小島 . 小息
A little rest in this tiny island
背景
香港人工作勤奮，營營役役，共同建立了香港繁榮昌盛。可有曾坐下安靜，望海聽浪，雙手撫藉己心，放開世上事，尋找真正心中所想 ？ <小島 .小息> 以香港島山巒為概念為灣仔臨時海濱花園設計此公共藝術座椅， 香港木庫希望市民在灣仔最美麗的海濱位置，能偷空小休，坐著安靜，看海聽心，驀然回首。
Background
Hong Kong citizens are well known of their hardworking and they have been living relentlessly for the prosperity of this tiny city. Yet have they ever sat down for a single while and listened to the sound of waves, and touched and comforted their own heart? This public art bench features the mountain range of HK Island as concept to allow our citizens to take a rest at the best spot of the promenade, to find a tiny moment of peace for our soul and body.
ReCYCLE Story
This work collected felled Acacia trees from roadside tree replacement scheme of Highway Departmentent in 2019.
ReCYCLE Process
Waste and usable parts of the collected trees were hand sorted. Timber were then sawmilled to obtain usable timber slabs. They were then stacked into piles and sent to kiln dry by professional thermovacuum kiln dryer WPE Marspell up to 180 degree celcius for two weeks approximately. Dried timber were then further prepared for design production.
ReDESIGN Brief
The design brief was to design a 7.5 meters long slightly curved long bench over a newly constructed concrete elevated platform against a tree planter backdrop, with a radius of 30 meters. The bench needs to provide a low backrest but not obstructing views towards the sea. The installation has to withstand high heat at the midday from direct sunlight as well as sea wind since it is a open ground facing to the sea. Construction of the park started in 2020 to 2021 and quick installation of the underlay steel frame was required by the site sub-contractor thus a off site fabrication and pre-assembling sequence were required. Coordination among various parties and immense tension during construction coordination were anticipated.
ReDESIGN Concept
Facing to the best seaview towards TST with a super wide vista, the backdrop with enormous highrise building in the Wanchai and the Peak give an additional tone of mixed feeling of scarcity of peace and mindfulness. The bench made a twist from an abstraction of the mountain range of HK Island, to form the undulating form of the bench, giving it a “Strong support” by the chinese concept of Fung Shui.
ReDESIGN Strategy
The irregularity of the mountain form timber were complicated with the fan shape converging direction. By designing a fast to install stainless steel baseplate into a prefab framework, the allocation of each piece of timber were carefully spaced out onto the steel works and manufactured accordingly. 3 dimensional one to one model was created to manupulate in real time to create the fluid form and ready to export for post-processing in CNC machine.
ReDESIGN Process
All the timbers were cut and jointed in respective ID group and further milled by CNC. Pre-assembly was done in the factory and further hand-crafted and polished to achieve smoothness of timber members.
The timber pieces was assembled as in kits of parts by 13 pieces of stainless steel baseplate. It assured quick assembly on site and only touchup works were required after assembly.
ReLink
The work is marked with a blockchain tag created by our IT partner OneChain, which client can scan the NFC embedded in the unique captions. OneChain is a blockchain technology company based in Hong Kong, committed to facilitating seamless blockchain adoption for enterprises with blockchain infrastructure and applications. Our flagship product, ESGLedger, stands at the forefront of our offerings, redefining ESG data traceability. ESGLedger is the first Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution in the market dedicated to ESG product and data traceability, enabling organizations to meet sustainability goals and enhance transparency.
小島 . 小息
A little rest in this tiny island
2021 April
Dimensions: 7.5m (L) × 0.8m (D) x 0.6m (H)</
Client: Victoria Harbor, Architectural Service Department & Highway Department
Location: Wan Chan Promenade
Creative Director: Ricci Wong
Team: HK Timberbank
Art Bench | Taiwan Acacia, Eucalyptus citriodora | Fluid Form