Overhead Bridge: Hybrid City
Jiankai Gong 3036086373
Theme
As one of the most densely populated cities in the world, Hong Kong has adopted a multilevel urban planning system in order to optimize land use and the convenience of travel. As of 2022, 1,043 overhead bridges have been constructed as a response to accommodate the high-density living style. I will be conducting my research around the hypothesis: Hong Kong is a bridge city and overhead bridges embody hybridity.
The video is divided into two parts:
Hybrid Urbanism
Overhead pedestrian bridges are elevated urban infrastructures segregated from ground-level streets. Being the top part of the layered traffic construction, they vertically segregate vehicles and pedestrians, allowing the free-flowing of road traffic while guaranteeing the safety of pedestrians. They connect the city by creating a sophisticated patchwork of horizontal infrastructures among vertical architectures, improving mobility and embellishing the topography of the metropolis.
Hybrid Space
The overhead bridge is a hybrid space where public and private collide, coincide, and synchronize. On Sundays, communities of foreign domestic helpers gather together to spend their “day off” on these bridges. They chat, share food, polish their nails, and play card games as if they are “at home”. In fact, a house, which we consider as our private space, is actually their working space, and thus they are often unable to discuss private matters comfortably in their employer’s house. A bridge, despite being a public space, serves as a private space for domestic helpers to a certain extent due to the sense of anonymity that individuals perceive in a big city. Pedestrians might take a quick glance at the helpers as an oblivious expression of general awareness of one’s surroundings, but no one is evaluatively “watching” them with a great amount of intensity. This suggests that their privacy is actually redeemed in public places.
The method of conducting the research
I decided to conduct my fieldwork with a special focus on the iconic landmark of Causeway Bay — the round overhead footbridge. Built in 1963, situated on Yee Wo Street, this architecture enriches the urban topography with man-made geometries, the curved circular structure of the bridge contrasts with the linear streets which can be interpreted as a symbol of resistance to the superimposed overall utopian rigidity. The objective of my field trip was to investigate the role of overhead bridges in enhancing the heterogeneity of Hong Kong and the way they define the unique visage of the city. Adopting a cinematic approach, my research began with a distant observation of the panoramic bridge, then I gradually walked toward the bridge from different directions to scrutinize it in detail. I paid attention to the structure of the bridge, the orientations that it provides access to, the pedestrians, and more specifically, the domestic helpers enjoying their Sunday on the bridge.
Producing the video
My video essay opens with a push-in shot that ends with a vertical tilt to introduce the subject of my research: the round bridge at Causeway Bay. The push-in effectively emphasizes the theme of the video and the vertical tilt reveals the scale of the subject in its environment, which provides a clear setting and context for the following contents. Then a montage of static shots, horizontal tilts, and diagonal tilts gives a more comprehensive image of the bridge from different angles and the surrounding layering traffic construction. The following crosscutting of camera roll shots of different points of view highlights the unique round structure of the bridge as opposed to the straight-lined buildings next to it, acting as a prologue for the first subtheme: hybrid urbanism.
In the hybrid urbanism part, I demonstrated the overhead bridge as an elevated pedestrian network separated from the ground-level vehicular traffic, with shots of the bridge from a passenger’s perspective inside the nostalgic “Ding Ding” tram. Further displaying the hybrid urban planning, I accentuate the verticality of the bridge with a downward tilt shot of the spiral stairs and a match-cutting of people walking up and down stairs. In contrast to the bustling traffic at ground level, the overhead bridge exists as a tranquil parallel of the city and offers novel views to tourists and residents alike. It’s an unmoving space to watch and appreciate the dynamic moving city below us.
Not only is the bridge a space that harbors mobility and immobility, but it is also a hybrid space — the second subtheme of my video — where public meets private. Eye-level tracking shots following a user of the bridge permit the audience to get a first-person sensation of what it feels like to be on the infrastructure. The frame captures the omnipresence of cardboard and mats on the floor which people use as “temporary shelters” and reveals the way the bridge, which is usually classified as a public space, fosters behaviors that are conventionally seen in intimate personal spaces. Aiming to delve deeper into the relationship between people and architecture, I included documentary-like shots where I interview the foreign domestic helpers for their views of the bridge as a public-private space.
Finally, the video ends with a montage of views from the bridge and a vertical tilt that starts with green plants in the foreground. This scene elevates the hybridity of Hong Kong to a new level by showing the coexistence of natural elements and artificial elements. The closing of the video is a time-lapse of the flow of people and vehicles filmed on the bridge providing a holistic view of the city.
Bibliography
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Good work! A well-established piece supported with personal perspectives and contextual information. I like your video in a way that it is not purely informative, but telling a story while giving out critical factual information. Your contrast and description of the ambiguity of the working space, private space and public space for the domestic workers is also thought-provoking.
At the same time, your writing is carefully-crafted and organized so that it helps readers to understand your research focus and intention behind your representation in the video. I appreciate how you adopted the idea of ‘hybrid urbanism’ and ‘hybrid space’ and your discussion on the typology of footbridge.