Major designs on micro parks
Friday, May 25, 2018
Marisa Yiu founded Design Trust Futures Studio, hoping to get community members to work alongside architects and academics towards reimagining the old, familiar neighborhoods of Hong Kong. She tells China Daily Hong Kong about the progress of her newly launched project aimed at revitalizing the city’s micro parks.
Q: How did you zero in on the Design Trust Futures Studio flagship program “Play is for the People”, which is about developing proposals toward revitalizing four of Hong Kong’s micro parks? A: We wanted to explore notions of designing through learning, and listening, basically designing with the community by being more openminded and challenging notions of “expertise”. Different sections of a community often do not talk to each other. Some of them are more segregated from each other because of their social or cultural environments. So we’re trying to bring together people from different fields to tackle and promote the ideas of innovation and leisure through design.
Q: You have four teams of young designers, each mentored by a more experienced professional, working on developing the revitalization proposals through interaction with community members. How is it going so far?
A: Each group of architects has a different relationship with its assigned neighborhood. For example, the group working on the Yi Pei Playground has already forged a strong connection with people from the surrounding neighborhood. They are going to design some prototypes and study models with inputs from the children in the neighborhood.
The Portland Street Rest Garden and Hamilton Street Rest Garden groups are going to present their initial ideas to the district council as well as local community members in early July.
Usually the success of such initiatives depends on the will power of the individual designer or maybe that of the community district councilor who actually wants to help drive it. When it comes to collective community design, what really counts is the team dynamic, provided you can actually build strong aspirations to work together, motivate the participants and keep the momentum.
Q: From the outset you have got together people from across different
fields to collaborate in Design Trust projects…
A: With Design Trust Futures Studio we have tried to turn the model of the university-type studio inside out. It’s not so much about “I am so obsessed with designing this beautiful object”, rather whether and how the said beautiful park or a green wall design impacts the neighborhood. It’s a question of facing design challenges beyond the architecture school set-up.
All our “Play is for the People” design project mentees have 10 years or less of experience working in various fields of design. Through this program, they had the exposure to different neighborhoods in Hong Kong. The mentors come with a different range of expertise: Gary Chang has extensive experience designing small apartments and micro spaces; Stanley Wong is an artist and designer focused on promoting Hong Kong culture. One of the advisers, the artist Kacey Wong, opened up his studio to the designers and challenged some of their thinking. These are opportunities architecture and design students do not often have after finishing school. My goal was to engage them in continued learning, have them interact with reporters, scientists and activists.
Q: Some of the participating architects proposed strikingly imaginative and unconventional use of Hong Kong’s vertical spaces. Is it possible to transfer public spaces from the ground level to the rooftops as well as accommodate the needs of the elderly and the infirm?
A : I think anything is possible if you have the will power, good governance and community involvement. For example, the group working on the Hill Road Flyover sitting-out area has proposed exploiting the vertical spaces under the flyover infrastructure as the available public space is quite narrow and mostly tucked under the flyover. Rooftops could also be very useful for the people living in the subdivided flats in the neighborhood; however there are public regulation issues to contend with. Our team is now looking to build a structure that will bring new opportunities to the local community. We did something similar last year as part of our “Small is Meaningful” project. A young developer group let their storefront space in Shek Tong Tsui to be turned into a semi-exhibition-cum-pop-up-playground space for a short period of time. Every afternoon, the neighborhood children would run into the space and start tossing the ball. After two and a half weeks, when the exhibition had to be dismantled, the mother of a 3-year-old told me, “This was a great asset, especially since we can’t afford to go to indoor playrooms.”
Q: The Hill Road Flyover group also proposed creating sitting-out areas inspired
by the historic defunct gasholders in the area…
A : The third gasholder in Kennedy Town reminds one of a very tragic historic moment (an explosion that killed 42 people in May 1934). To be able to present a relic of that incident in a playful way and also with respect to the neighborhood’s history is beautiful and critical at the same time.
Q: To revitalize without altering the original character of a historical structure must be quite tricky. And then there is also the question of being in character with the city’s architectural landscape…
A: There’s a huge need for non-generic design to make a city really stand out in terms of having a strong identity. Elizabeth Diller, who was a lead designer of New York’s High Line (a defunct light railroad spur that has since been repurposed into an aerial garden), is one of our international workshop mentors. She remarked that Hong Kong has a beautiful urban network, density and compactness. It might be possible to build a network of small parks with different identities in Hong Kong by involving the community as a collective.
Q: What’s the government department feedback vis-a-vis
the concept presentation last month?
A: All the people joining us as advisory, including those from the Leisure and Culture Services Department (LCSD) and Architectural Services Department, have been giving us great feedback. They have been super incredible, very open-minded. Of course they are the ones who manage the parks and support capital investment to sustain them. The approval of funding agencies is required too before these projects are possible. So of course there are issues of practicality and pragmatism to push.
In the past, Hong Kong parks did not really feature “inclusive” designs. It wasn’t part of the mandate. Now the LCSD is keen on having more inter-generational designs that are beneficial for different age groups. And, very importantly, can parks also become educational, can they help people learn about the ecological cycles and different species, so that parks are not just a pleasant environment to be in but could be inspiring?
Q: So what’s the status of the revitalization of micro-parks
project right now?
A: How well the design teams present their ideas to the community district officer and councilor to get their buy-in is crucial. If some of the plans make it through, hopefully Hong Kong will have some new parks in a year or two. That’s the desire. I do get a sense that there is incredible support, especially with the new policies in place. And with the chief executive leaning toward design thinking, there’s investment and value placed on design. So there’s a new energy in looking at design and culture. Hopefully we’re the lucky recipients of this new movement.