Daydreamers

DESIGN: SIU Kwok Kin Stanley, CHAN Pui Hong Aden, HUI Chun Hoi Eddie, HE Yiteng

Project Duration and

LOCATION: This Pavilion was built for Hong Kong Mid-Autumn Festival Lantern Wonderland 2013, held in Victoria Park from 14 September 2013 to 22 September 2013.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Rising Moon is a temporary pavilion designed to serve as an anchor attraction during the 2013 Hong Kong Mid-Autumn Festival. It re-interpret traditional paper lanterns with recycled plastic bottles on the same time creating a Synthetic Moon, thus promoting the message of environmental protection. Rising Moon offered strong visual impact with sound and lighting effects externally and internally. The design received the Gold Award at the Lantern Wonderland Design Competition in May 2013.

DESIGN CONCEPT: For over hundreds of years, it is the Chinese’s tradition to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, to be gathered under the full moon once a year with family and friends, a symbol of Reunion. With such tradition and folklore, the Moon has always been the main focus during Mid-Autumn Festival as it become brighter, bigger in size and a perfect circle during the Full Moon Phase. Our concept is to bring the distanced Moon closer to the surface of Victoria Park, which gives the visitors a dynamic visual impact, a Synthetic Moon.

In recent years, our society becomes more aware of the term Sustainability, on different aspects of our living environment such as foods, shelters and transportations. As a temporary pavilion, we proposed using sustainable materials which is recyclable after deconstruction or even using recycle material for construction directly, to promote Hong Kong as a sustainable city.

Each year, there are thousands of polycarbonate water bottles distributed and the amount of consumption is still increasing. The polycarbonate water bottles will be recollected by distributer for reuse after distillation. This sparks our concept on our proposal for this year’s Lantern Wonderland 2013, to achieve a sustainable design. We proposed to reuse the 5 gallons polycarbonate water bottles as a representation of the traditional Chinese Paper Lanterns. The outer dome surface of the moon was wrapped around with water bottles, in which they are transparent with variation of colours also creating an interesting texture.

Each water bottle was connected with a Light Emitting Diode (LED) device and each LED was controlled by computer to generate different lighting effects on the moon surface. LED are low energy consumption and reusable. One of the highlights of the lighting effects was the performance of the Moon Phases, from the New Moon to Full Moon.

The Rising Moon was sitting on top of reflective pool. This was to allow the Moon to have a complete sphere visually on the outside, having the other half appearing on the pool as a reflection.

The Rising Moon consisted of a steel dome structure based on the geodesic dome design with triangular modules. The visitors can experience the whole journey by the pathway which run through the pavilion. The journey began from the edge of the reflective pool, it leaded to the entrance of the Rising Moon. It had 20 meters in diameter by 10 meters in height spherical interior space, and also an opening on the roof to let the moon shined into the pavilion at night. In order to arouse the public awareness of the damage made to our city by those bottles, we had included a lighting installation hang from the ceiling as to mimic the tradition of hanging paper lanterns under the eaves.

Once the installation had completed, a sea of bottle lanterns with LED appeared inside the pavilion. This gave a strong visual impact to the visitor as they enter, and drew the attention towards the opening.

While we celebrate such meaningful tradition of ours, we might as well think about what can be done so that our future generation will grow up in a healthier environment.

SPECIFICATIONS / DIMENSION / PACKAGE / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: - “Rising Moon” is three stories high, measuring approximately 10 meters in height and 20 meters in diameter. - The entire lantern is made from recyclable and reusable materials, including approximately 7,000 recycled plastic bottles (4,848 5-gallon bottles and 2,300 1.5-liter bottles), steel frames, cable wires and energy-saving LED lights. The plastic bottles will be recycled after the display. - The hemispheric structure consists of 148 triangular steel components, each crossed with cable wires to form a cable net.

LED lights tied to plastic bottles are secured to the cable net in each triangular steel frame, forming the surface of the lantern. - The giant lantern sits in a pool, and with lighting effects, it joins its reflection, imitating the moon phases, forming a “full moon” at one point. - Visitors and local residents can walk inside the structure from its sides to appreciate the design of the interior, which is filled with suspended lanterns made from recycled plastic bottles. Spectators can view the full moon through the lantern’s dormer.

The lantern interior can accommodate a maximum of 100 persons at a time.

CHALLENGE: The construction period of Rising Moon was between 02 September 2013 and 13 September 2013, 12 days. In order to deliver the Rising Moon within a short period of time, we standardize the design with triangular modules through complex geodesic calculations. 148 steel triangular modules were simplified into 6 types of different module. Prefabrication of triangular modules and inserting LED components into water bottles were the vital part of the construction of Rising Moon. This process minimize the on-site production time and maintaining its quality to a high standard.