How a Hong Kong park’s revitalisation encourages the people of one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods ‘to come together’

Hamilton Street Rest Garden in Yau Tsim Mong has been revamped to round off a project that saw budding designers pair with mentors to spruce up four city parks

An enormous ‘sharing’ table is the focus of the park and designed to spur communication and the sharing of ideas between locals

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Hamilton Street Rest Garden, in Hong Kong’s Yau Tsim Mong district, rounds off a project in which budding designers have collaborated with old hands to renovate four city parks in a way that promotes community. Photo: Design Trust

Published: 12:33pm, 9 Oct 2023Updated: 10:24am, 11 Oct 2023

As dusk bleeds into night, Hong Kong’s Nathan Road remains a noisy, polluted artery at the heart of Kowloon. However, a sanctuary exists amid the clamour of cars, buses and people.

Hamilton Street Rest Garden, in the city’s Mong Kok neighbourhood, marks the final chapter of a Design Trust Futures Studio (DTFS) initiative aimed at revitalising four public parks across Hong Kong through community-based design.

The projects paired budding designers in the city with seasoned creatives – in the case of Hamilton Street Rest Garden, Stanley Wong (also known as “Another Mountain Man”), who is renowned for his red, white and blue artwork.

The mentor-mentee collaborations allowed innovative ideas to merge with a deep understanding of Hong Kong’s design history, and the result was urban renewal projects that aimed to foster a sense of community.

Hamilton Street Rest Garden’s 30-square-metre aDapTable is an abstraction of the urban topography that surrounds the park, and contains space for takeaway boxes, books, newspapers and laptops. Photo: Design Trust

Marisa Yiu Kar-san, co-founder of the Design Trust charity, says that the fundamental objective behind the Hamilton Street Rest Garden’s revitalisation was to understand “who is our community”.