact the core has socially – what it defines as communities, in ways in which it connects but also separates people.

We will look at CORE VALUES.

This studio is not a lesson on how to design a ‘technically efficient’ core – it is not about ‘professionalism’ in that sense - but it is about understanding the important role a building’s ‘dirty inner secret’ has on the condition of architecture.