Medusa

Exploratory Construction Project
University of Hong Kong

Design Team: Eric Lo, Serena Tse, Chen Lok Yan, Olivier Ottevaere

2012

Medusa is a full-scale prototype of a concrete umbrella providing sunshade for public use. It consists of three interlocking concrete legs that articulate a continuous transition from column to slab - an alteration of a mushroom column archetype.

The construction of the project explores means of conceiving concrete formworks that are more responsive and adaptive to the casting process. In doing so, the formwork employs a range of different materials - hard and soft - all accomplices in interacting with gravity loads.

As a group of architecture students and one tutor, we took residency in a large precast concrete factory in the Pearl River Delta, a region in China often labelled as ‘the factory of the world’. There, for a few weeks we lived and worked with factory workers, learned from their trades, and fully experienced how such a plant geared towards mass production operates professionally and socially. Throughout the making of the project, friendships were forged out of intense working circumstances.