PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE UNFINISHED MUSEUM AT PLOT 77 & 78 AT LAI CHI WO
2019
Ink & Paper
42 X 29.7cm
When I first visited Lai Chi Wo, the ruin houses have inspired me most. Those collapsed houses not being occupied by people are gradually reclaimed by nature from inside to outside. The complexity of the imaginary of the ruin is fascinating. The brick and earth structural walls are revealing their inside as if they are unfolding their stories. To me, the ruin is like an architecture book showing me isometric drawings in real life and at the same time illustrating culture, history, habitation and materiality of mankind.
The ruins of the two collapsed houses in plot 77 & 78 of the village seem to have become one while most of the party wall shared was collapsed. They are almost like revealing themselves as architectural drawings in their own right. To a large extent, the two houses have been evolved through time and becoming a “living museum” that would never finish. The unfinished status of this open-air “museum” has fascinated me to propose an intervention onto this site which would exhibit and highlight the “artifacts” we found in these ruins as a real museum. Those “artifacts” such as tableware fragments will be displayed in corten steel cones supported by a light weight framing structure. The structure appears as stacking up to complete the collapsed wall, trying to celebrate the uncanny and unfinished quality of the ruin in Lai Chi Wo. In the exhibition, architectural drawings of the proposal will be exhibited and a partial 1:1 mockup of the structure will be shown next to it.