De place was founded in 2004 by Jeong-Der Ho and Deland Leong, and has been exploring the Relationship between urban dynamics and prototypes embedded within urban flows. The studio also researches the Digital technologies that develop the evolvement of physical formation and its links to the living environment.
Volatile architecture. As for the urban dynamics, due to the complexities in urban conditions, prototypes, as liminal bodies, have been devised for tracing and interweaving urban textures based on their operational processing. To deal with the ever changing urban fluxes, instant reactions in various scales are empowered to resonate with the pulses from outside which leads to an architecture of responsive volatility. Being volatile requires that the artificial construction adapts itself from being static to dynamic as an responsive system connecting the multiple layers of human environments. Appropriate technologies are implemented to improve the interaction between the earth and the artificial landscape. Therefore, fluxes of original pattern are reconfigured and a new landscape contour may emerge based on responsive adjustments from the lower level.
Self-sustainable housing. As we know, Hong Kong as a vertical city, it is aggregated with highly dense fluxes of human consumptions. Meanwhile, the complicated networks within the city amplify the damage caused by human consumption at all levels, scales and chain reactions, if inappropriate channels are linked. By shifting within systems, all the pollution and waste can easily spread and do more damage. To stop the propagation, the thresholds within city systems are introduced as gateways to control the movement of consumption flows. Thereby, the consumption flow becomes manageable, and further potential resources if appropriate channels are connected.
The urban rhizome. The plant sustains itself from the surrounding energy. The plant contains various tissues interwoven with all kinds of environmental resources. Within the plant exchange systems, the resources are recycled by the living of the plant, the Urban Rhizome produces shoots upward and roots downward in between existing urban networks. The Urban Rhizome scavenges for potential sources and puts them into the earth and reorganizes the texture map. Thus, the Urban Rhizome reconnects the human dwelling to natural environments as part of the artificial landscape.
The texture map. Through the Urban Rhizome, a new resource network is linked. The texture map includes electricity from fuel cells and plastic solar cells; water is recycled from rain for necessary services and building temperature control; composting from kitchen refuse and garden waste is used to amend the soil, and its by-product methane, from which fuel cells can extract H2 as an energy source; vibrations as the energy source for ubiquitous computing senses the micro-environmental shift, which helps the building adjust its condition to its surroundings. The human consumptions floes are restrained by the thresholds and interwoven with other resource cycles using the rhizome as hybrid of the Nature-and-Human texture map.
