Project Description

….there is no tabula rasa; there is no clean slate….

The palimpsest drawings explore land reclamation in Hong Kong over the past 140 years, beginning with its colonization. The process of land reclamation breaks down rocks and fills in the harbour to expand the coastline and create more inhabitable land. This process of destruction and rebuilding has been part of Hong Kong’s history, and in doing so, it has been destroying its own history. Hong Kong is a throw-away culture: new technology, new fashion, new buildings, new land. The palimpsest drawings explore the possibility of a new environment in the waters beneath the reclaimed land where things that are thrown away can be converted to a kind of energy that sustains this new architecture to [un]reclaimed the land.