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Tokyo 20/20
Get PDFWith the Olympic and Paralympic Games heading to Tokyo in 2020, the city is going through a flurry of urban development and design change. And the revitalisation of public space is at the heart of the projec
In praise of silk
Get PDFSilk, a natural material that was first used in China around 6000 years ago, still outperforms even the most high-tech artificial fibres and continues to be considered the epitome of style and luxury. A recent exhibition at HKDI\u27s d-mart explored this wonder materia
A Clean Plate 也談淨食
Get PDFClean eating is the phrase on everybody\u27s lips, but what does it actually mean? Here, chefs consider that question and address where the trend is going - and where it really should end up.
不少人把淨食掛在嘴邊，然而何謂淨食呢？廚師們是怎麼看這個問題的？他們又認為這個飲食趨勢應朝哪個方向發展
Neighborhood variation of sustainable urban morphologicalcharacteristics
No full textCompact cities and their urban forms have implications on sustainable city development because of high density urban settlement, increased accessibility, and a balanced land use mix. This paper uses quantitative means of understanding urban morphological characteristics with reference to the differing qualities of the urban form (i.e., street patterns, building volumes, land uses and greenery). The results, based on 89 neighborhood communities of Hong Kong, show varying degrees of regional differences in the urban built form supported by numerical statistics and graphical illustrations. This paper offers empirical evidence on some morphological characteristics that can be estimated objectively using modern geospatial technologies and applied universally to inform urban planning. However, more studies linking these quantifiable measures of the physical form with sustainable urban living are needed to account for human comfort in the totality of environmental, social, and economic responsibilities
Quality of life in a “High-rise Lawless Slum”: a study of the Kowloon Walled City
No full textInformed by the ‘quality of life’ model with specific reference to Chinese culture, this article uses reliable and publicly available information seldom used in historical or heritage study to identify the designs of flats and builders of the “Kowloon Walled City” (hereafter the City) and reliable oral testimonies to refute some myths about the quality of life within it. This settlement has been notoriously misrepresented by some as a city of darkness that was razed from the face of the Earth before 1997 to fulfill a pre-war dream of the colonial government. This article confirms the view that this extremely short-lived concrete jungle, mystified as a horrifying, disorderly-built, and unplanned territory, was a product of un-organised small builders that had been hitherto unreported. The layout and designs of the housing units were different from that prescribed by the Buildings Ordinance, but were, in fact, developed within a consciously planned boundary that was a result of international politics. Although the City’s overall built environment was poor due to a lack of natural light penetration, the designs of its individual flats were comparable, if not better than, typical units in contemporary public rental housing blocks, many of which had to be demolished less than 20 years after their construction due to structural defects. This article uses the ‘quality of life’ model, which has hitherto been limited to medical and social, rather than historical or anthropological, studies, to evaluate how design and housing satisfaction affected City residents’ quality of life
Development and application of a dynamic model for a solar assisted liquid desiccant air conditioning system
No full textThe investigation showed that there were few research works about the real dynamic performance of solar-assisted liquid desiccant air conditioning systems with an unsteady term in the governing equations. Regarding the unsteady properties of the components, a novel dynamic model was developed for a solar-assisted internally cooled liquid desiccant air conditioning system. In the model, the variable t (time) was involved in the governing equations of each component to take into consideration the influence of the previous condition on the following state of the system. The accuracy of the above mathematical model was verified partly with experimental results of some key components. Then the model was applied to a real solar-assisted internally cooled liquid desiccant air conditioning system for an office building with the capacity for eight people in Hong Kong. The transient performance of the system on a summer design day in Hong Kong was investigated. The results reflected the necessity of considering the influence of the former state on the following running of the system. In conclusion, the novel model could be a reliable tool to predicate the system operation and provide useful information for better control of the system