STILT WALKER

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A New Cultural Hostel Experience in Tai O

Final Year Project-The Polytechnic University School of Design (Environment & interior Design)





Background

As a backpacker,the most effective way to have a deep impression of the life of a place is to live in the local community. In fact,  many unique subcultures of Hong Kong were forgotten gradually. Stilt house is one of them, it is a house which stands elevated from the sea and is a symbol of the Tankas fishermen in Tai O. It is one of a special housing typology in Hong Kong and landmark of Tai O. The decline of the fishing industry there has brought about the sad demise of the stilt house culture. So, I come up the idea of turning stilt house into cultural hostel in order to make both local people and visitors get aware of the importance of preserving the cultural heritage.



​Concept
A humanity house which will lead you to walk through it place and show you its culture by a journey. I use the stilt structure as my key spatial language and its working tool-fish net as an idea of connection between the house. This represent the idea of solid and void of stilt house. The arrangement of wooden pillars has a character of directionality and extensible. Therefore I create a whole walking journey before the guests  entering  the hostel space. For the Hostel, I aim at incorporating the original face of the stilt house and  introduce the aspects of transparency and flexibility of interior by designing  a horizontal insert rack so as to enable more leveling inside the house. The Hostel comprises a suite of 6 stilt houses in overall which include a saltland workshop, pier cafe and accommodation which named according the history year of stilt houses. I believe my guest could get a good experience of the life of Tai O after staying at my Hostel and could help to retain the spirit and value of existence stilt house…