[total dimension: 600 x 360 cm; dimensions of houseboats variable | mediums: plexiglass, wood veneer, plastic, aluminum, paint, steel cable, foam, copper wire, etc.]

Related Exhibitions:
OPEN HOUSE: Singapore Biennale | 2011
The River Project | Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney | 2010

◀︎ ▶︎ All Projects

Many of Chung’s projects explore the intricate relationships between humans, their built environment, and nature–with a focus on anthropogenic and climate-related disasters. As a child, Chung witnessed the 1978 historic flood in a ‘New Economic Zone’ of the Mekong Delta, where her family was forcibly relocated after the war. This severe flood was recorded in the International Disaster Database. Growing up, Chung has become interested in flooding as something natural and as indicative of Anthropocene disasters—particularly floods that occur with sea-level rise and climate variability, and those intensified by hydropower development. Responding to the extreme flood projections by 2050 in a 2010 study published by the Asian Development Bank[1] that was later confirmed by a 2019 Climate Central report,[2] Chung rendered several maps based on the study and created a large-scale model of a floating village combined vernacular architectural forms of farming and houseboat communities in Asia with ecological design principles, many of which have already existed in these villages. Drawing from the wisdom and resilience of communities living with such acute climate crises for generations, Chung proposed an adaptation measure as a sustainable way of living with chronic floods, instead of mobility recommendations.

To design this self-sustaining floating village comprised of the 1:50 scale models of 43 houseboats and 70 miniature boats, Chung researched floating communities on Tonlé Sap Lake (Cambodia), Hạ Long Bay (Vietnam), Song Kalia River in Sangkhlaburi (Thailand), Srinagar (India), and Japanese traditional farmhouses in Gifu and Yamaguchi. She then incorporated design principles drawn from these various examples throughout Asia to create five distinct types of houseboats: fish farm, farmhouse, school/clinic, house on stilts for ventilation and cooling, and narrow houseboat for mobility—with an extensive rainwater harvesting and storage system functioning as floating blocks, solar tiles and panels, yakisugi walls, and floating, rooftop, or vertical gardens.

While Chung’s ambitious installation also reflects her interest in arcology,[3] it critiques the modernist ethos of master planning, with its contradictory premise that often assumes universalist architectural plans ill-suited to the needs of the community at the ground level. Instead, Chung’s work highlights vernacular architecture and design features that have been in place for generations in these localities, underscoring the fact that ecological concerns and strategies for sustainability are neither a contemporary nor Western phenomenon.

[1] Asian Development Bank, “Ho Chi Minh City Adaptation to Climate Change” (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2010), 6-8.
https://icem.com.au/portfolio-items/ho-chi-minh-city-adaptation-to-climate-change-summary-report/
[2] https://www.climatecentral.org/report/report-flooded-future-global-vulnerability-to-sea-level-rise-worse-than-previously-understood
[3] Arcology is an ideological and practical approach to the imbricated fields of architecture and ecology theorized by architect Paolo Soleri.
Paolo Soleri, Arcology, the City in the Image of Man (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1969).