REDEVELOPMENT OF ART MUSEUM ANNEX THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF  HONG KONG | Hong Kong, SAR | 2019

Architects: PLY Union Limited
Design Team: Lucia Cheung, Rayman Chan, So Kwok Kin, Samantha Tam, Fondie Choi
Client: Campus Development Office, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 
Photographs: PLY Union Ltd.

The new Annex is intended to provide an iconic addition to the Art Museum for the purposes of teaching, research, and exhibition.

With the redevelopment of the annex building, the museum aims to revisit the connectivity of the existing museum complex, namely the gallery in the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), the Museum West Wing and East Wing.

It is also part of the campus master plan to improve connections across the campus to develop a pedestrian-friendly campus.

Here comes the opportunity of making use of the Annex to connect pedestrians from University Avenue to the University Mall, which are on two different levels.

The dual use of the teaching laboratories as gallery spaces is also a challenge to the floor layout of the project.

Strategic introduction of natural light at circulation, inter-floor connection, and break-out area have been explored to cater to the need for a pleasant environment for classroom usage while provides a break-out area as a relief for museum fatigue.

The existing site is covered up with trees, and a unique retaining wall feature is also identified. The disposition of the building mass makes an attempt to minimize site excavation and to preserve the existing retaining wall to cut down the site formation work.

Coincidently, trees with higher amenity value are located along the strip of the retaining wall and hence having a higher chance of survival if the retaining wall is left untouched.

The main bulk of the museum annex is a 3-story extrusion box with a cut-out to embrace the four nos. of existing trees along the retaining wall to form an open-sided courtyard.

A short link is allowed for, at the northeast corner to make a modest connection to the two exhibition floors of the existing Art Museum at its recessed corner to minimize the alteration and disturbance to the operation of the existing museum.

Apart from the link, a separation of 7.3 m is maintained for emergency vehicular access, for both the existing complex and the new Annex.

The lower floors of the annex house the workshop and main entrance lobby cum exhibition area.

The first floor is the connection floor which links the future teaching building to the West and the East Wings, and the potential link to Lady Shaw Building for barrier-free access to the University Mall via its existing link bridge.

This public floor opens to the tree courtyard with cafe and artist studio flanking the other two sides of the courtyard.

A stepped theatre teaching laboratory is introduced next to the tree court on this public floor to bring people up to the gallery floors above.

An inter-floor connection staircase which integrates with break-out areas is located next to the tree court to shield off the natural light to the gallery.

The two floors of the teaching laboratory take the box-in-box approach with slot windows, hinting the circulation, which brings in indirect natural light and can be easily shielded by blackout blinds for gallery use.

The corridors can be made disappeared with the removable partitions at a concealed parking position.

While the introduction of natural light may not be desirable to a certain type of exhibits, the architects would like to explore slot windows at corridor end to allow penetration of soft light to hint the circulation space for the teaching laboratory floors.

The display cabinets are placed in such a way they are always protected against the penetrated light. When used as gallery, the slot windows can be easily shielded by blackout blinds.

A curved wall feature, in the gesture of peeling off from the facade allows a narrow slot of low angle natural light. The penetrated light is diffused by the internal curved wall.

The placement of facade features corresponds to the circulation routes with direction flip for the peeling on alternate floors, forming an interesting facade composition.