Immersive Bodies

Immersive Bodies

Architecture as Performance investigates the interaction between human and architecture: bringing architecture to life and expanding communication and exchange between architecture and its inhabitants.

Architecture as Performance emphasizes on the idea of participation and activation, symmetry and alignment, and sacred and spiritual experience through the intricate and reciprocal relationship between human and architecture. The activation of the performance occurs when people participate and engage with the architecture as the it responds back in symbiosis. Multiple agents, from various people and social groups in the site to the architectural space itself, come together correspondingly to produce a truly immersive experience.

Immersive Bodies turn a chaotic street intersection into an immersive living organ.

Immersive Bodies take on ideals of the Gothic architecture with its great scale and captivating space reaching towards the heavens with its overwhelming height and sounds, as well as High-Tech architecture with its expressed structure revealing the internal parts of the building.

Site: Hong Kong Island

Site located on Hong Kong Island in the Central District

Protestantism in Central, Hong Kong

Existing Site Conditions

Intersection between two traffic roads, a two walking streets, and an elevated walkway above
Each path consists of its own distinctive qualities, intersected yet separated from one another.

The Creation

The chaotic and disorganized street intersection transforms into an immersive living organ. With influences from the Gothic ideals, the architecture immerse its inhabitants with its grandeur scale and overwhelming voice. 

The creation, working as a living organism/instrument, breathes in air from the city's infrastructure (the water mains) and exhales through a system of pipes branching out from the central altar. Nourishing its life are the people and vehicles that pass through its body. As it breathes, water rises up and down the main pillars helping maintain constant air pressure inside its body. As people and vehicles pass through each of the paths, it responds and speaks back through a variety of organ pipes. The tone and intensity of the responses act reciprocally with its activation through participation and interaction of various actors.

Adapting from the systems of organ pipes used in religious ceremonies, the creation utilizes air pressure (gained through pressure in the water mains running through the site) to power its operations. The regulator applies the system of the Greek hydraulis uses water pressure to maintain constant air pressure. The air then travels to the windchest which are located on top of the "altar piece" within the pointed arches. The "keys" of the organ located on the ground are activated as people exert pressure onto them. (The more pople, the more keys are pressed the fuller and louder the sound.) As the keys are pressed, the air pressure travels through the pipes to open valves letting air out from the mouths of the pipes filling the atmosphere with sounds.

The project brings different agents together,  i. e. people, light, sound, water, architecture, and space.  In the time of religious rituals and ceremonies, believers purposefully create symmetry and alignment towards the center through communication with the architecture. A truly immersive experience is performed.

Investigation of the pipe organ and its elements and mechanics.
The project employs mechanics of the pipe organ and expands it to a public field of musical notes activated by users of the space.

The pipe organ is organized into each intersecting path. Each path contains a keyboard (61 notes, 5 octaves or 61 pipes and 5 ranks of pipes). The pipes are arranged so that sound would surround its inhabitants from all sides. The keys are arranged according to the scale on the keyboard (in some cases one side are the notes from the C scale and the other the C# scale). Moreover, the placement of the pipes and keys directs perspectives towards the altar in the center.  The organization creates a transition through space as sounds become more dense as one moves towards the High Altar.

The organ breathes through the city's infrastructure and provides air throughout its body to be released into the surrounding spaces. The water in the regulator rises and fall with each breath of the organ. As the inhabitants engage with it (by exerting pressure on the keys), it responses back accordingly (by vibrating air out through the corresponding pipe). 

As a body of the church (two or more people) is established, the organ will sound. On regular days, the sounds would be random and disorganized.

Through active participation of the church, organized music will be created, filling the atmosphere with praise and worship. (The larger the congregation, the fuller and more complete the music)

On special ceremonies such as Baptism, the elevated walkway will be filled with water acting as a baptism pool floating in the middle of the intersection.

Approaching the High Altar by car

Approach through one of the paths directed towards the central High Altar.

Underneath the elevated path. Structure of the water, air, organ, and steel pipes are revealed.

Elevated walkway with baptism pool in the center. Pipes run along the walkway to supply air to other paths.

As one is immersed in the overwhelming musical trance, one gazes up towards the heavenly light.