*홍콩 도시건축/건축비엔날레를 위한 건물 개조작품- [ WUTOPIA LAB ] HIS HOUSE AND HER HOUSE

작년 12월에 개장한 심천 - 홍콩 도시건축/건축비엔날레 (Biannale of Urbanism / Architecture)의 일부인 His House and Her House는 상하이에 기반을 둔 건축회사인 Wutopia Lab의 개념적 설치로, 심천의 도시 빈민가에 위치한 두 개의 작은 건물을 개조하여  부엌에서의 남녀의 대조적인 역할과 이것이 식이 습관에 어떻게 반영되는지에 대해 이야기하는 방식으로 풀어냈다.
이 비엔날레를 위해 Dameisha Village에서는 Wutopia Lab을 비롯한 5개의 디자인 스튜디오가 초대되어 10 개의 건물 개조를 통해 마을의 부엌 개념을 도시 공생의 장소로 재해석했다.

 

Part of the seventh Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture that opened in December of last year, His House and Her House, is a conceptual installation by Shanghai-based architectural practice Wutopia Lab that has transformed two small buildings in an urban slum of Shenzhen into a conversation about the contrasting roles of men and women in the kitchen and how this is reflected in dietary habits. Using blue as an allusion to the masculine traits of perseverance and crudeness, and pink for the feminine virtues of sensitivity and refinement, the project is also a playful metaphor for the complimentary forces that power urban rejuvenation.

For this Biennale, a decision was taken to integrate all the exhibits into urban villages—squalid urban neighbourhoods, growing independently from the city and providing low-cost living for migrant labourers and new arrivals. At Dameisha Village, five design studios, including Wutopia Lab, were invited to re-interpret the concept of the village kitchen as a place of urban symbiosis through the renovation of ten buildings.

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Wutopi Lab’s approach is focused on the roles that men and women are culturally assigned to in the kitchen: men usually being associated with public cooking and women with domestic, and the different dietary and eating habits that this distinction entails. Visually and conceptually, this is accomplished by colour-coding the two buildings that comprise the installation as a way of assigning them a gender: light pink for the female building and blue for the male. Although these two colours are stereotypical of the two genders, they are also symbolic of other relevant attributes, blue for survival and competition and pink for sensitivity and delicacy, but they also allude to the invisible forces that hold the urban fabric together—both blue and pink are typical colours of insulation materials.

from yatzer