Merve Bedir; Sampson Wong

The city of Hong Kong is a space of extreme interaction and moving together, an open and distributed system that is young, fluid, and formless. Unsettled Urbanism identifies the three main aspects of the city-in-movement: “Be Water,” the movement and tactics of people defining a fluid public space; “Transformed typologies,” the architectural typologies and spaces that have been completely transformed by people’s use; and “Technology as affordance,” the coalescence of physical and digital spheres that enable another experience and production of urban space. The emerging interpretations of this city show how flexibility, fluidity, and openness offer the possibility of another urbanism that is not static and deterministic. This installation opens questions about the spatial contract, in which spatial design is presumed to be implemented; how collective spatial intelligence is created, and how the city is re-lived; as well as the continuous becoming of the city and the public.

Research and theoretical framework: Merve Bedir and Sampson Wong
Drawings: chongsuen, Monique Wong, Nicole Lau, Jennifer Yip, Merve Bedir
Videos (use of mobile applications): Sampson Wong.

The first iteration of Unsettled Urbanism was produced for the 12 Cautionary Urban Tales exhibition in Matadero, Madrid, with generous facilitation by the exhibition’s curator Ethel Baraona Pohl