Web Content Display
Web Content Display
Web Content Display
Web Content Display
Hong Kong appears to us as a green island. The city exists as a niche between the evergreen of the hills and the ever-grey of the water. We look out into the green around us: is this real wilderness or just wallpaper decorating the countless architectural sins of this city?
The idea of wilderness is exciting to us. But there is no space for wilderness in our highly styled and controlled life. The ground we walk on is reclaimed land taken from the sea. The mountain slopes are cast in concrete. The hiking trails are secured and well maintained. The playgrounds use green rubber flooring as a substitute for grass. What is natural in this nature? Indeed, where is nature?
We find nature in Hong Kong Park. A park is nature perfected. But the nature in the park is a construct. Everything – from the trees, shrubbery and flowers to the turtles – is placed carefully to create a surrogate of wild nature. This park has been created to give us a place of saved wilderness.
I question this construct with my work ‘Simulacra Naturans'. In three locations along the artificial lake of Hong Kong Park, I place 3D scans of the very same locations. These artworks are simulacra. They imitate nature. They are copies of an artificial image space we have constructed as a consequence of our longing for a totally controlled form of nature in an idyllic park.
Within the designed and therefore unnatural world of the park, my works of art are foreign bodies. They offer moments of disorder. They represent wilderness. They call on the viewer to visualise how the boundaries between wilderness and park, between reality and illusion are not heavy as a turtle, but light as a butterfly. As Hong Kongers, we should not forget this.
Tobias
Klein
Tobias
Klein,
Dip.
Arch
(Dist.),
M.
Arch
(UCL),
was
born
in
Bonn,
Germany.
He
studied
architecture
in
Germany
and
Austria
before
completing
his
master's
degree
at
the
Bartlett
School
of
Architecture
UCL
in
London.
He
is
currently
an
assistant
professor
at
the
School
of
Creative
Media
of
City
University
of
Hong
Kong.
Experimenting with media in the most diverse way possible, Klein generates a syncretism of contemporary computer-aided design (CAD) techniques and CAD/ computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) technologies with site and culture-specific design narratives, intuitive non-linear design processes, and historical architectural references. Klein's works have been exhibited around the world, including at the V&A, the Bellevue Arts Museum, the London Science Museum, the Museum of Moscow, Venice Biennale of Architecture, ModeMuseum in Antwerp, AIL in Vienna and Industry Gallery in Los Angeles.
Studio
Tobias
Klein
Taken
at
face
value,
computer-aided
architectural
design
(CAAD)
merely
performs
within
the
domain
of
what
is
best
described
by
the
German
term
technik
(combing
technology,
technics
and
technique).
The
truth
is
that
CAAD
overcomes
the
dichotomy
between
techne
(craftsmanship)
and
poiesis
(art).
Although
digitally
driven,
the
work
in
my
research
and
also
within
my
artistic
expression,
in
architecture,
in
art
and
in
interactive
design
does
not
succumb
to
the
pervasive
allurement
of
‘parametric
digital
modernism'
–
the
unspecified
whitewash
(actually
grey)
of
3D
surfaces,
the
universal
Sachlichkeit
(objectivity)
of
algorithmic
design
techniques
and
the
mechanistic
vision
of
input-output
interactivity.
Date: 4.10 — 27.11.2017
Web Content Display
Exhibition Highlights
Web Content Display
a vision of wilderness in an unnatural park