"Faith Hybrids" Exhibition opens in Hong Kong

Our workshop is focused on the relationships between architecture and the spaces of everyday faith in the city of Hong Kong. The project itself explores the ways in which faith communities create space focusing on architectures, material cultures, rituals, music and performance. The project is born out of the religious diversity inherent in the urban landscape and focuses on different faith community case studies selected to represent different faith and migration traditions. These case studies also represent different aesthetic and material cultures in their faith traditions and practices and in their buildings and community spaces. We are keen to use the workshop to explore a range of perspectives that examine the relationship between built form and the characteristics of faith and worship. Following research work which was carried out in groups and shared between the unit. The students were asked to formulate a program which integrates an existing faith group in Hong Kong into the existing urban fabric creating a hybrid program based on their findings and investigation. This consisted of a Prayer Space for a specific religious group or combination of faiths, a public mixed use program and public space all integrated into a particular context and community. The workshop was well received with external critics complimenting the inside-out methodology and transcendent spatial and programmatic qualities in the students work.