A0: Applied Exercise

1. GATHER

Build a useful visual collection.

Begin with the city rather than the AI. Each student will work with one assigned / approved artefact category, building a small collection of real examples from around Hong Kong. Document them carefully enough that someone else can understand both the whole system and the details that make it up.

The aim is not simply to collect many photographs. Your collection should provide structured visual evidence that can later be compared, cross-referenced, and checked. The quality of the later investigation depends on whether your visual collection gives you evidence that can actually be understood and tested.

1.1. Your collections

Each student will work with one artefact category:

Bamboo scaffolds & connections
Façades, building envelopes & massing
Floor plans & massing
Comfortable or “happy” places & interiors
Trusses, frames, connections & buildings

Within your assigned category:

Select approximately 5 sites / artefact collections around Hong Kong.
Treat each site or related group of material as one identifiable collection: ##01, ##02, ##03 …
Aim for examples that are sufficiently different to support comparison later in the exercise.

For example, if your assigned category is Bamboo Scaffolds & Connections, you might document five different scaffold installations. If your category is Floor Plans & Massing, you might document five different residential buildings or estates.

Figure 1. Illustrative examples of possible subjects and visual artefacts. Image generated with ChatGPT / OpenAI.

1.2. Document at three scales

IMPORTANT: Please turn on Location Services on your phone before collecting photographs. This helps preserve GPS information in the image metadata and supports later georeferencing of your collections.

Level 1 — Context

Purpose: Situate the System within a larger setting.
Show: Where the System is located; what surrounds it; how it relates to a larger building, site, room, block, or estate; and where different parts of the System belong.
Target: Approximately 1–2 Context views or representations per collection, where appropriate.

Level 2 — System

Purpose: Capture the principal object of study as fully and clearly as possible.
Show: The main artefact you are documenting—for example, an entire bamboo scaffold, building massing, large coherent façade, individual floor plan, complete room, truss, or frame.
For three-dimensional Systems: Use different viewpoints; make sure the System appears as completely as reasonably possible; and provide enough variation for its overall form to be understood.
Target: Approximately 4–5 System views or representations per collection.

Level 3 — Detail

Purpose: Isolate meaningful parts, components, features, or local conditions within the System.
Show: Joints and connections; individual members; façade panels and openings; material interfaces; rooms or local spatial conditions; furniture, objects, or other features that caught your attention.
For plan-based collections: A Detail does not need to be a close-up photograph. It may instead be a particular room, unit, corridor, threshold, or spatial condition represented through a plan crop, photograph, rendering, or annotation.
Target: Approximately 4–5 Detail views or representations per collection.

Connect the scales

For each collection, prepare one nested visual explanation that clearly connects the three levels: Context → System → Detail

Show where the System sits within the wider Context, and where selected Details belong within the System. Use simple crops, boxes, arrows, labels, or other annotations to make these relationships immediately understandable.

The aim is to show that the three scales form one connected visual record, rather than a set of unrelated images.

PHOTOGRAPHY: For System and Detail levels, you are generally expected to collect your own photographs (for anything plan-based, gathering or scanning the plan is enough). You may complement your collection with externally sourced images—such as Google Maps Street View, satellite imagery, or other online references—particularly where they help establish the Context level.

Artefact category	Context	System	Detail
Bamboo scaffolds & connections	Building / street view showing where the scaffold is located	Scaffold shown as fully as possible	Connections, joints, individual bamboo members, ties, supports
Façades, building envelopes & massing	Building within its street, block, or surrounding urban setting	Whole building massing and/or a large coherent view of the façade	Individual façade panel, opening, window, material junction, shading element, surface condition
Floor plans & massing	Estate map, site plan, block arrangement, or other larger-scale plan	Exterior building massing and/or an individual floor plan shown as completely as possible	Particular room, unit, corridor, threshold, or spatial condition, shown through a plan crop, photograph, rendering, or annotation
Comfortable / “happy” places & interiors	Floor plan, building plan, or wider spatial view showing where the selected place is located	Room, interior, or spatial setting shown as completely as possible	Particular things or conditions that captured your attention: furniture, light, material, view, planting, enclosure, seating, objects, etc.
Trusses, frames, connections & buildings	Building plan, larger room, roof, hall, or structural setting showing where the truss / frame is located	Truss or frame shown as fully as possible	Connections, joints, supports, members, plates, bolts, or other local structural features

The precise meaning of each scale will vary between artefact categories. The important relationship is:

Context → System → Detail

Context situates the System and helps relate it to a larger whole.
System captures the principal object of study as fully as possible.
Detail identifies meaningful parts or local conditions within that System.

Wherever possible, make these scales cross-referenceable.

For example:

a scaffold connection should be locatable within a wider scaffold image;
the scaffold itself should be locatable on the building;
a façade panel should be locatable within the overall façade;
a room should be locatable within the floor plan;
a room photograph or rendering should correspond to a recognisable location in the plan;
a truss connection should be identifiable within the complete truss.

Think of each collection as a nested visual record, rather than a set of unrelated images.

The following guidelines will help you prepare this part of the assignment:

📷 Photography Notes
Set up Location Services, preserve original files and metadata, and collect photographs consistently. [link]

🗂️ Raw Artefacts
Check what evidence, files, outputs, and supporting material you need to produce and retain. [link]