the METACURSE helmet

in

the METACURSE helmet.

Nowadays Hong Kong can be perceived only through the prism of our nostalgic (or futuristic) fantasies about the city. This is the reduced reality of the METACURSE: the boundless prison we have built for ourselves out of ever flimsier digital copies of reality.


METACURSE is also the name for the helmet we designed to evoke this predicament. Projecting a hypnotising feedback loop, it confuses and complicates reality for both wearer and bystander.


Finally, we produced an experimental short film titled METACURSE, exploring the personal outward, then inward journey brought on by wearing the helmet.

At present, we are wearing the helmet, the digital gear of virtual reality. We hope that even this virtuality is virtual, in other words that we will no longer have to deal with it, but it is now in the process of annexing all possibilities for the moment, including the possibilities of art […]

– The Conspiracy of Art, Jean Baudrillard

METACURSE HELMET

  • materials: lasercut black acrylic sheet, iPhone X, Miroir M220 projector

  • year: 2023

  • designer & manufacturer: TypicalPlan

The METACURSE and its counterpart OFFCUT were produced for “Project Oi Kwan”. This project invited various artists to create work inspired by Oi Kwan Barbers, a traditional alley barber shop on Hong Kong island. The project was co-produced by Gallery In-between and Cheung Chau Wave and curated by Christina Brandt Jensen. Helmet, paintings and film were first shown during the In-progress event on Cheung Chau on 29–30/04/2023 and after that at After Sunset Festival in the iconic Fringe Club in Central Hong Kong (15–19/11/2023). See here for more info on this and other TypicalPlan exhibitions, workshops, lectures etc.

All in the Name of the Name

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at "ALL IN THE NAME OF THE NAME"

Les Rencontres d'Arles in co-production with Palais de Tokyo

As part of the annual photography festival Les Rencontres d’Arles, Hugo Vitrani curated the exhibition “All in the Name of the Name” (Au Nom du Nom). Located in the 17th century Sainte-Anne church in the centre of Arles, it offers a fascinating overview of the history of graffiti and urban culture through the works of around 40 artists. In the curator’s words, the exhibit “unfurls the negative film of graffiti, a revelation of what is stirring under the surface of urban life.” Read the full curatorial statement on the websites of Les Rencontres d’Arles or Palais de Tokyo.

“But graffiti emerges only to disappear, leaving behind traces and wounds, to quote Henri Michaux. The ultra-visible combines with the unspeakable—absence, belief, and complaint.”
— Hugo Vitrani, curator

Two photographs of Hans Leo Maes/TypicalPlan are included in the exhibition. The photos are stitched panoramas composed of the images of erased graffiti at Hong Kong tram stops as previously featured in the TypicalPlan book Nothing To See Here. (click images below to see full panorama)

At the far end of the church, in the choir space, these photos of erased protest graffiti are brought into dialogue with works by Sophie Calle and John Divola, among others. The exhibition further includes works by artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark, JR, Martha Cooper and Jamel Shabazz.

The exhibition is open to the public from 01/07–29/09/2024. It is co-produced by Palais de Tokyo and Les Rencontres d’Arles. Below are more images of the exhibition.

Find more info about the catalogue which also features photos by TypicalPlan on the publications page.

Check out more TypicalPlan exhibitions, lectures and other outings here.

FOUND SUBJECT (Tiled Compositions along a Catchwater Drain)

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FOUND SUBJECT

(Tiled Compositions along a Catchwater Drain)

The exhibition “FOUND SUBJECT (Tiled Compositions along a Catchwater Drain)”, curated by TypicalPlan and WildArtofHK, ran from 28-30 March 2024 at a secret (undisclosed) location in Hong Kong. This coincided with the annual appearance of the Art Basel circus in the city.


The exhibition featured the existing makeshift seats found alongside a catchwater, presumably made by residents of a nearby village. They are fashioned out of concrete, tiles and any other materials the carefree artisans could get their hands on. Despite their rather crude nature, some of them exude an unmistakable artistic quality.


(Besides some apparent embellishments, we are going to assume the makers were not too preoccupied with aesthetics. Otherwise this would just be an instance of Outsider Art we uncovered in the woods and this would rather undermine our argument below — every curation is inevitably a selective reading of reality.)


However, like Duchamp’s Fountain was not really about urinals, this exhibition is only marginally concerned with the aesthetic value of these undomesticated suprematist compositions. Rather, the exhibition “FOUND SUBJECT” seeks to use these odd objects as a gateway drug that leads us into a delirious meditation on the diminished role of the art-object within the art experience.

The art object: lost and found.

The invention of the “Objet Trouvé” (and the Conceptualism built on its foundations) still haunts our museums and galleries. Despite its name, the found object and its successor the readymade shifted the balance of power in art production and appreciation from the “made object” towards the “maker–subject”. In other words: from the artwork to the artist.

Duchamp’s copernican act of iconoclasm simultaneously banalised aesthetics and aestheticised banality (The Conspiracy of Art, Jean Baudrillard, p. 52). Within this flattened landscape, the self-evident nature of art as an exalted object has been lost. We need to rely on a life support system of museums, galleries and dedicated professionals to keep the illusion of art alive. In this context the figure of the artist has become essential. As the artworks themselves have become mute, they can only be understood through the prism of the artist’s intentions and motivations, personal histories and previous works.


As such the art object has turned into a mere representation or illustration of the artistic mind behind it. It has been relegated to the role of interface between the audience and the artist. The idea of the found object really started the era of the lost object: the disappearance of the artwork in favour of the artist.

Capitalism & Conceptualism.

The rise of conceptualism and the accompanying rise in stature of the artist have tracked the rise of capitalism. As a capitalist society we are in thrall to those who create value out of seemingly nothing. We worship the artists who turn the banal into meaning like we worship the investment banker, the bitcoin entrepreneur or the NFT-peddler. This strange alchemy speaks to the deep yearning in all of us who have been taught to live within the confines of the free market.


(The reproach that the art world is now driven by commerce is missing the point. The commerce IS the art. It is a symptom of the sublime stage of capitalism we are living in, where the object or commodity has become unimportant or invisible and only the creation of value is relevant, like in the casino-realities of the stockmarket or bitcoin trading.)


The artwork’s monetary value is not dependent on the significance of the object in itself but on the perceived market value of its maker; the object is just a symbolic representation of this value and so in itself irrelevant — often it languishes in a windowless art storage facility somewhere, like a gold bar in a vault. Investing in an artwork now resembles buying a company share in an artist: it has become a virtual, invisible object which only becomes actualised and visible in the moment of transaction.

Enchanted once again.

With the exhibition “FOUND SUBJECT” we re-centre the art object. By making an exhibition featuring existing objects whose authors remain unknown, we seek to prove that the world outside the global art market has more artistic merit than its self-appointed gatekeepers would want you to believe. If the idea of the found object put the spotlight on the artist-as-subject who magically transforms ordinary objects into valuable art, the exhibition “FOUND SUBJECT” aims to highlight how seemingly ordinary objects can still have a transformational impact on a subject, outside of museums, unbothered by artists.

As such it is a reversal of the principle of the found object that is given the kiss of life by the artist-subject; here it is the object that finds and animates the audience-subject, illuminating the viewer’s mind with explosive artistry. The object stops being a passive representation and regains the initiative. In this suddenly enchanted forest, the objects start speaking to us once again and the artists are nowhere to be seen. 

Excerpt from the invite to the exhibition.

This exhibition takes place at a secret location, contributing to the exclusive, high-profile nature of the event but also emphasising the fact that it is not about these specific objects as such. The exhibition only seeks to inspire the audience-as-subject to open its ears to the eloquence of ordinary objects and seek out poignant beauty in the ostensibly mundane reality.

The exhibition runs from 28 until 30 March, concurrently with Art Basel HK. It is to act as a tiny pinprick applied to the hot air balloon of the travelling art circus. As our exhibit is charging up our daily surroundings with potential artistic energy, one may find that it is simultaneously sucking all the hot air out of Art Basel and related events, following the principle of communicating vessels. Please contact the relevant organisers for refunds.

Opening event.

At the opening of the exhibition (attended by nobody) the basic paraphernalia indispensable to a successful art reception (cheese + wine) were transubstantiated into sacrificial offerings to whichever forest-dwelling deity is in charge of anointing artworks, eliminating the need for any middlemen in the form of the pesky art crowd with their shrill voices, perspiring foreheads and witless banter.

Simultaneously a sign marking the official opening of the event was revealed in situ. This sign was meticulously handcrafted through a process of what we call “negative stencilling”, a procedure that relies on locally wiping the grime off the existing tilework using a stencil template, cotton buds and lemon juice. As such this sign embodies the conceptual idea behind the exhibition “FOUND SUBJECT”: art potentially underlies all of reality and can be uncovered as long as we apply the mild acids of a sharp eye and a critical mind to it (yes, the curators still have a hangover from the reception and as such their metaphors do not quite hang together).

The Warm Embrace of Obsolescence

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typicalplan = penning

about: THE WARM EMBRACE OF OBSOLESCENCE.

(A paranoid exploration of the port of Antwerp, where you are no longer needed)

On a rare clear day just after Christmas I found myself cycling deep into the furthest reaches of the Antwerp harbour. In those last weeks of the year the days had been scarcely a few tonal shifts lighter than the nights, mustering not more than a few hours of sludgy grey slumber before collapsing back into nocturnal darkness. The year had run out of steam. So when the leaden skies finally split open to reveal a sliver of blue I took my chance, and — squinting against the sudden white light of the low winter sun — I navigated freshly laid roads in pursuit of a rare ibis that had been sighted.

The port of Antwerp is a vast, under-explored territory. An ever-widening vector of docks, locks and container terminals that is only held back by the hard stop of the Dutch border, it has geographically reduced the city itself to a static afterthought, a diminutive punctuation mark on the map. Yet, unlike the city, it hardly figures in the public imagination. It remains abstract, barely cohering into existence beyond newspaper articles about shipping volumes and trade imbalances. It is a foggy matrix of data that lacks narrative, its history buried under metres of dredging sludge.

This no-space of ruthless logic and searing efficiency has consistently exerted a strange pull on me. Since my teenage years I venture here to go birdwatching, seeking out the pockets of nature squeezed between the city’s last tower blocks and the harbour’s first petrochemical plants. My architectural master’s thesis project investigated the port expansion and the villages left ravaged in its wake. And years later, it was here that my passion for photography was sparked by the formal interplay of empty warehouses, gleaming refineries and scruffy wastelands.

Back when I visited in the nineties this was all scrubland and mud, where the low-lying agricultural lands had been recently covered with metres of sludge. Now I made my way past vast new infrastructures and factories, geometric mounds of landfill and fenced-off emptiness, barely a human in sight. As low dark clouds rolled in from Holland and I started to worry about where to shelter in this uninhabited flatness, I could not help but wonder what drew me to this inhospitable landscape time and again. What exactly was it within me that resonated so deeply with this outlandish desolation?

Not picturesque.

A conventional sense of the picturesque (whether beautiful or — more commonly in Belgium — ugly) may be found in the typical fragmented Flemish landscape: in the small scale of the parcelled up lots; the messy mosaic of houses, farms and factories; the medieval city centres with their cobbled streets and quaint facades; the suburbs with their ridiculous villas. It lies in the crooked detail and the uneasy juxtaposition.

The harbour environment appeals to a different aesthetic sensibility. It is a landscape we Belgians are rarely exposed to, generally lacking the grand gesture in both nature and city. Belgium does not contain soaring mountains and roaring waterfalls, we are denied the intoxicating sights of skyscraper districts or glitzy waterfronts. Our panoramas are patchworks of humane cosiness, comforting yet suffocating.

Although the port of Antwerp is undeniably conceived and built by people, the resulting environment has seemingly lifted the human figure out of the equation. This is a technocratic territory, shaped by industrial processes and logistical requirements on the one hand and an EU-decreed manufacturing of new, “wild” nature on the other hand. As a landscape that is geared towards animals and machines, it is both regressive and futuristic. Humanity has been squeezed out from both sides, by its evolutionary predecessors and successors. And oddly enough, rather than being the victims of some grand conspiracy, we humans have designed ourselves out of the picture.

Modernism going through the mechanical motions.

Fittingly this fresh bond between nature and machines is established on top of the erstwhile polder landscape. In an artificially accelerated process of sedimentation, the latter has been buried under metres of dredging sludge so as to make the absorbent land dry and ready for machine colonisation. Simultaneously some zones have been excavated, reflooded and transformed into nature reserves — as EU rules impose the creation of new nature as a compensation for the expanding harbour infrastructure.

The polders were a direct result of a rare equilibrium, a sort of armistice — or more, a symbiosis? — between nature and man. Through the use of ever more sophisticated tools, man moulded the landscape into a novel shape and created a previously non-existent environment, generating new conditions for nature to take hold. Now this intricate relationship has been upended, with technology increasingly taking the lead. The emergent paradigm of the harbour abandons the concept of landscape as an arranged form of cohabitation. The moderating sponge of the polder landscape has been replaced by wet-lands and dry-lands; a happy medium that had grown organically has been replaced by a blunt, drawing board–driven juxtaposition of extremes, a globalised logic imprinting itself on a singular locale.

This rigid segmentation reminds us of the more fundamentalist strains of modernist urbanism and makes us wonder: is this where modernism retreated to after it was chased out of the cities and the battlefields of post-war housing estates? Is it now nursing its wounds here in the former countryside, living out its unfulfilled fantasies: a landscape of geometric precision, unbothered by the quaint messiness of human lives?

The flat event horizon of the human death drive.

Along the edges of this new landscape, we find a post-apocalyptic condition that is not unlike the ones evoked in movies and other catastrophe-driven fantasies. Here are the doomed last fragments of polders, the scenic ruins of farmhouses overgrown with a nature taking back control, a picturesque wasteland full of melancholic references to a vanishing human race.

So far so familiar. Yet when we dive into the harbour zone itself we are presented with a post-post-apocalyptic environment that is not as readily decipherable. The world may be a stage, but here all actors have long left: there is no dramatic arc, no more story to tell. This is the scene of a clean cataclysm that was initiated by humans but is now unfolding in mechanical slow-motion following the clinical laws of ecosystems and algorithms, of nature and machines.

Instead of the picturesque beauty of the polders and their slow demise, the sterile precision of the harbour possesses a more sublime quality. It fills us with a certain dread — and a certain thrill. However, this is not the traditional version of the sublime that is caused by the confrontation with a formidable, incomprehensible otherness. We are not romantics overwhelmed by a nature unleashed, standing in awe of untamed wilderness. Nor is this sublime feeling generated by the theatrics of an alien invasion or robot uprising, an act of terrorism or climate change spinning out of control; in short, it also differs from the recurring (fictional or non-fictional) scenarios which represent the contemporary incarnations of the apocalyptic sublime as an external catastrophe visiting us.

This two-dimensional man-made landscape is sublime not because it is incomprehensibly opaque, but because it is terrifyingly transparent. The map and the territory have become indistinguishable. Our sublime paranoia about hidden machinations and unidentifiable threats has run out of steam, as if the fog in Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer painting has lifted and we finally see everything crystal clear. If the sublime effect always depended on smoke and mirrors, here it is just a window into a future we will not be part of; but occasionally we still catch a glimpse of our own ghostly reflection in the glass, as the creator who is now separated from his creation.

We cannot hide anymore behind the opaqueness of an inscrutable, possibly malign other. As it is we who have designed and created this inhuman landscape, we are forced to get to grips with a deliberately anti-human streak within ourselves, with our desire to self-exile, even self-annihilate.

This is our sublime realisation when we observe this landscape and catch our self-reflection. In our attempts to control our environment, to manage and exclude every external threat, we have created a landscape that also excludes any humanity. We have been chasing our own tail all along. And so finally here we are squaring off against our biggest, possibly only nemesis: ourselves.

Humanity as a bridge — or a purpose?

It was not long after my cycling trip that I was reminded of Nietzsche’s concept of “man as a bridge” while listening to a podcast discussing “Thus Spoke Zarathustra" — a book I had read (and scarcely understood) decades ago. We always see our surroundings through the prism of our own obsessions and preoccupations so, relentlessly over-interpreting this landscape like a fortuneteller poring at tealeaves, I convinced myself I had observed here the sure signs that man had been — or is about to be — overcome.


Pursuing this tenuous train of thought, we would have to conclude that man is not a bridge between animal and Übermensch (“overman”) as Nietzsche proposed, but between animal and machine. Because in our irrepressible Nietzschean desire to surpass ourselves, to not be bound by societal norms or ingrained habits and become a completely free agent, we may also have lost the essence of our humanity. Indeed this landscape posits the question, what if our greatest qualities as a human being are integral to our human (all too human) frailties?


Rather than man’s history being a linear, dialectic evolution from beast over man to overman (a slightly strange teleological flex for someone like Nietzsche in the first place?), there is no progression to be found here; just a return to a beastly machine logic. Humanity was only a brief interlude of complicated affections and affectations, a blip in the history of the universe.


Where futurologists and over-excited tech-bros dreamt of an exponential curve towards a singularity, we find our timeline to be more like a gaussian curve — and we have just begun the long slide down. Humanity will not end with a bang but a whimper. The only singularity that ever existed was our brain, a point of infinite creative density, that has now been scattered along the lines of worldwide neural networks in order to be harvested by machines and their mean intelligence of averages, statistics and common denominators.


We completed our role as a bridge and are retiring. Time is a loop and the future has fed back into the past. Technology has achieved the evidence of nature, nature has been exposed as just highly complicated technology and both will live out their senseless repetitive existences in eternal recurrence.

Be still my cold cold heart.

While I had determined in my mind (and probably in my mind only) that this harbour landscape prefigured the end of humanity (or at least signified a kind of abdication), I had not gotten much closer to explaining my fascination with it.


When relating to your surroundings you can look for your self, for a flicker of familiarity in the eyes of the other, for proof of your own existence as well as a shared humanity. This is the comfort of self-confirmation. But you can also seek out the eerie and unknown. You can scream into bottomless depths to hear the echoes fade away and rejoice in the inevitability of your own impending demise, the denial and loss of your ego.


The desire to transcend, to go beyond the limits of our own existence, beyond what makes us human, might paradoxically be what defines us as humans. And is not the ultimate consequence of this transgression the annihilation of the self and, by extension, the end of humanity? A human being unavoidably thinks about a human not-being.

Looking at humanity through the lens of our desire to survive and procreate delivers us no unique insights, as we share this in-built proclivity for proliferation with animals and machines. Feelings such as love are just the logical extensions of the irrational urge to propagate, a quantitative rather than a qualitative jump in evolution. (As such, it can be predicted that machines will at some point experience love — and animals already do, possibly.)


A specifically human trait on the other hand is the capacity (and inclination) to question this relentless drive for survival and reproduction. We are the only creatures rational enough to realise the nonsensical nature of being, to explore the outer fringes of existence and toy with the idea of non-existence. This is what makes us truly sentient and unique and sets us apart from other life forms, organic and inorganic.


So after I had peered for long enough at this unforgiving, depopulated landscape, what emerged was a justification ad absurdum for human existence. In the over-eager dark room of my head this sublime negative image was developed into an unlikely positive impression of the human condition — something that had always stayed tantalisingly out of reach when I tried to build up a logical argument in favour of life using ephemeral positive values such as community, love or creativity.


As I emerged from the harbour, I realised the paralysis in my face was not frostbite caused by the wind but sunburn — the numbness felt the same, but it was now impossible not to crack a smile.

Epilogue: the endgame.

Rushing to catch the boat back into town, cycling and sweating in the warm winter weather, I remembered the moment I rode into the harbour earlier that day. I had gotten off the river bus which was populated with darker-skinned people being ferried to the logistics centres and container terminals where they kept the wheels of the global markets grinding.

Riding past the ventilation shafts of the tunnel under the river, an extraordinarily loud bird sound stopped me in my tracks. I failed to locate the outsized bird producing this monstrous sound, until I realised it was emanating from a speaker. A little further two jackdaws picked through the grass, looking for food but also, I imagined, listening.

And I knew then: the machines and animals were now directly speaking to each other and, slowly but surely, the day was approaching when they would have absolutely no use for us anymore.

  • date: 12/2023-02/2024

  • author: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

  • photos & video: iPhone 14 Pro

Penning for you

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typicalplan = penning

design-related TEXTS for YOU (so you don't have to).

TypicalPlan is now ready, willing and able to write your design-related texts, concepts and pitches in English or Dutch.

TypicalPlan brings 25 years of experience as a writing architect into play to unearth the unsuspected conceptual depths in your work. We go beyond mere copywriting to challenge, prod and reinvigorate your thinking and propel your design practice to new creative heights.

Alternatively and just as happily, we can simply write inspiring texts about you and your work for your website, social media and other communications :)

Contact us here for samples of our writing or to discuss your ideas and requirements.

About TypicalPlan / Hans Leo Maes

TypicalPlan / Hans Leo Maes has been writing about architecture and design since his student days in the late 1990’s.

Having worked for various architecture firms in Belgium and Asia, he has built up extensive knowledge of different design philosophies and cultures. His professional experience helped him gain a deep understanding of the challenges faced by architects and designers in the context of ever more stringent regulation, environmental catastrophe and out-of-control consumerism.

Over the years Hans has honed his writing skills working on design concepts and presentations for a wide variety of projects. Simultaneously he has continued to pen theoretical and philosophical musings about politics, culture and society. In 2021 this culminated in the publication of the book “Nothing To See Here” by Paris-based publishing house Building Books. The book — with photos and text by Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan —  documents the erasure of graffiti in Hong Kong.

Also in 2021 TypicalPlan started a long-term collaboration with one of Belgium’s most prominent and prolific architecture offices. Through close cooperation with the company’s founders and principals, Hans helped put into words the ambitions for their freshly minted design platform and formulate the design strategies crucial to achieving their vision.

Writing by Hans Leo Maes has further appeared in specialist design magazines such as the Modernist Magazine (UK) and Bauwelt (Germany).

the METACURSE short film

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the METACURSE short film.

Nowadays Hong Kong can be perceived only through the prism of our nostalgic (or futuristic) fantasies about the city. This is the reduced reality of the METACURSE: the boundless prison we have built for ourselves out of ever flimsier digital copies of reality.


METACURSE is also the name for the helmet we designed to evoke this predicament. Projecting a hypnotising feedback loop, it confuses and complicates reality for both wearer and bystander.


Finally, we produced an experimental short film titled METACURSE, exploring the personal outward, then inward journey brought on by wearing the helmet.

Awards

  • Official Selection for the Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival 2024

  • Best Experimental Film at the Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival 2024

  • Recipient of the Tarkovski Grant in 2024

Screenings

  • Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival 2024, 10/07/2024 at Emperor Cinemas, Entertainment Building, Central, Hong Kong

  • Moving Cinema, 08/06/2024 at Chez Trente, Central, Hong Kong

  • Night of Obsession at After Sunset Festival, 17/11/2023 at Fringe Club, Central, Hong Kong (Official Premiere with performance by TypicalPlan)

  • In-progress, 29/04/2023 at Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong (Preview Screening with performance by TypicalPlan)

METACURSE SHORT FILM

  • year: 2023

  • length: 10’40”

  • language: English (subtitles in English and Traditional Chinese)

  • director & producer: TypicalPlan/Hans Leo Maes

  • concept & scenario: TypicalPlan/Hans Leo Maes

  • cast: Hans Leo Maes, Mark Lau

  • cinematography & camera: Bradley Aaron

  • sound design: Seb StJean

  • translation (subtitles): Hei-man Cheung

The METACURSE and its counterpart OFFCUT were produced for “Project Oi Kwan”. This project invited various artists to create work inspired by Oi Kwan Barbers, a traditional alley barber shop on Hong Kong island. The project was co-produced by Gallery In-between and Cheung Chau Wave and curated by Christina Brandt Jensen. Helmet, paintings and film were first shown during the In-progress event on Cheung Chau on 29–30/04/2023 and after that at After Sunset Festival in the iconic Fringe Club in Central Hong Kong (15–19/11/2023). Both screenings were accompanied by a performance by TypicalPlan. See here for more info on this and other TypicalPlan exhibitions, workshops, lectures etc.

OFFCUT

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“OFFCUT” is the flip-side of the METACURSE-project, inspired by the leftover pieces of black acrylic — like the cut hairs left on the barbershop floor.

As the artist has become just another commodity producer, maybe real art lies hidden in the subconscious byproducts of the artistic process, the rejects and leftovers.

(An alternative art history: one composed of only the garbage found in artists’ dustbins)

The precise laser-cut shapes form the basis for freehand paintings. This adds the human touch so valued by the market, while the relative ineptitude of the artist simultaneously represents a critique and rejection of the creeping professionalisation of the art world.

“OFFCUT”是 METACURSE 項目的反創作，靈感來自黑色亞克力的剩餘碎片——就像理髮店地板上的髮碎。

當藝術家淪為商品生產商，也許真正的藝術只存活於過程中遺留下來的副產品、廢料及殘骸。

（另類藝術史：僅由藝術家垃圾箱中的垃圾組成）

精確的激光切割形狀乃手繪的靈感。 粗劣的畫工既增加了市場所崇尚的人情味，亦代表着對藝術界逐漸變態的批判和控訴。

  • materials: canvas (2x 600x900mm, 1x 300x200mm), acrylic paint, varnish (matte and high gloss)

  • year: 2023

  • painter: TypicalPlan

OFFCUT and its counterpart METACURSE (both the helmet and short film) were produced for “Project Oi Kwan”. This project invited various artists to create work inspired by Oi Kwan Barbers, a traditional alley barber shop on Hong Kong island. The project was co-produced by Gallery In-between and Cheung Chau Wave and curated by Christina Brandt Jensen. A first preview of the works was presented during the In-progress event on Cheung Chau on 29-30/04/2023. The final exhibition took place during After Sunset Festival in the iconic Fringe Club in Central Hong Kong (15–19/11/2023). See here for more info on exhibitions, workshops and other TypicalPlan endeavours.

Skirting Table

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typicalplan = producing

a dining table: SKIRTING TABLE.

A dining table made from recycled skirting boards.

  • materials: recycled skirting boards

  • year: 2012

  • designer & manufacturer: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

Cube Side Table

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typicalplan = producing

a side table: CUBE.

A solid oak side table with drawer.

  • materials: fumed oak

  • year: 2010

  • designer & manufacturer: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

Machine à rêver

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typicalplan = planning

UNE MACHINE A REVER.

More than 50 years after its construction, the modernist architecture of the Kiel development has not lost any of its utopian power. But in light of today’s changing society, its original design principles must be re-considered in order for it to function optimally.

The proposed re-purposing of the former boiler room and director's residence is the perfect cause to provide an answer to the needs of contemporary residents. They could become the heart of a new hedonistic complex which both complements and safeguards the spartan purity of the neighbourhood.

The machine à habiter is enriched with a machine à rêver, where the creative desires and civic aspirations of the residents are realised. The rigorous socialist re-education vehicle conceived by architect Renaat Braem is complemented by a cheerful materialistic outgrowth.

A social condenser?

In the original modernist set-up the residents were to be socialised in the paternalistic educational way typical of the era. We propose a contemporary strategy to create a sense of community, based on a collective experiencing of the "petty-bourgeois sins". After all, in our fragmented consumer society, aren't we all increasingly connected by our exceedingly decadent material desires and ambitions, beyond all ideological divisions?

In the not so distant past the creation of pleasant shared space was deemed sufficient for like-minded people to meet and socialise in an evident, organic way. The residents now form a much more heterogeneous group and we propose that a sense of community can only arise as a by-product of shared experiences. The new complex focuses on the creation of these shared, but not necessarily collective, experiences.

As an ultimate tribute, this intervention hopes to be a contemporary interpretation of the "social center" which Braem always saw as an integral part of his public housing schemes but never saw realised.

“The unfulfilled material desires of the residents of the Kiel neighbourhood are realised inside and around the former boiler room. All activities that fall outside the remit of the efficient modernist plan find their expression here. The defining characteristics of the suburban Flemish dream house are reinterpreted as collective facilities of the public housing estate.”

A house fostering a new idea of community

All facilities can be booked by the inhabitants for their private use.

The living room: containing all the luxury essentials for the modern cocooner to entertain guests: a home cinema, design lounge, computer games room…

The kitchen: a fully equipped professional kitchen for cooking lessons and preparing elaborate meals for family feasts

The bedroom: hostel rooms to be booked by residents for temporary stays of visitors who cannot be accommodated in the apartment

The bathroom: wellness center with jacuzzi, sauna, gym...

The veranda: a greenhouse with swimming pool, diving tower and year-round tropical planting

The shed: a thin high-rise of stacked hobby and craft rooms which can not be accommodated in the apartments for acoustic or space constraint reasons

The allotment: private outdoor spaces that compensate for the lack of balconies, to be used as ornamental garden or vegetable patch

The sun deck: a terrace available for the local residents and their guests, connected to the "kitchen" and "living room"

  • type: submission for ideas competition “Renaat Braem 1910-2010” organised by Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) and others

  • location: Antwerp, Belgium

  • year: 2010

  • architect: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

VAC

in

typicalplan = planning

an office building: THE FLEMISH ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRE (VAC).
vacl.jpg

Although the VAC is functionally an office building, we felt from the beginning that the typology of office building design was an inadequate starting point for this building.

The office building is a commercial typology whose aims are completely different to that of a public building and in fact, opposite. Profit driven, built for the short term, they must project enough exclusivity and gloss to attract occupiers. We felt strongly that the VAC should not be held hostage to a typological exercise best suited to a European highway or business park,  contorted to fit this site.

In contrast, a public building reveals a government’s commitment to its people and their aspirations. Long term investments, these building need to be solid and durable but not extravagant. They should integrate well with their context and be perceived as environmentally responsible. Full of ‘not for profit’ public rooms, receptions and exhibition spaces, they should be welcoming, easily accessed by the handicapped, non intimidating and immediately identifiable.

We felt strongly that due to the prominence of its site; its final place in the station development sequence of Leuven; its great size and the request for durability and long life, that the real priority for this building is to become not only part of the enduring fabric of Leuven but both a regional and city landmark.

The design grew out of a sculptural elaboration of the BPA. It aims to achieve a formal, urban simplicity through its proportions relative to the context  and by the use of a single material throughout – brick – (instead of a collage of materials) so that the building assumes a monolithic presence and identity as both a city and regional landmark. And within its most immediate environs, the building generates its own context.

“The idea that architecture can and should speak for itself is clear in both internal planning and external expression. (...) The building mass, with its clearly expressed extremities and a recessed centre, are a remarkably inventive translation of the planning requirements.”

Jan Schreurs, Professor of Architecture, in article “Flemish House”, A+, Belgian Review of Architecture

  • type: winning design after two-stage open design competition

  • client: Flemish Government

  • GFA: 25 000 sqm

  • design architect: GZ-ZAvEM (Eleni Gigantes, Elia Zenghelis, Bart van Leeuw, Heidi van Eetvelt, Hans Maes), Belgium

  • landscape architect: An Voets Belgium

  • engineer: Ove Arup & Partners International Ltd. UK

  • quantity surveyor: Monk Dunstone Associates Belgium / UK

  • construction architect: Jaspers-Eyers Belgium

Justaposition

in , ,

typicalplan = producing + penning

a book: JUSTAPOSITION.

Justaposition is a collection of mobile photography previously posted on Instagram under the TypicalPlan username.

All photos were shot between 2013 and 2015 and edited ex-clusively on iPhone 3, 4 and 6 with following iPhone apps: Snapseed, Mirrorgram, Mextures, Darkroom, Perspective.

For this publication only limited reformatting was applied for printing purposes.

  • title: Justaposition. framing the facts to fit the fiction. TypicalPlan images 2013-2015

  • publisher: TypicalPlan Ltd.

  • ISBN: 978-988-14472-0-3

  • date: 12/2015, first limited edition of 300 signed and numbered copies

  • details: soft cover, 100 pages

Hong Kong's Heretic Heritage

in

typicalplan = penning

about: HONG KONG'S HERETIC HERITAGE.

Argument for a Pungent Architecture.

Located in the densely populated Wan Chai district, Spring Garden Lane is one of Hong Kong’s oldest streets. Where once stood picturesque colonnaded shophouses containing brothels, now a jumble of mismatched high-rises are lining the narrow lane. At the halfway point the road widens to accommodate a small freestanding building that is currently being torn down. So far, so predictable: the dry beat of the jackhammer is an ever-present part of the city’s relentlessly cacophonous soundtrack. Hugged tightly by bamboo scaffolding and tarpaulin, the building’s silhouette now stands as a forensic tent at a crime scene. Behind this veil the structure is being pulverised back to the triangular piece of land it was standing on.

The haphazard shape of this leftover plot must have served as a catalyst for the building’s sculptural appearance. In contrast to the boxy building extrusions all around, its asymmetrical volume revealed different aspects of its character as you navigated the surrounding streets and glimpsed it from different directions.

Hemmed in at all sides, only pedestrians approaching from the north were afforded a long distance view. There commuters emerge from the subway trains, buses and trams whose routes trace the historical contours of the pre-reclamation coastline.

The building faced the endless streams of people head-on, sitting confidently at an angle to the narrow street, prying it open to claim its space. On the ground floor: a large gate for trucks to enter —a gaping void which emphasised the mass above. Rising up only four storeys, here it visually punched above its height.

At the opposite side the building volume stepped down in terraced platforms towards a street lined with market stalls. Slot windows horizontally sliced up the solid wall connecting these two very different facades. They were capped with chamfered concrete ridges, shielding against rain and sunshine. Wrapping around the corners, they provided a continuity and horizontal articulation across elevations.

Finally, the verticality of the public staircase tied the different floors together; extending above the main volume, it completed the composition on a suitably high note. The general impression was of a pleasingly scaled building, playful and inviting. The angular site had been translated into a mini-tower which provided a contrarian focal point within this high-density environment.

This was a utilitarian building housing the most mundane of functions. The high-ceilinged ground floor accommodated a refuse collection room. The neighbourhood’s thrash, gathered by garbage collectors on handcarts, was compacted there before being loaded onto garbage trucks. Above this were two levels of public toilets, open 24/7, not for the faint of heart. At the top was a cosy staff office with outdoor terrace for cleaning staff. From there the roof was accessible by steel ladder. In an alternate universe this could have been the perfect space for a lush roof garden, a visual relief for the thousands of neighbouring high-rise dwellers.

A truly public building, its borders seemed nebulous, the area around it always teeming with activity. Refuse spilled over from the holding area inside. Large bales of compressed cardboard were sitting on the pavement waiting for collection. Nearby shops stacked their wares against its façade for storage and display. Come Sunday, domestic helpers would be filling huge cardboard boxes with cheap goods to be shipped to family abroad. Elderly locals were playing boisterous games of Chinese checkers in its shadow.

During operation times the ground floor refuse room had its gates in opposing walls opened and the ground floor became part of the streetscape. It was easy to reach the imposing compacting machines or come and throw your thrash in one of the containers; just the stench kept people at bay.

The building’s functions have now been displaced and buried deep in the bowels of a nearby new development called the Avenue. Designed in a pastiche historical style, it is as if Hong Kong is trying to recreate the grandeur of history minus the inconvenient colonial memories —having demolished virtually every trace of its neo-classical heritage. At street level there is a mix of chain stores and fake rusticated facades concealing service spaces. They form the obligatory podium interface between the ground plane and the overpriced jigsaw of standardised apartment plans above. Built to resemble a kind of renaissance fortress, there are no porous borders to this building, no grey zones, just security guards and a general animosity towards the neighbourhood it is located in.

All this is in stark contrast with the disappearing refuse collection point. Here was a building that grew out of its surroundings, a veritable extension of the street. It responded to its intricate context with a restrained expressionist virtuosity. Celebrating its pungent functions right in the centre of the action, this building was a contradiction made concrete: a functionalist folly.

Picking through the rubble of this modestly ambitious structure should give us pause to think about the future of the Hong Kong streetscape. As the vanilla-scented fumes of commerce are seeping out of the air-conditioned shopping centres into the streets, the dirt, grime and controlled chaos that are so inextricably linked to the Hong Kong experience are gradually being vacuumed away.

Simultaneously the government seems to be shedding its role as purveyor of public facilities, shifting its responsibility to private developers. Some of Hong Kong’s most interesting architecture consists of government-funded buildings providing vital services to a burgeoning population in the second half of the 20th century. In a cityscape that was increasingly dominated by cookie cutter tower blocks aimed at nothing but generating revenue, they provided a measure of architectural ambition. They often combined very disparate functions under one roof while displaying a sense of light-touch, pragmatic modernism; in Hong Kong it is still not unusual to see wet markets, public baths, libraries and sports courts collated into a hybrid complex known as a municipal services building. These buildings as well as their smaller cousins —like the refuse collection/restroom combo discussed here— became buzzing hubs of activity, sitting prominently within the commerce-driven bustle of the surrounding city.

Saying goodbye to the philosophy of locating these facilities at the heart of public life and reducing them to add-ons to commercial developments has big consequences for the character of Hong Kong’s streets. While the changing fabric of society undoubtedly demands a reconsideration of its urban tissue, one wonders what it means when we start hiding all undesirable functions —and the people associated with them— from view.

The idiosyncratic energy of Hong Kong is very much tied up with relentless confrontation, with the forced collision of competing interests.

20190715_DSC5131.jpg

The limited amount of public space sets the scene for continuous negotiations —by definition it is open to multiple uses and interpretations. When those tensions are “resolved” within privately owned masterplanned environments like the Avenue, where all vagueness has been engineered and policed away, a certain freedom is necessarily lost.

Should Hong Kong not leave the sterile illusion of perfect harmony and re-imagined history to countries that do it so much better, the Singapores and Dubais of this world? Can we bring Hong Kong into the 21st century while preserving the sense of adventure and surprise —shock even— that make it such a joy to explore this city, time and time again? 

  • year: original text 2016 / redacted in 2021

  • author: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

The Doorstep

in

typicalplan = planning

an inside-out hotel: THE DOORSTEP.


The Doorstep is a hotel turned inside out.

The workings and functions of the hotel -usually invisible to the city- are brought out into the open. Corridors and facilities are cantilevered from the hotel tower with guest rooms. 

The spectacle of the multifarious everyday activities and available services on display draw in a wide array of people -bringing the diversity of the city literally to the guest’s doorstep. 

The Premise.

The typical highrise city hotel: a matrix of hermetically sealed, relentlessly repeated identical hotel rooms sitting on top of an inward-looking podium which hides a world of facilities. 

We accept the bigger city hotels are like small, dysfunctional villages in their own right. We put forward that these these ever-changing neighbourhoods have not been sufficiently integrated in the fabric of the city.

Think of all the facilities present in hotels. The meeting rooms, swimming pools, laundries; the restaurants, the gyms and squash courts; the convenience stores, concierge services and business centres. 

Think also of the dark, uninviting, generic hotel corridor. Think of the wasted opportunities, all these square metres for just circulation, the same depressing stationary conveyor belts all over the world, nightmarish and depressing.

What if we turn the hotel inside out, upside down?

Circulation on the outside of the building, galleries with abundant daylight and spectacular city views.

Facilities not on ground level but lifted up, scattered, part of the newly formed promenade architectural, livening up the walk to your room. Also acting as a living billboard for all the activities available in the hotel.

It’s not about inventing new functions or hybrid spaces where hotel guests and locals can meet. It is about injecting what is already present with new life, opening up the hotel to the city. Making a living, breathing spectacle of the hotel merely by opening it up to the city, visually as well as functionally.

The corridors with a variety of activities and stepped access to the raised hotel rooms call to mind another New York scene, the streetlife around the Stoops, typical of the old Brownstone buildings.

Injecting the diversity and excitement of the city into the hotel.

The typical city hotel room is only differentiated by its size, sometimes its view, sometimes by some extra services. However, the Doorstep is able to offer an endless array of room types, based on their proximity to facilities: the pool room, the smokers’ room, the booklovers’ room, the family with kids’ room, the gym nut’s room, the businessman’s room, the serious drinker’s room, the gambler’s room… And all the combinations thereof.

  • type: submission for Tablet hotel design competition

  • location: New York, USA

  • year: 2012

  • architect: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

Flemish Mountaineering Federation Headquarters

in

typicalplan = planning

an office interior: FLEMISH MOUNTAINEERING FEDERATION HEADQUARTERS.


Conversion and sustainable upgrading of existing warehouse of 240 m² into open plan office with meeting spaces, library and kitchen. Integrated architecturural and interior design services including custom-made furniture. 

  • location: Zwijndrecht, Belgium

  • year: 2011

  • architect: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

  • contractor: Bouwbedrijf Van Der Kinderen NV

Vlaanderen 2002 no-space odyssey

in

typicalplan = planning

VLAANDEREN 2002 NO-SPACE ODYSSEY.
Doel-Vlaanderen_masterplanning-highrise-vertical-village

Due to a government decision the small Flemish polder village of Doel will finally yield to the expansion of the port of Antwerp. About a  thousand inhabitants will be forced out of their houses and distributed over new suburban developments. A village community with a rich history is destroyed.

By relocating to low-density neighbourhoods a bad thing begets worse: the space-consuming port expansion is multiplied by housing the former village dwellers in suburban villa’s.


Can this tragedy instead become an opportunity?

If destruction of the village is unavoidable for economic reasons, isn’t it our duty to offer the inhabitants a real alternative?


The port expansion is accompanied by the abandonment of the old small-scale port facilities near the centre of Antwerp. The gradual dissociation of city and port leaves a barren no man’s land in its wake. Would it not be self-evident to relocate a village destroyed by harbour expansion to the scorched earth left in the wake of this capitalist bulldozer?

Instead of being fragmented by the destructive powers of the port, the village would reappear densified, more concentrated in the eye of the storm.

Instead of causing fragmentation, the disappearance of the village becomes an opportunity for a research into new forms of high-density housing.

An investigation into high-rise dwellings:

+ Can an apartment building with a surplus of shared common spaces become a vertical village?

+ Is not the flaw of modernist high-rise planning to situate public space next to the building, thus minimizing the possibilities of interaction and interweaving between public and private space? (The so-called landscape on the untouched ground plane beneath the “pilotis” is just greenery as scenery.)

+ What if circulation spaces were inflated so they function as real transitory semi-public zones within the building?

+ What if corridors became streets?

The old village becomes a blueprint for the creation of multiple transitory levels of privacy. But whereas the structure of the old village meant that houses looked into each other in the front and at the back, here the inhabitants are offered an unhindered view of the river at one side and its hinterland to the other. Public streets are up- and downwards. A true vertical village.

  • type: graduation project Master of Architecture, St.-Lucas Institute of Architecture, WENK (Brussels, Belgium)

  • location: Antwerp, Belgium

  • year: 1999

  • architect: Hans Leo Maes / TypicalPlan

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