The Urban Puzzle: Commerical vs Public?
The Theme: The Urban Puzzle: Commerical vs Public?
Location: CBPM Room C119
The Speaker: Gregory Kovacs
Time: Wednesday of 23rd October 18:00
Gregory Kovacs graduated from Architectural Association School of Architecture with a unit master at the undergraduate school of the Bartlett UCL. He trained as an architect and engineer at Budapest University of Technology and the Architectural Association in London. He has taught at the Diploma and Intermediate Schools of the Architectural Association, working at Foster, HOK, RTKL, Herzog de Meuron and Atkins, and other leading firms, is currently the Design Director of Benoy in Hong Kong.
Gregory Kovacs has been recognized at the annual Perspective ‘40 under 40’ Awards in 2018. The leading architecture and design publication honored 40 future leaders of Asia’s design industry at a ceremony in Hong Kong. He was awarded in the ‘Architecture’ category and recognized for his professional achievements, contributions to the industry, and for paving the way for design excellence in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. The award categories cover a total of four design fields which include – Architecture, Interior Design, Product Design, and Art.
Benoy was founded in 1947 in the UK; an internationally acclaimed, award-winning firm of Architects, Master planners, Interior and Graphic Designers with a dedicated team of people working from design studios in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Mumbai, Newark, and London.
During Gregory Kovacs’s tenure as a Director in the Shanghai studio, as Project Leader at Heatherwick Studio, his projects include the Fosun Foundation Art Gallery and the Bund Finance Center, a mixed-use development in Shanghai. He was also the founder of their computational design unit of the practice, a specialist division focusing on the conception and delivery of geometrically complex structures.
The Bund Finance Center is the “endpoint” of Shanghai’s most famous street, connecting the old town with the new financial district, reflecting the size of the Bund and the characteristics of historical sites. It combines premium offices, boutique hotels, cultural centers, and luxury retail stores and they are arranged around the public square. To the south of the site are two 180-meter-high landmark buildings. The core building is the only cultural building in the financial district, the Fosun Foundation Art Gallery. It is regarded as an international art and cultural exchange platform and it is also a place where major brands hold events and release new products. It looks like a western classical organ, more like a tassel that is swaying by the Chinese imperial concubine. The movable tassels, the curtains of the event, the huge rooftops, and the flashing digital sky garden not only make the Pudong scenery unobstructed but also open a feast of repeated flows, bringing people a rich spirit.
Image| From the Internet
Writer| Haozhuo Wu, Jingjing Yu