Chloe Tam

Chloe’s spatial interests are places of curiosity and exploration, and is constantly questioning the relationship between senses, memory, identity, and temporality.

Her first-year project at the RCA: “From Homo Sapiens to Homo Ludens: Unscripting Architecture” proposes a spatial and programmatic strategy for the transformation of a large-scale mono-functional stadium into a multi-generational playscape in Hong Kong.

Chloe completed her undergraduate degree in Architecture at the University of Hong Kong (2019) and has worked as an architectural designer in P&T Group and Shigeru Ban Architects in Tokyo. Her final year project, ‘Flux in Málaga,’ was exhibited at IE Design Excellence Exhibition during her exchange semester in Segovia, Spain.

Chloe’s project takes the Cantonese ‘Ballad of Sighs’ as an entry point, to explore the maritime history of Hong Kong through the lens of a nomadic group of fishermen. A city known for its past as a fishing village, Ballads of Sighs carries stories about the sea’s scenery, the variety of fishes; stories about life & death, through tones that alternate in repetition, synchronizing with the ocean waves. Unique to the sea dwellers, this genre of music is passed down from one generation to the next, but as fewer follow the ancestral path of fishermen, the music finds fewer and fewer listeners today.

From Sampan (fishing boat dwellings), and shipyard factories, to typhoon shelters, Chloe seeks ways to connect, revisit and reactivate pieces of the fading history and culture of the city. 

The design is an architecture space dedicated to sea burial ceremonies in Hong Kong, a type of memorial service where cremated ashes are scattered into the sea. It is a way of honoring the natural cycles of life and death, where all living things eventually return to earth or water.

Sea burial addresses the environmental concerns of land shortage driven by traditional ground burial and urn storage in the crematorium. It is a greener burial method encouraged by the local government, but the current practice merely involves the government providing free-of-charge ferry services to bring citizens to the 3 designated scattering zones. 

The project intends to address the contemporary practice by proposing a new typology of ritual and ceremony around sea burial. Chloe wants to explore the use of sound and music as a design methodology, to approach the taboo around passing and mourning.