Tai Po has always been a unique neighbourhood in Hong Kong, with natural assets, cultural heritage, and a combination of urban fabric new and old, together with an abundance of public housing estates. It is a prototype of how nature and city can coexist in harmony. Lam Tsuen River, which runs through the history and identity of Tai Po, is often forgotten. The identity of the river and its quality to the urban fabric of Hong Kong has often been overlooked.

“Neighbourhood Commons @ Tai Po” presents a unique opportunity to rethink a human-centric urban design strategy for a neighbourhood with a focus on the river: its experience, its identity, and how it can enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors alike. In the process of place-making, our objective is to co-create a common vision towards Lam Tsuen River that is informed by a repository of insights and data about the neighbourhood, by the neighbours, for the neighbours.

From mid 2024 to early 2025, together with university students and youths in Tai Po, we began building knowledge about Lam Tsuen River through desktop research, on-site observations and social listening. Informed by desktop research and observation, the exploration is conducted under three themes: urban and nature, sustainability and resilience, and cultural heritage.

Quantitative data is collected through multiple street polling sessions and an online survey designed to understand the current usage and perception towards the river. While numerative data informs us on general themes and patterns, qualitative insights through interviews and focus groups provide an in-depth understanding of their experience and aspirations of the river. 

Co-creating possibilities with youth in Tai Po

With quantitative data and qualitative insights in hand, key challenges and opportunities were identified. They open various brainstorming directions for youth, community stakeholders and experts to ideate creative solutions collectively through workshops and dialogues.

Building on the innovative ideas, we co-created prototypes with youths to visualise different proposals for testing. The prototypes were then further developed into a comprehensive urban design strategy that is informed by community insights, and brought back to the public and experts for validation and prioritisation, formulating a collective urban design vision, objectives, strategies and suggestive roadmap for the next steps.

This project is the very first step of a long-term process of collaboration between multiple parties. Based on a cross-displinary approach, it starts to formulate how to identify issues within the urban environment and neighbourhood from a bottom-up process. Our vision requires the effort of multiple parties, public and private, institutions and citizens, to drive these ideas forward and to create a collective vision.

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Hong Kong faces unique challenges in public housing design due to its high population density, with over one-third of residents living in public housing developments. The Housing Bureau and the Hong Kong Housing Authority have continuously enhanced public housing quality. Beyond the goals of “Enhancing Quantity, Speed, and Efficiency” to promote increased public housing supply, they have evolved toward a more comprehensive vision of “Enhancing Quality,” improving residents’ well-being by focusing on their psychological, social, and environmental needs. The Well-Being Design Guide represents a new approach, transforming public housing from basic shelters into environments that actively nurture holistic well-being.

“Well• Being” is led by the Housing Bureau and the Housing Authority of the HKSAR Government, with the Neighbourhood Innovation Lab bringing together a group of experts including design thinking and innovation consultants, architects, landscape designers, visual designers, urban planners, real estate scholars, engineering and management experts, nursing professionals, and social workers. They employ “design thinking” and “participatory design” approaches to systematically research and integrate human-centred well-being design guidelines, aiming to create public housing that is simple yet comfortably livable, making residents feel at ease and well-being.

We employed multiple complementary methods, visiting seventeen districts across Hong Kong, conducting extensive professional discussions, research analyses, literature reviews, resident interviews, and community surveys, collecting input from 3,000 public housing residents and 630 professionals. Combining qualitative research, literature reviews, and case studies, they transformed academic findings into practical design solutions that effectively address community needs.

This initiative challenges conventional architectural practice in three fundamental ways: replacing top-down planning with collaborative co-creation that recognises residents as experts in lived experiences; expanding planning beyond physical structures to include community activities, addressing both “hardware” and “software” needs; and shifting evaluation from quantitative measures to qualitative outcomes like well-being. The “Wellbeing for HA” design guidelines serve as references for new public housing and renovations of existing estates and aim to promote innovative developments in planning, design, and implementation across all housing types in Hong Kong.

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The Jockey Club Project Wellbeing was one of the first projects where we integrated our user research and stakeholder engagement as an integral part of the placemaking and design strategy. Together with our client team, we are committed from the beginning of the project to create a project that stem from the research process of interacting our student users, and the teachers and principal team.

We started with the research question, how might we create sense of wellbeing for schools?

We conducted workshops with 400+ students and teachers at 8 primary and secondary schools and uncovered several major factors that contributed to well-being. These become the basis to develop our design as we further relate them to school’s context and the spatial limitation.

• Teacher-student connection
• peer-to-peer connection
• sense of belonging
• sense of ownership
• balance of active and private areas
• flexibility for multiple kinds of activities

Our 8 schools for Phase I and Phase II of this project includes:

1. S.K.H. Wei Lun Primary School
2. P.L.K. Ma Kam Ming College
3. P.L.K. Ho Yuk Ching (1984) College
4. TWGHs Ko Ho Ning Memorial Primary School
5. C.C.C. Kei Heep Secondary School
6. C.H.C. Living Spirit College
7. POCA Wong Siu Ching Secondary School
8. Raimondi School

Through three rounds of engagement, we explored the existing usage and the possibilities together with students and teachers on what does wellbeing mean to them. The first workshop is a design thinking incorporated board game for the students and teachers to run through a typical and a future school day journey. Through the gamified process, we aim to understand some of the issues and ideas through the lens of students.

During the second workshop, we mix-and-match different scenarios with different mediums, how would it spark creativity in students and teachers to reimagine a campus that promotes wellbeing?  Through the use of 3D objects, colour pencils and collages, we encouraged students and teachers to get hands-on creating the spatial quality of spaces. 

The final design is a result from further validation where students vote for desired elements of different design options at school. There were many factors that affect the students’ wellbeing, and sometimes these needs are in opposition. For example, active versus passive, group versus individual, fixed versus flexible. From outdoor garden to indoor meditation space, to multi-purpose room. The challenge is to create spaces that can accommodate these multiple options, and remind our team that a key factor of wellbeing for schools also lies in creating flexible functions outside of the day-to-day classroom. For example, putting more emphasis on soft-seating and zones with dimmable lighting, and other elements that can create different sensory regulations for the students based on their initial opinions.

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At present, there are a lot of improvised uses around Wan Chai. From extension of restaurants with foldable tables and chairs to accommodate more customers, to neighbours blocking car parking with plants. We have started to observe a lot of interesting adaptations that are human-centred and day-to-day, contributing to the neighbourhood commons. The project is based on the simple premise of extending these authentic programming of streets as public spaces. These imply informal adaptations, and eventually, ways of formalising these informal adaptations into actual, inclusive public spaces. These journeys have been adopted in many cities, and the process is usually long and dreary, but it has to start somewhere. This is the start of it for Wan Chai to use topics as such to cultivate civic awareness and ownership.

Between August 2020 and January 2021, we embarked on ‘Neighbourhood Commons @ Wan Chai’, a place-making project aimed at understanding and exploring ways to cultivate an inclusive neighbourhood in Wan Chai. We engaged diverse stakeholders through various forms of public participatory programmes, including 1-on-1 interviews, neighbourhood walks, street polling, co-creation workshops and many more. These activities have allowed us to build a repository of insights and data about the neighbourhood, which have, in turn, informed prototype initiatives developed by the neighbours, for the neighbours.

Researching about Wan Chai with neighbours

Together with 39 civic design fellows, we began to build up knowledge about the Wan Chai neighbourhood. We gathered a body of quantitative data and qualitative insights through a combination of desktop research, observations and social listening. These insights informed in-depth dialogues and an extensive series of workshops with stakeholders that have vested interests in the neighbourhood to ideate ways of approaching a commons.

Building on innovative ideas and the collaborative spirits of civic design fellows and neighbourhood collaborators, we co-created testable prototypes with the public to experiment with ways to create shared value between social and business goals and measure them against defined metrics to review lessons learnt from Wan Chai as a pilot neighbourhood.

Co-creating Weekend ｜from sidewalks, pedestrianised streets, private terraces to public parks

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Facing the undercurrents of rapid neighbourhood change, Tsuen Wan is presented with the challenge of a new-old divide. This project is an iterative process with an ambitious aim of realizing a neighbourhood commons, where neighbours in Tsuen Wan would come together as a whole to share and manage resources with a shared identity. With an in-depth research on the concept of commoning, the principles of developing an urban commons are introduced. Based on the principles, this project is downscaled to a neighbourhood scale – creating a neighbourhood commons. Eight local and international case studies are featured as a comparison through the lens of scale, depth and complexity.

Together with 40 civic design fellows and 39 corporate fellows, NIL embarked on a journey. Neighbourhood Commons@Tsuen Wan was carried out from October 2020 to June 2021. Over the eight-month period, NIL has reached out to stakeholders across sectors in Tsuen Wan, including neighbours, businesses, civic organisations, social innovators and corporate.

Following the three ideation tracks, three prototypes were developed and experimented with the public and corporate teams, namely Space As Commons, Neighbourhood Friendly Businesses Ecosystem and Neighbours-for-Neighbours Experiences. On open space, a piazza was selected as a site to experiment and test how public spaces (privately owned or publicly owned) can be co-managed by multiple parties. We co-hosted two co-creation pop-ups together with local NGOs and social enterprise, including Newlife 330, Green Common, Green ladies and HKFYG. On business collaboration, a questionnaire survey is designed and conducted with small scale businesses across sectors to validate and test the feasibility of the scheme.

The engagement process included 3 street polling sessions, an online survey, 5 focus group discussions, 40 1-1 interviews, 8 ideation and prototyping workshops, 17 co-creating experiences and an exhibition, engaging over 5800 audiences.

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In the light of climate change and extreme weather, potential flooding risks in Kowloon City have increased over the recent years. The proposal to build new drainage improvement facilities, including underground stormwater storage tank and at-grade pumping station, at Argyle Street Playground prompted the need to understand existing usage patterns and engage with stakeholders who will potentially be impacted by the construction.

By adopting a Design Thinking approach, a series of community engagement activities were devised to reimagine the future potential of the redeveloped open space and the stormwater storage scheme. Early in the process, four key topics were identified for discussion and definition. They include:

1. The current perception of the site

2. The redevelopment of sports and leisure facilities on site

3. The potential integration between leisure and cultural events on site

4. The exploration of public co-usage of the proposed stormwater storage facilities

Reflecting Kowloon City and its rich culture, Argyle Street Playground is an inherently complex site. Being the location of the third largest 7-a-side football pitch in Hong Kong, the annual site for three intangible cultural heritage festivals, and adjacent to one of the oldest Anglican church complex in Hong Kong, the site has long had a special place in the hearts of local residents from To Kwa Wan, Ma Tau Wai, Sung Wong Toi and Kowloon City. It remains a significant centre for Kowloon City and traditional Chinese culture.

While street polling and quantitative survey with local Kowloon City residents kickstarted the process in discovering issues related to the site, focus groups and 1-1 interviews reached out to specific interest groups and users of different ages to further define particular pain points and how the proposed drainage improvement public works can potentially impact their usage in the long-term. We have worked closely with the Holy Trinity Cathedral community, local cultural associations such as the Kowloon City Chiu Kiu Yue Lan Association and football enthusiasts throughout the Design Thinking process.

In May 2023, two co-creation workshops were subsequently held to deepen participants’ knowledge on the project and to explore potential design ideas for the overall scheme and stormwater storage tank co-use. Using results from the persona analysis, participants were invited to explore journeys as a user of the site and the pain points collected in the process serve to reinforce comments identified throughout the engagement process. Co-use scenarios and prototypes were created through the making of low fidelity models, discussions and self-reflection of public open space habits.

In all, we have engaged with over 500 persons, and reached out to over 30 local groups. A report consolidating all engagement findings, analysis and recommendations on the way forward for the design and consultation strategy of the detailed design stage were provided to the Drainage Services Department.

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We believe that every community space is a to-be living room for us to chat, share, rest, and do things we like. In the coming 2 months, we will have a series of Neighbourhood Living Room activities revolving around different neighbourhood stores.

The first Neighbourhood Living Room took place in Oi Kwan Barbers! Featuring the authentic “Cantonese Barber Shop”, Oi Kwan Barbers is probably one of the most classical, yet very active local barber shop.

You are going to meet Mark, the second generation of Oi Kwan Barbers there! He will be sharing stories about the shop that you probably can’t hear elsewhere.

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This project is the first Hong Kong project to integrate caregivers’ needs into public playspace designs.

In the 2019 Policy Address, it announced the revitalisation of 170+ public playspaces under LCSD. We therefore hope to redesign Shek Yam Lei Muk Road Park, creating a caregiver-friendly playspace from the bottom-up, and eventually submit our opinions to the relevant authorities. From October 2021 to February 2022, we and 9 Civic Design Fellows conducted a 5-month community survey and engaged a total of 378 participants.

This project serves to supplement the scarce research on local caregivers. It explores in-depth about the pains and gains of caregivers, and proposes 9 design principles and 3 park services, offering validatable hypotheses that are applicable to other caregiver-friendly designs.

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Built in the 1920s, the pre-war cluster which was once named “Green House” is a preservation and revitalisation project by the Urban Renewal Authority (URA). It was opened to the public in 2013 and operated under the name of “Comix Home Base”. The Grade II historical building was then renamed to 7 Mallory Street in August 2018, continuing the service to the community by offering shops and activity spaces for events such as exhibitions, seminars, workshops and community workshops.

Neighbourhood Innovation Lab and map consultant iDiscover were collaborating with the Urban Renewal Authority to embark on a new journey to reimagine how 7 Mallory Street may integrate its historical episodes to current cultural contexts, to build a place where evolving experience can be created.

Community Listening through Design Thinking

In order to understand the opinions and aspirations of the Wan Chai residents on Wan Chai and 7 Mallory Street, our team utilized the design thinking process to set and run a series of public engagement activities including street polling, focus group discussions, ideation workshops, and pop up wall exhibition.

Pop Up Wall

From April to May 2021, a Pop Up Wall was set on one of the walls in 7 Mallory Street public open space as an ideation and prototype exercise. The wall visualizes the Wan Chai cultural map and provides a channel for the public to collectively vote for the local culture that they think is suitable for 7 Mallory Street to develop.

Retrieving History and Envisioning the Future

Based on the above insights gathered from the public engagement activities, building on the past, we created a community booklet documenting the past and present of 7 Mallory Street. Envisioning the future, we designed a concept plan for 7 Mallory Street as a local cultural hub which promotes Wan Chai eating, craftsmanship, and living culture.

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