Jason Kwok Kwan Chan

The Edificial Voice of San Lorenzo, Turin 2009

This project embodies a series of investigations into the Sublime through a reinterpretation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame that is extrapolated from Paris to Guarino Guarini’s (1666-1680) Baroque Church of San Lorenzo in Turin.

In Hugo’s novel the anthropomorphic aspects of Notre Dame reflect an implicit relationship between the Cathedral’s plan and decorative elements and the disfigurement of Quasimodo’s body. It describes the Cathedral’s bell tower as the bodily extension of the hunchback. Quasimodo, deafened by the sound of the bells, relies on the edifice to ‘speak’ to the city of Paris, creating a metaphysical fusion of acoustic, spatial and human flesh.

In this project the ‘voice’ of San Lorenzo is fulfilled through the completion of a new bell tower, one that can now speak to the city of Turin through its carillon. The proposed architecture is explored through a digital study of Baroque geometry, as it informs the formal and material dimension of the tower.

Jason Kwok Kwan Chan studied architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL where he gained a Masters/Diploma degree in 2009. He has worked for Professor Qing Yun Ma in Shanghai and Los Angeles and is currently employed at MAKE architects in London. Jason has been invited to run design charrettes in various universities most recently at Oxford Brookes University and the University of Lund in Sweden.