Between total disappearance and reconstructed cliché, my thesis proposes an alternative: turning the dismantled Queen’s Pier into a constant process of re-appearing, in each round to retell and re-make history, to re-live in the new reality.
Congratulations to Nesia Cheung @necheung (BAAS ’18, MArch ’21) for winning the DFA Hong Kong Young Design Talent Award (Environmental Design) 2021 with her thesis Dis-a-pier | Re-a-pier, advised by Tao Zhu and Guillaume Othenin-Girard, with Nasrine Seraji.
With this award, Nesia hopes to raise the awareness of Hong Kong’s disappearing historical buildings and contribute to the local architectural scene by conserving and giving new life to historic buildings in Hong Kong.
In this thesis, I have chosen to “reconstruct Queen’s Pier ” as a focus to put forward the hypothesis that architecture can be a tool to retell disappeared history and also open up new uses by injecting new life into this piece of old architecture. Rather than treating Queen’s Pier as an obsolete object, I have paired Queen’s Pier’s historical significance in relation to the current geographical, social and political setting in Hong Kong with the goals of recalling memory as well as opening up new purposes of the pier in the future.
More information on YDTA DFA Awards website