Visitors peek at some of the skyscraper models featured in "Vertical Fabric: density in landscape," Hong Kong's Collateral Event at La Biennale di Venezia. [Photo by Dimitri Bruyas]

Hong Kong vertical cityscape

Vertical Fabric: Density in Landscape, on the other hand, brings together 111 skyscraper models and artist impressions by 94 architects to explore different ways of making high-rise living more comfortable, environmentally friendly, social and humane. Like its counterpart from across the Taiwan Straits though, Hong Kong's contribution to the global architecture exhibition looks at how to create a community in a high-rise.

True to the words of the biennale's curators, Irish architects Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, who coined the term "Freespace" as the theme of this year's biennial, each model-base project is on a 360-millimeter square plan and rises to 2 meters in height to highlight the "generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity" that should be "at the core of architecture's agenda." The exhibition also illustrates the aesthetic of density and the uniqueness and compactness of Hong Kong's urban form in a typical Venetian courtyard house next to one of the biennale's two main venues.

According to the chief curator of the Hong Kong Exhibition, professor Wang Weijen, Hong Kong is unique for the compactness of its "vertical architecture and urban form in high density." The Hong Kong exhibit is, therefore, a platform for an increased dialogue aimed at shaping a discourse of Hong Kong's urbanism and vertical architecture. Meanwhile, the collateral event invites architects to "re-think the design of towers" to encompass "the needs for vertical freespace while the city is facing global challenges in technology, environment, and society."