Hong Kong’s AI-driven future and human past contrasted in 2 riveting projects
Sterile AI-driven designs at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture are at odds with a group’s efforts to preserve community stories
Two vastly different projects in Hong Kong, one looking to the AI-driven architecture of the future, the other to the human stories of the past, are constructing different narratives of the city.
At the same time, a group of young researchers is trying to unlock and record a tapestry of personal stories from a now-dispersed community that once lived in one of the city’s oldest housing estates.
These seemingly opposing projects reinforce the importance of emotions and cultural affinity in urban planning.
The AI solutions presented at the UABB exhibition, titled “Techformance”, range from sterile to impractical to dystopian – but this is intentional. By exposing the limitations of machine imagination, the exhibition – co-organised by The Hong Kong Institute of Architects Biennale Foundation, The Hong Kong Institute of Architects, The Hong Kong Institute of Planners and the Hong Kong Designers Association – is meant as a critical challenge to prevailing techno-solutionism.