Networked Urbanism

design thinking initiatives for a better urban life

Design critics: Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo, principals of Ecosistema Urbano

This video is about a citizen who sit in a park. However, the park is surrounded by schools and built nearly the road which is very busy and disturbing by the noise.
The citizen in the video cannot stay no longer in the park. He leaf and the park become unfrequented.

However, after building a lawn and planting plants, the trees block the noise from schools and road. Also, the trees can purify the air and increase the air quality. After the improvement, the park become vibrant and attracted more citizens to visit. Finally, the citizens in the video all enjoy the park.

After the video shooting, we found that a good planting design is important for the park. A designer should consider the surrounding area for the planting design to achieve ‘People, Tree, Harmony’.


After we site visit and interview with user, we find out the park miss one important thing, Fun! We have an ideas about add more fun in park. It have been a playground for child , it is a fun facility for performance or action. People can have interact with another and the park.


This is our stop-motion video to raise the government awareness of people can use public space in different applications, and  asking people to show their potential by using places in different ways.


Group 11

Location:  Tseung Kwan O South Waterfront Promenade.

Having shelters are very useful and important in rainy seasons and in summer.  They may not be so obvious in nice weather, but they provide us shelter when there is heavy rain or extreme sunshine.

In our video, the secret angels are a symbol of shelters that protect the visitors on bad weather days.  Why is secret angel a secret? It’s because you don’t notice them unless you get into trouble.

You can see two secret angels trying to protect the visitors on a sunny day.  If the secret angels disappeared, the visitors would have had a heatstroke.

Also, secret angels protect the visitors on a rainy day.  When the secret angels disappear, the visitors will get wet and suffer from a cold.

Therefore, if there are no secret angels standing around you, you will be in a big big trouble.

At the end, shelters always protect us when needed, and often we forget about them in city planning. More shelters should be built or planted to provide pedestrian with a comfortable walkway, and at the same time decorate the surrounding environment.

 


Title: What to do if no fish at waterfront park?

Reflection: The people-oriented design tends to be a public space problem, such as at TKO waterfront park, it allows people fishing but there is no local fish in the river, in fact, the fish is come from some Chinese religious cermonies: people buy fish from supermarket and release them back into wild river for getting good luck by giving them new life. An amateur fishman told us he recognizes the fish at waterfront park was come from supermarket as they all in the same size and same type, and he claimed that he used to see some people release the fish on the boat several times. In short, our reflection is we should see bigger and design our public space from greater perspective instead of focusing on human use only.

Action: Raise the public awareness about the balancing of ecology-oriented design and people-oriented design. Collecting more strange environmental phenomenon in pulic space is one of the possible way to encourage the designers concern more about the design of taking care of organisms from sky to sea instead of human only. For example, design some nests for birds or shelters for fish would be a good idea to improve our public space design. If no fish at waterfront park, beside importing fish into the river, we also need landscape architects to design the local ecology for the sustainable development of our city.

 

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Location: Domain roof top garden, Yau Tong, Hong Kong
Topic: Adventure in the city
We are not just the users, but also the adventurers!
This video talks about different ways to enjoy our time in a urban park. Although the space has limited facilities, we can still have fun ourselves. We want to deliver a message that “Use limited resources make unlimited ideas“.

Present by
Hui Ka Ki, Laura
Mak Ka Hei, Hayley
Tam Heung Yan, Jamie
Tong Wing Yi, Wing
Tse Kwai Wa, Laura
Wong Yuk Man, Jasmine

 

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Hong Kong have high educational level and is such a civilized city, still, cases of falling objects from height happens occasionally. Creating polluted areas, higher workload for cleaners, and MOST important POTENTIAL THREAT to people who pass by.
Imagine you are the victims, and these fallen objects injure the people you love…

Fact is, the proportion of rubbish bins and citizens are enough around the city, we can definitely keep our trash for a while, throw to a bin when we see one. To do better, pick up the rubbish we see on street, even we are not the ones who produce it. At home, clip the cloths you hang outside tighter, so it does not get blown away and create awkwardness. Don’t put heavy objects by the windows, or make sure the things you put there don’t fall. So we can enjoy a safe and clean Hong Kong.

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This video is about using dog poops as a fertilizer which added to the planter, increasing greening area that based on the existing fences at Wan Po Road Pet Garden.

This is a popular pet garden and pet garden has to separated by fences for safety reasons. It can keeps the owners stay with their dogs, and separates the road and garden. But the fences is designed like a jail and make people stressful.

So we design some planters that placed below the fences, and the plants can climb up the fences that work similar to vertical greening. The planter is designed like a flatten excrement collection box thus it can blocks the smell of the poops, so when people carry up the poops, they can put those into the planter then used as fertilizer which benefits to the plants.

So finally, we come up with a way that make dog poops become a useful fertilizer and make the pet garden greener.


 

WALKING DEAD

WALKING DEAD_ZOMBIE in the Park ver.

 

This video is about how to use facilities in the park correctly.

However, we are providing a safety and happiness environment for people.

In the video, if people use the facilities incorrectly, the zombie will give you a bite for punishment.


This workshop, under the title of “Designing human cities for the digital age”, aims to provide an alternative to the traditional approach of designing urban environments from a bird’s-eye view, and a single designer’s perspective. #networkedurbanism not only examines the physical dimension of the city, but also its social processes and fluxes, made visible through the digital layer, developing initiatives that generate spontaneous transformations and set up conditions for change.

Students will make intensive use of ditial tools and media to find opportunities of improving public spaces around Hong Kong, to define proposals for a better urban life, and to broadcast their message in the most effective way.


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