「非常社區」是香港中文大學建築學院與非牟利機構非常香港合作發展的社區場所營造項目，旨在重新啟動和拓展後疫情公共空間及社區生活，並建立一個關注社區空間營造的持份者網絡。本文將介紹中大建築學院師生為「非常社區節」設計的公共空間改造及建築裝置，從而探討設計師在社區網絡中所擔當的角色和挑戰。

1. HK Map logo

Introduction
Space+ is a placemaking project conceived by the non-profit agency Very Hong Kong (VHK) and the School of Architecture of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), aiming to re-initiate and expand post-pandemic community life in public space. The aspiration is to develop a district network of “place-makers” across Hong Kong, of which the first two editions were realised in Tin Shui Wai(TSW) in winter 2022 and in Yau Tsim Mong(YTM) in summer 2023, with a third edition planned for Quarry Bay in spring 2024. (Fig. 1)
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Each edition encompasses an 8-week capacity-building programme, concluding with a community festival for local residents. The programme includes workshops introducing placemaking concepts and skill sets to community groups and NGO staff, enabling them to act as multiplicators in each neighbourhood for local initiatives. The workshop participants form teams and plan for a place-based project, which will be showcased during the community festival event at the end of each edition. In collaboration with the organiser, faculty members and students from the architecture and urban design programs at the CUHK School of Architecture contribute to designing and making spatial installations to transform local public spaces for the Space+ community festivals temporarily. While it is a valuable design exercise for students to gain hands-on experience in community design and making, this project is also an opportunity to think about our role in community design as architects and urban designers to create social impact through spatial interventions. This article offers two points of consideration, intending to initiate a disciplinary discussion on how to design for and engage with the community and the architect’s position as part of a larger collaborative community network.

2. Site figure ground

Sensitivity to local community character
The first question that arises as we approach this project is its district-based conception, which points to the diverse characteristics and demographics of different areas in Hong Kong. In typical design projects, the professional acts as a consultant and uses their skills and knowledge to respond to a given brief, usually as an outsider attempting to provide a universal design solution. However, in the case of a public space project, the relationship of the designer to its user (or client) should be different, through a reciprocal communication and negotiation process instead of a one-way order in place. Besides fulfilling basic programme needs such as seating, display, or performance during the festival, how can we apply common placemaking strategies to represent and reflect a sense of local identity? Furthermore, the design exercise examines the nominal public space design practice and explores how tactical intervention can evoke and suggest future design improvements.
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Therefore, sensitivity to local character and the people becomes a crucial guide to the design, where the team works closely with the organiser and seeks opportunities to interact with the participating community groups. This approach changes the user’s positioning as the “client”. From asking the users (or clients) what they need (i.e. a design brief), the designer investigates the actual and sometimes less obvious needs and concerns through careful observation and conversation. To better understand the district’s character, the design team conducted extensive fieldwork to survey site conditions and document local public space usage. Such pre-design interactions and studies became important clues and inspirations to inform design decisions, discovering the detail and nuance of local characteristics and demographics. In review, the site of the first two editions presents contrasting characters and design challenges to be answered with site-sensitive design. (Fig. 2)

Tin Shui Plaza, Tin Shui Wei: the vast open space in a suburban new town
‍TSW is a new town in northern Hong Kong with a demographic mainly consisting of young families and new immigrants in public housing estates. The district’s rational master plan appears to be well-functioning with sufficient service and amenities; however, it is also known for its persistent social issues as a bedroom town with little vitality. This presents a problem of orderly planning prioritising “road-scape” instead of street life (Tieben, 2016) with over-scaled public space and passive recreational facilities. One of the community festival sites is in such space, a 40x40m plaza between the light rail station and the estate shopping mall. The unshaded plaza has two covered walkways at the periphery, leaving the vast open space with little daily activities.
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The design challenge is to contain space for social activities and redirect passer-by focus from the peripheral passage into the central plaza area. The design follows the existing grid floor tile pattern to draw smaller zones of activities with three sets of round-edge grass carpets to form the Space+ logo on the ground. Each zone was placed with a variety of temporary street furniture for different activities – the centre square with folding chairs and stools facing the performance stage, the south side turned into a children’s play space with lounging furniture and cushions, and the north side with picnic tables and chairs for casual gathering. The installation was kept on site for ten days, and residents have used and enjoyed the space during non-event hours. (Figs. 3&4)

3-4. TSW site and activities

Dundas Square, Mong Kok: the pocket park in the compact urban centre
The second edition was held in the YTM district, a dense city centre presenting a contrasting characteristic with TSW in both urban conditions and demographics. The site is a small pocket park in Mongkok bounded by a busy thoroughfare at the terminus of the Sai Yeung Choi Street market. It reads in the plan as a spatial break to the ultra-dense urban fabric, yet at eye level, its physical access is fenced off, and tall trees block the visual connection. With only one gated entrance on the main street, it is less inviting for everyday activities and passage, reflecting the rigidness of typical local public space design and operation. The characteristic and sense of identity in Mongkok is rather a collective one of the whole city, described as “everyone’s local district” by one NGO participant. Some key themes drawn from the placemaking workshops are “collective memory”, “youth and popular culture”, and “density, vibrancy, and compactness”.
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Therefore, the objective of this design is two-fold: to provoke existing park design for alternative possibilities and to embrace a local character that is diverse and inclusive. The public space for the community festival is similarly planned as three zones – the stage, the display, and the gateway. At the deep end of the park is a circular plaza against the blank wall of an adjacent utility building, suitable for staging events and hosting the gathering crowd. The linear portion of the park is currently bounded by planters with waist-height bushes and tall trees that provide good shading but essentially reduce the usable area. It is lined with typical park benches with a defensive design to prevent laying down, limiting its usage to passive sitting. On a micro-scale, the festival intervention re-configured the linear path from a single direction with no interaction into clusters of activity with additional tables and chairs to allow display, games, or social gatherings. To tackle the non-inviting gesture of the fenced park, a way-finding system is designed to visually guide passers-by towards the happenings inside the park, along with colourful canopies and a customised tricycle at the gateway to attract interest. With the constraint of a temporary event, these tactical strategies hope to provoke the possibility of opening the park for a thorough redesign. (Figs. 5&7)

5. YTM site and activities

Collaborative Relationship and Network-formation
The process of public space design for the community also challenges our understanding of the nominal consultant-client relationship, which turns into an emphasis on the collaboration of different parties and how to align diverging goals. Instead of a single output objective, the focus rests on the process of coordinating multiple interests and needs, working through communication and negotiation to build a more resilient network. A key lesson learnt in the community-based effort is identifying apparent and less visible actors that unpack “the community” not as an abstract and homogeneous whole but as multiple individuals.

The Space+ program presents a layered relationship of different actors that forms the community network. The first layer of initiators is the partnership between VHK and CUHK SoA that conceives the overall program supported by the local philanthropy Robert Ho Foundation. The VHK, experienced in hosting public space events, assumes the organiser’s role in planning the program and coordinating with the NGO participants, while the SoA is responsible for the design and making of public spaces and architectural installations. Each party utilises their expertise and contributes to the programme, which expands into separate but interrelated collaboration networks. VHK conducts placemaking workshops with the social service sector participants from different NGOs or local community groups and recruits local organisations to contribute with display booths or performances during the festival event. At the same time, the SoA began to design spatial interventions and make architectural installations involving different faculty members and students, who reach out to local craftsmen not just as a commission but also to work closely with them and learn the craft through the process. The extended stakeholder groups include government departments managing the site and various local shops and restaurants supporting the event. During the festival, this network of local place-makers is extended to the general public. Through chance encounters and causal interaction, the passive participants become part of an extended network and could increase participation in future community activities. (Fig. 6)

6. Stakeholder diagram

7. YTM axonometric

Reflection & Consideration: Open City for Creative Users
The past few decades have seen a social turn in architecture and urban design as more architects and designers are involved in community design projects. This article reflects upon how we operate in public space and work with the community, concluding with two concepts, “Open City” and “Creative User,” for further discussion.
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In contrast to the common practice in architecture and planning intended to create order, Richard Sennett argues that the vitality of a city rests in its disorder (Sennett, 1971, 2018). This notion of disorder does not mean the city should be left in chaos but should be designed as infrastructure that can “create conditions and provides possibilities for change without dictating what is going to happen” (Sendra et al., 2020). This is a particularly helpful reminder when we work with public space to ensure the design is not over-deterministic but has the capacity and flexibility to allow different uses. An example in this project is the preference for loose, moveable furniture over the type of fixture that dictates a particular usage. The temporary setup of the Space+ project has to be quick, cheap, and mobile, with materials such as lightweight plastic stools, paper cartons and pallets, and mobile tricycles that can be easily dismantled and moved around.
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Such flexible design is a suggestive notion to let the users (both the event organiser and the neighbourhood residents) decide what to do with the installation. This approach demonstrates trust towards the users and recognises them as effective public space creators. The nominal deterministic design creates the passive or reactive user, who is bound to limited options by design, although they could attempt alternative uses. To further empower the user’s role in public space, we can consider the idea of the creative users (Hill, 2003) – who reimagine and reinvent their inhabited space, where the architect becomes the facilitator who designs prompts and a flexible system that encourages unexpected use.

This article introduces the Space+ project as a prompt to discuss the role of designers in public space and community projects, which are intended to evoke questions rather than propose definite solutions. The question of order and spontaneous happening would continue to be a balancing act, which deserves attention in the profession for continuing conversations and debates.

Reference
Hill, J. (2003). Actions of architecture : architects and creative users. Routledge.
Sendra, P., Sennett, R., & Hollis, L. (2020). Designing disorder : experiments and disruptions in the city. Verso.
Sennett, R. (1971). The uses of disorder : personal identity & city life. Vintage Books.
Sennett, R. (2018). Building and dwelling : ethics for the city. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Shinohara, H. (2010). Urbanismo de bicicletas adaptadas. Materia Arquitectura, 02, Article 02.
Tieben, H. (2016). Public Space Trends in Hong Kong. A view from the New Territories. The Journal of Public Space, 1(1), 25-34.

• Hill, J. (2003). Actions of architecture : architects and creative users. Routledge.
  
• Sendra, P., Sennett, R., & Hollis, L. (2020). Designing disorder : experiments and disruptions in the city. Verso.
• Sennett, R. (1971). The uses of disorder : personal identity & city life. Vintage Books.
• Sennett, R. (2018). Building and dwelling : ethics for the city. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Shinohara, H. (2010). Urbanismo de bicicletas adaptadas. Materia Arquitectura, 02, Article 02.
• Tieben, H. (2016). Public Space Trends in Hong Kong. A view from the New Territories. The Journal of Public Space, 1(1), 25-34.

Project Conception & Advisor: Prof Hendrik Tieben Public Space Design & Coordination: Melody Yiu, Jessica Cheung, Charlie Chan, Terri Zhu, Ivan Lam.
TSW Installation Design: Prof Zhu Jingxiang, Pedram Ghelichi, Lau Hing Ching, Wu Chenghui
MK Installation Design: Prof Hiroyuki SHINOHARA, Ian Chan, Tony Lau, in collaboration with local craftsman Michael Yu, Melty Chan, and Nan of Kindergarten Insane Studio.
The Space+ project is organised by Very Hong Kong (VHK).
Special thanks to Mr Jason Hilgeford for his early-stage contribution.