deformity ON SALE

“Use value was formerly implicit in exchange value. In terms of the spectacle’s topsy-turvy logic, however, it has to be explicit – for the very reason that its own effective existence has been eroded by the overdevelopment of the commodity economy, and that a counterfeit life calls for a pseudo-justification.” Guy Debord

What

In Hong Kong estate market history, we have entered a gorgeous era – the time all kinds of residentials become possible. Cage house, post war tenement house, rooftop squatter, single-bed-size subdivided unit, irregular wrinkled private housing unit with bed-size bay windows and chair-size utility platform, cost-effective public housing unit, one-person studio flat introduced by Housing Authority, ten-thousand-square-feet luxury apartment, all are built and sold in the market in response to the diverse demands. So what’s next?

Architects in Hong Kong are enjoying the craziest environment for residential design once there is market. And Hong Kong architects do demonstrated much extreme experimentation of residentials more than testing the limit of habitable size: twenty-tower mega residential development on top of gigantic podium under Michael Wolf camera and commercial-residential mixed use tong lau in Mongkok echoing the culture of congestion by Rem Koolhaas. Facing this fascinating moment, is it possible to abstract something from this deformed environment rather than solely blaming the economic stress?

Why

An object has its use value. When it is selling in the market instead of self-consumption, it becomes commodity with exchange value. The exchange value has basically no direct relationship to the use value but heavily related to the supply-and-demand condition in the marketplace. How many commodities can my commodity exchange for? How much money can my commodity exchange for? How much money can the ownership of one square feet of area exchange for?

We do not understand the money in our pocket at all, especially in our digital Internet era. Money as an independent measure of the value of all commodities on the market, a single metric of value, is now further commodified as money capital loaning to the third-person with interests. Money is no longer a true representation of exchange value.

The situation is the same for architectural field and estate market. Architects are not clear his design is adding use value or just helping client maximizing the exchange value. Instead of purchasing the architecture, buyers are investing on the increase in exchange value of the architecture. Worse still buyers are blindly consuming the spectacle as discussed by Guy Debord in The Society of Spectacle.

How

The first stage of this thesis is to abstract and theorize the existing phenomenon. Rooted on the factual situation in Hong Kong property market, the research is heavily based on the close examination on the building plans and sections, unit typology, medium of promotion, marketing strategy, rent and selling price, and indexes of property market. Conceptual drawings and short statements are expected to be the product in this stage.

The second stage is going to pull the theorized hypothesis back to reality, testing against the reality and pushing beyond the reality. A manifesto drawing expected to be produced.