Infrastructure: Social Infrastructure in Wan Chai

INFRASTRUCTURE:

SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN WAN CHAI

灣仔

ARCH2058 Modern Architecture ASSIGNMENT 3: GUIDEBOOK

| Fall 2021

Infrastructure: Social Infrastructure in Wan Chai Leung Kok Yan Gracie (3035798280) Mak Wing Yan (3035796256) Wu Wan Sheung (3035794870)

Foo Tak Building May Wah Mansion Southorn Playground

Introduction

Social infrastructure refers to “the networks of spaces, facilities, institutions, and groups that create affordances for social connection”. Typical examples include parks, sports facilities and community centres.1 In Wan Chai, where public space is scarce, is one of the densest areas in Hong Kong. Therefore, it is important to explore 3 of the most indispensable social infrastructures in the neighbourhood and see how they function as spaces for social connections.

In this guided tour booklet, follow us on a journey to Southorn Playground, May Wah Mansion in the Johnston Road composite building cluster and Foo Tak Building, paired with interview audio recordings of typical users in the appendix.

We will experience how these social infrastructures of different SCALES and USAGE act as the connection between people throughout TIME, with reference to the 3 essays in this booklet.

1 Latham, Alan, and Jack Layton. “Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces.” Geography Compass 13, no. 7 (2019). https://doi. org/10.1111/gec3.12444

Figure 1: Southorn Playground at 5:00 p.m.

Figure 2: Southorn Playground in 1932. Anonymous.1 Anonymous. Southorn Playground in 1932. 2014. Photograph. Gwulo: Old Hong Kong. https://gwulo.com/atom/17827.

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1 SOUTHORN PLAYGROUND Built in the 1930s as suggested and named after Sir Thomas Southorn,2 the Southorn Playground is considered as the hub of old Wan Chai. It was planned as a childrens’ playground at the beginning, and soon evolved into a public space to all age groups, despite the reduction in size due to the development of the periphery area together with the construction of MTR and other social facilities such as the Southorn Stadium and the Violet Peel Clinic (the clinic is now relocated to elsewhere in Wanchai). It has been a major recreational area and public open space in Wan Chai since the 1930s. Nowadays, the playground consists of a 7-a-side soccer pitch, 4 basketball courts, spectator seats and a childrens’ playground. Various social and recreational activities can be done in the Playground, such as joining the sports club in the Southorn Playground and the annual fire dragon dance in the Mid Autumn Festival.31

Or, Carol. “An Urban Space Re-Creation - Southorn Playground,” 1999.

Oriental Daily. “相隔廿年 大坑「火龍」灣仔表演,” July 3, 2017. h t t p s : / / o r i e n t a l d a i l y. o n . c c / c n t / n e w s / 2 0 1 7 0 7 0 3 / 0 0 1 7 6 _ 0 1 0 . h t m l .

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2 MAY WAH COMPOSITE BUILDING It is a single-block composite building which is defined as buildings that are partly domestic and partly non-domestic.5 Located at the corner of Johnston Road, it is also categorised as a corner house.6 It is a part of the Johnston Road composite building cluster, with its similar counterpart, Chung Wui Building. It was built in 1963 with 14 stories and 80 units.7 8

Figure 3: Mei Wah Mansion at 1967 HKSAR Government. “Cap. 123 Buildings Ordinance”, accessed December 16, 2021. https://www.elegislation.gov.hk/hk/cap123.

5 Michael Wolf, Hong Kong Corner Houses (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 40.

6 Francisco García Moro, “The Death and Life of Hong Kong’s Illegal Façades,” ARENA Journal of Architectural Research 5, no. 1 (2020): 5, https://doi.org/10.5334/ajar.231.

7 陳慧敏.“【文化籽】同德大押巴豪斯風格 與特拉維夫 White City”, accessed December 16, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20180731153451/https://hk.lifestyle.appledaily. com/lifestyle/special/daily/article/20150830/19274995 8 “1967 Tram line”, accessed December 16, 2021. https://gwulo.com/atom/29342 4

3 FOO TAK BUILDING It is a fourteen-storey composite building with two units on each. Eighteen units have been leased to art and cultural organisations with much lower rental rates sponsored through ACO as the management after a renovation in 2003. May Fung May-wah has been the chairperson of the management since then.91 A low degree of management is also valued to provide more room for self-discipline with minimal rules, allowing all kinds of ideas to develop, practise and perform here. Liaison with the units for the promotion of experience and opinions sharing is also welcomed. At the same time, the management aims to foster a community there with various ways of resource sharing and helping one another.10

Lotus Lau, Billy Leung, and Charlie Leung,”Artist Village in Wan Chai”, January 9, 2012 , accessed December 16, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20200924030256/http://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php/2012/01/foo-tak-art-village/ 9

Arts and Cultural Outreach. “Aco FTB,” accessed December 16, 2021, https://www.aco. hk/ftb-eng.

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Social Infrastructure’s Scales: Incremental Community Design for Comprehensive Sociality Wan Sheung, Wu

I. Social infrastructure: Creation of Social Connection Social infrastructure, which can be defined as spaces that support and create opportunities for social connection,1 in Wan Chai comes in different scales. These public cultural spaces create a two way effect, as they shape us and at the same time we shape it back.2 In the past, the major driving force of establishing these social infrastructure was the government with top down policies. However, as time progresses, the public becomes a more prominent force in crafting these social modern architecture that are more tailor-made for the authentic public needs. Despite the largely varying scales, the Southorn Playground, the May Wah composite building clusters and Foo Tak building could be considered as social infrastructure. In this essay, the scale of the social impact of each site will be discussed. The reasons for the scale of its planning and resources will then be investigated.

Finally, the challenges that come with scales and

the insights that it gives to future designs of social infrastructure will be further explored.

II. The Southorn Playground: kinesthetic Space The Southorn Playground is a big scale, governmentally supported social infrastructure because it allows for the co-presence of multiple users and encourages kinesthetic practices.3 It is a rare hot spot for families, fitness enthusiasts and local workers that have no outdoor space of their own in the high density neighbourhood of Wan Chai.4 It is intended for public use because its 0.9 hectare consists of year-round, free access basketball courts, soccer fields and outdoor seating. Community sports competitions and events are regularly held here, supporting locals’ aspiration of being an athlete. The public also shapes the Southorn playground by compromising and negotiating for multiple uses of the same space. People of all ages, genders, ethnicities and backgrounds are all sharing the space. The time and the way of how they use the facilities are all unique conventions that shaped the Southorn Playground. Thus, the playground as a social infrastructure and the users have a co-dependent relationship.

The reason for its large scale could be traced back to governmental planning and resources. The centrally planned and comprehensive sports facilities with regular maintenance are supported by the plentiful resources from the government. However, one may question whether the perfect social infrastructure comes from a top-down approach of the government. Since its opening in 1934, it has gone through multiple changes of usage, often initiated by the people.5 Using Tai Tat Tei (大笪地) as an example, the playground has been transformed into a night bazaar for the locals. The Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance Festival is also an example of how non-traditional use of the sportsground is initiated by the people to suit their authentic needs.

The question for the case of the Southorn Playground is that how do we design sports social infrastructure that maintains flexibility and maximizes options? It is important that social infrastructure gets designed with public engagement because it is these individuals that have the real power to shape the environment according to their desired planning, experiences and interactions with both other individuals and the environment.6 The playground gives us insight in limiting the influences

of institutional and market and letting the public decide what is the most suitable way of managing the facilities. Learning from the Finsbury Park in London, the local authority introduced large scale, exclusive music festivals to be held. This capitalisation of the park creates disturbance and dispute among the original users.7 It is best that the authority should let the original users decide for the scale and nature of the events being held there, whilst keeping the park free and accessible for everyone.

Even with conflicting uses of the space, it is best to leave it for the people to rule out what is the best future of the Southorn Playground instead of a one off decision by the government.

III. The May Wah Composite Building Cluster: Sociability and Friendship The May Wah composite building cluster is a middle scale, local supported social infrastructure because it fulfils the sociality of care and kinship, as well as sociability and friendship.8 As composite buildings, the May Wah building provides a collective sociability while housing many individual privatized spaces as a result of combining domestic residential use and other functions in a single

building.9 Chinese medicine clinics, tutoring nurseries, clan associations and hostels are ubiquitous on the lower floors. They are the social fabric of the May Wah building, where hospitality is offered by the old friendly Chinese doctors and friendship bonding are formed due to the same places of origin. Although slightly smaller than the Southorn Playground, these warm and eccentric private cooperative buildings amidst the often cold consumerist society is an indispensable social infrastructure that facilitates people’s kinship.

Its middle scale size could be explained by its public planning and resources from local residents.

The individuals invest and transform flats into public spaces that provide social services, such as the Chinese clinics, hair and beauty salons and the Ki Chan Tea Company on G/F. Sometimes, groups of individuals with the same background also pull together capital to form a social gathering space for themselves, as seen in the Fu Clansmen General Association Headquarters on 6/F.10 The residents tolerated the presence of commercial activities within the private building because they get social benefits from the services they provide. The range of these private social services expand the

breadth, depth and texture of sociality provided, which in turn makes the building a more liveable place.11 Composite buildings are social infrastructure because its capacity of sociality has been expanded when spaces are made available for people to gather and social freely, while a range of essential services are provided.12 Agglomeration of social services within the scale of a building is seen in multiple composite buildings, a cluster in the neighbourhood of street corner houses. This harmonious public use of space could only be done when it is middle-scaled because all residents actively participate and pull in resources during the planning and incremental development of this social infrastructure.

As a middle-scale social infrastructure, it may face the dilemma of how to keep privatised space undisturbed while allowing social activities to expand. In this case, it is best to keep the current programme and layout of space. It should aim to balance public and private by keeping non-conflicting services that target at the different age groups and families in the building. Inclusion of ethnic minorities, as more foreigners, domestic workers, asylum seekers and fugitives are moving

in,13 can also be a direction of thinking in future social infrastructural designs.

IV. The Foo Tak Building: Civic Engagement Foo Tak Building is a small scale, commercially supported social infrastructure because it allows civic engagement and supports the social capacity with the freedom to gather.14 Originally a residential building, it was then transformed into an artist village in 2003, offering low rent spaces for small independent organizations. Active social participation in the building exists in the form of intellectual, cultural, and social resource production in the artist studios. Passive consumers of the sociality are the ones who visit the Arts and Culture Outreach (ACO) bookstore on the top floor, attend workshops and talks in the “Corrupt the Youth” philosophical club (好青年荼毒室) on 11/F etc.15 For civic engagement, the Foo Tak building’s cultural environment is free and inclusive. It is a space for minority and marginalized groups to express.

For example, the independent news outlet Hong Kong Inmedia and the SANKOFA African culture association both find their homes here. Foo Tak Building as a social infrastructure is an important

space for local intellectual and cultural production, as well as a space to consume these socialites.

To account for the small scale of this social infrastructure, we may look into their resources and planning at hand. Scattered capital from each of the small scale artists are supported by the rental sponsorship and funding from ACO.16 The agglomeration of these music, arts, humanities and philosophy organisations create economic externalities and spill over as they support each other and generates an incomprehensive but in depth network of intellectual and cultural services. As it is comprised of many small independent organisations, they have scattered resources and loose planning.

The Foo Tak Building is an irreplaceable piece of social infrastructure because the users inherit, interact with and change the cultural-intellectual environment that has been carefully curated there.17 Most importantly, this environment and the knowledge could be passed on to future generations because these intangible cultures have been preserved, supported and facilitated by the concrete spaces and facilities in the Foo Tak Building. Oth-

er than artist self-funding, other resources could be gathered to make the practice more sustainable, and more possible for the next generations to explore. For example, open days of the workshops and studios could be held to increase public awareness and participation.

Foo Tak building gave us insight in tackling planned obsolescence, which is the accelerated life cycle and demolition of buildings due to capitalism’s emphasis on profitability and functionality.18 Acquisition of old buildings in Wan Chai, such as the demolition of the Tung Tak pawn shop is on the rise.19 Foo Tak Building is an exceptional case because it is modern not in terms of form, but its function. It has an eternal meaning because of its interior being a place for creating an intellectual atmosphere where artists and public can enrich and exchange work and ideas.20 The partitions, interior planning transcends functions, and is flexible for use throughout time. For future designs in small scaled social infrastructure, we should therefore design with change and continuity in mind, allowing the building to be easily repurposed into a contemporary context. Considering the promiscuity and sustenance of form and function, we

could envision expendable short-life buildings that embodied choice and freedom in social infrastructure.

V. Scales Differences and Sociality Often overlooked and undervalued, the development of social infrastructure is valuable history that recognizes the public modern architecture. By studying the history of these sites, we can understand how these infrastructures of various scales creates social connections architecturally. Both concrete and abstract scales have been used to compare the 3 social infrastructures in Wan Chai. The size of the outdoor and indoor spaces, the governmental, commercial and local management, the scattered and centralised planning, the unlimited and limited resources to maintain the infrastructures are all scales that create the distinctiveness of each site.

Despite their scale differences, they all provide sociality as they support and create chances for social connection.21 Exploring these sites in Wan Chai can give insight in how we design social infrastructure of different scales in the future.

Notes 1.

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Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How to Build a More Equal and United Society (Penguin Random House, 2018).

Brett M. Frischmann, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Jack Layton and Alan Latham, “Social Infrastructure and Public Life – Notes on Finsbury Park, London,” Urban Geography 42.6 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1080/02 723638.2021.1934631.

The Legislative Council, “Public Playgrounds in Hong Kong,” 2017, https://www.legco.gov.hk/research-publications/english/essentials-1718ise04-public-playgrounds-in-hong-kong.htm.

Kar Lok Carol Or, “An Urban Space Re-Creation Southorn Playground” (The University of Hong Kong, 1999) Frischmann, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources.

Layton and Latham, “Social Infrastructure and Public Life – Notes on Finsbury Park, London.”

Layton and Latham.

Eunice Seng, “The City in a Building: A Brief Social History of Urban Hong Kong,” Studies in History and Theory of Architecture 5 (2017).

Michael Wolf, Hong Kong Corner House (Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

Layton and Latham, “Social Infrastructure and Public Life – Notes on Finsbury Park, London.”

Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1999).

13. Seng, “The City in a Building: A Brief Social History of Urban Hong Kong.”

14. Layton and Latham, “Social Infrastructure and Public Life – Notes on Finsbury Park, London.”

15. Frischmann, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources.

16. Arts and Culture Outreach, “Foo Tak Building,” accessed December 20, 2021, https://www.aco.hk/ftbeng.

17. Frischmann, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources.

18. Daniel M. Abramson, Obsolescence: Notes towards a History (PRAXIS, Inc., 2003), https://www.jstor.org/stable/24328933.

19. Masterplan Limited 領賢規劃顧問有限公司, “Composite Building Development at No. 1 Stubbs Road, Wan Chai,” Planning Statement, 2021, https://www.info.gov. hk/tpb/en/application_collection/A_H7_179/Planning_ Statement_1.pdf.

20. Abramson, Obsolescence: Notes towards a History.

21. Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How to Build a More Equal and United Society.

Shaping and Functions of Social Infrastructures Varying with Time Kok Yan Gracie, Leung

Social infrastructure refers to “the networks of spaces, facilities, institutions, and groups that create affordances for social connection”. Typical examples include parks, sports facilities and community centres.1 As unobvious as it could be, there are indeed so many around us, and we actually step foot in plenty in a day. This essay will explain transformations as in both the variations of social functions performed by the sites as well as their emergence as social infrastructures in terms of time, and reflect whether they can stand the test of time. Let’s experience a day with Chan, a resident of May Wah Building.

“Good morning, Chan!” As long as Chan enters the lift of May Wah Building for work, he is greeted by a neighbour living a few floors above. When the floor number hits two, a Chinese medical practitioner steps in and nods at them.

May Wah Building has different major functions at different times of the day. An element of social in-

frastructure is interactions,2 which could be fostered among more groups of people with both commercial and residential programmes within the same building. Other than communication between business owners and consumers who come enjoy services; residents as they travel around the building; business owners within the centralized commercial areas, encounters between residents and non-residents are also made possible as they share the only lift that reaches all floors as in the case of May Wah Building. The effect of exchange is further amplified when some are shop owners resided there, ethnic minorities (in which many live in composite buildings in Wanchai)3 and even asylum seekers.4 People there have more opportunities to meet others with various identities and start conversations. The significant parties in conversations differ throughout the day, as the major role/programme of the building keeps shifting from commercial to residential in a loop. The building could be considered as communicative hubs, accomodating people with more identities than their residential and commercial counterparts. Although the units might be privately owned, the agglomeration of residential flats and commercial activities has caused the building to become a social infrastructure as it seems to be a miniature of the society, promoting collective socia-

bility.5 In the 1950s-1960s, such diversity of communication would not have been as obviously observed as in recent decades. In view of the shift to tertiary production, industrial activities have gradually been replaced by diverse non-industrial ones since the late 1980s. Back in the 1950s-1960s, an array of commercial and industrial activities including production as home businesses, packaging and storage were accomplished inside composite buildings.6 7 As the business nature was mainly secondary production, there would be fewer visitors and thus communication would be more monotonous, mainly between residents and sometimes maybe between business owners. It could be understood that composite buildings served as an instrument for social transformation of Hong Kong,8 from supporting economically self-sustaining activities then to encouraging interaction now.

Chan walks past the quiet Southorn Playground on his way, only a few senior citizens are doing their morning exercise. The Playground is awaiting the crowd.

Figure 1: A few senior citizens are gathering at Southorn Playground in the morning

As Chan is waiting for the lift at Foo Tak Building where his art space is located, he is greeted by the owner of another arts space there and they had a fruitful chat. Chan is glad that he can always engage in conversations with other artists there. Roy Tsui, a founder of Black Paper, also expressed that the warmth of the relationships between people there is unique for the Building.9 The Building had been an ordinary composite building until its renovation in 2003, when the property owner decided to dedicate it as an arts village. She invited May Fung Mei-wah, an art administration expert,10 to conduct the screening of artists and actively recruit artists instead of passively waiting for applications.11 Community-level social infrastructure involves having outsiders as leaders to build con-

nections with the outside.12 The building as the first privately owned art village in Hong Kong13 has created larger social implications beside the communal outcomes brought by typical composite buildings.

It was the pioneer to have an individual-initiated model for transforming the building to form an art community, instead of having the usual top-down approach involving the government for arts space such as the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre and Cattle Depot Artist Village.14 Another social significance of social infrastructure lies in the individuals’ achievement of self fulfillment.15 With the cheap rent offered to independent art and cultural entities,16 the renting of arts spaces becomes more affordable and more artists would have chances to actualize their aspirations with the two-to-three-year turnover.17 Although the units are tenanted individually, the Building could be considered as a public space as it is opened to the public and visits to different arts spaces are welcomed. Carl Grodach in his article stated that there is a relationship between the role of art spaces as public spaces and their abilities of enhancing social interaction and engagement.18 Foo Tak Building not only fulfills artists’ aspirations, but also makes the agglomeration of arts organizations

possible. This has bolstered the formation of an arts community with ideas and supplies shared among one another being common. This is an anomalous case in Hong Kong.19 Blommaert and Klinberg stated that social infrastructures may be formed when linkage within groups are exemplified.20 21 The emergence of the Building as a social infrastructure has come into shape when artists mainly work on their artwork on weekdays, as the Building has encouraged the formation of bondings among artists.

Figure 2: The cover photo of an online article published by HK01 on Foo Tak Building22

Figure 3: The directory of Foo Tak Building

Foo Tak Building could also be regarded as social infrastructure when there are more visitors during weekends. It welcomes a wide multitude of cultural activities, providing space to unrecognised artists and forms of arts. In a music show co-organized in 2015 by Art & Culture Outreach which is the management of the Building, the musicians performed on landings of the building’s staircase. Visitors travelled along the stairs, sitting on the steps to enjoy the music reverberating throughout the building.

The physical structure becomes crucial to music-related activities and audience engagement.23 Facilitating the formation of bonding among artists and visitors, the Building has fulfilled another aspect of being a social infrastructure in which facilitation of sociality is vital.24

Figure 4: Performance of the abovementioned show (extracted from Fractured Scenes: Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia)25

Chan heads to Southorn Playground to enjoy his lunch takeaway, and is joined by a number of peo-

ple. This is indeed a common practice for the nearby workforce, and a minor function performed by the Playground. After a rest, he decided to join the students and the middle-aged on the basketball court.

Southorn Playground shows participation in civic life with changing functions from hour to hour.26 27 A person could be a spectator enjoying one’s meal at some time while being a player at another. This is indeed one of the cases of our interviewees. Besides, Southorn Playground not only connects people of different ages but also of different races. The space is utilized by ethnic minorities to form multi-ethnic networks. Some play ball games, some gather with acquaintances especially on Sundays, some bring children there before or after school.28 The social implication of Southorn Playground has shifted from serving mainly children and giving relief to workers living in dark space nearby with its huge space with greenery back in the 1930s to building social networks between different age and racial groups now.29 Same in the cases of May Wah Building and Foo Tak Building, there are different combinations of people at different time periods.

As the night arrives, Chan lies down on his bed for a sleep after a simple yet satisfying day in his neighborhood. Just around the corner at Southorn

Playground, street sleepers also lie down onto the grandstands for rest.

People might have multiple identities at a place, social infrastructure might serve different purposes with the passage of time from the scale of a day to decades. Being social infrastructures, all the sites experience recurring transformations of major social functions in daily and weekly bases. May Wah Building and Foo Tak Building have even experienced transformations in terms of the becoming of social infrastructure decades after their existence.

Unlike Southorn Playground which was initially planned for the public and has been the focal point of meeting in Wan Chai,30 the composite buildings were not intended to have facilitating social interaction as a major function when they were built.

However, social implications have emerged as the clock ticks everlastingly. They might seem ordinary in architectural terms, yet the discontinued building typology has now become “a source of identity, distinctiveness, social interaction and coherence” for Hong Kong communities.31 32 In our interviews with people living or working in Wan Chai, many expressed their support for keeping Southorn Playground as it is a historical landmark with societal

purposes. Just some streets across, the composite buildings might have different fates despite the fact that they are also implicitly serving the community, just like the contrast of Chan and the street sleepers. Composite buildings somehow suggested a consumerist society,33 showing a hint that their fates are likely to be determined by market forces. Demolition of composite buildings one day is anticipated to once again smooth the social transformation of the city, yet there could be consideration of preserving the agglomeration of activities and the communities seeded there.

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Alan Latham, and Jack Layton. “Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces.” Geography Compass 13, no. 7 (2019): 3. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12444.

Cornelia Flora, Jan L. Flora, “Entrepreneurial Social Infrastructure: A Necessary Ingredient” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 529, no. 1 (1993): 50 DOI: 10.1177/0002716293529001005 Po-Fung Matsushita, Tetsu Yoshida, and Junzo Munemoto, “Research on the Formation Process of a Multi-ethnic Network in Urban Mixed-use District by Ethnic Minorities Living in Mixed-use Buildings, Wanchai, Hong Kong” Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering 4, no. 2 (2005): 384, DOI: 10.3130/jaabe.4.383 Eunice Seng. “The City in a Building: a brief social history of urban Hong Kong,” studies in History and Theory of Architecture (sITA), 5 (2017): 82. ISSN: 2344654 Eunice Seng. “Composites: The City in a Building” in The Resistant City: Essays on Modernity, Architecture and Hong Kong (Hong Kong; Singapore: World Scientific Press, 2020), 97.

Eunice Seng. “The City in a Building: a brief social history of urban Hong Kong,” studies in History and Theory of Architecture (sITA), no. 5 (2017): 83. ISSN: 2344654 Ho-yin Lee, Lynne D. DiStefano, and Chi-pong Lai, “Hong Kong’s Early Composite Building: Appraising the Social Value and Place Meaning of a Distinctive Living Urban Heritage” in Place Meaning and Attachment: Authenticity, Heritage and Preservation, ed. David Alan Kopec and AnnaMarie Bliss (New York, NY: Routledge, 2020), 177.

Nancy Stieber. “Microhistory of the Modern City: Urban Space, Its Use and Representation.” JSAH 58, no. 3 (1999): 386.

Lotus Lau, Billy Leung, and Charlie Leung,”Artist Village in Wan Chai”, January 9, 2012 , accessed December 16, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20200924030256/ http://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php/2012/01/foo-tak-art-village/ “Research on Future Development of Artist Village in Cattle Depot” (Hong Kong Arts Development Council, July 2009), https://www.heritage.gov.hk/en/doc/conserve/HKADCResearchReportExecutiveSummary.pdf Lotus Lau, Billy Leung, and Charlie Leung,”Artist Village in Wan Chai”, January 9, 2012 , accessed December 16, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20200924030256/ http://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php/2012/01/foo-tak-art-village/ Cornelia Flora, Jan L. Flora, “Entrepreneurial Social Infrastructure: A Necessary Ingredient” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 529, no. 1 (1993): 50 DOI: 10.1177/0002716293529001005 “Research on Future Development of Artist Village in Cattle Depot” (Hong Kong Arts Development Council, July 2009), https://www.heritage.gov.hk/en/doc/conserve/HKADCResearchReportExecutiveSummary.pdf Hoi Ling Anne Chan. “ Creative Arts Space in Hong Kong: Three Tales through the Lens of Cultural Capital ,” 2019.

Elena V. Frolovaa , Mikhail V. Vinichenkoa , Andrey V. Kirillova , Olga V. Rogacha and Elena E. Kabanovaa, “Development of Social Infrastructure in the Management Practices of Local Authorities: Trends and Factors” International Journal of Environmental & Science Education 11, no. 15 (2016): 7422.

Damien Charrieras, Sébastien Darchen, and Thomas Sigler, “The Shifting Spaces of Creativity in Hong Kong,” Cities 74 (2018): 140, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.11.014.

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Carl Grodach, Art spaces, public space, and the link to community development, Community Development Journal, 45, no. 4 (2010): 475, https://doi.org/10.1093/ cdj/bsp018 Olivia Lai, “Foo Tak Building artists’ village”, September 1, 2017, accesses December 16, 2021. https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/art/inside-foo-tak-building-artists-village Blommaert, Jan. “Infrastructures of Superdiversity: Conviviality and Language in an Antwerp Neighborhood.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 4 (August 2014). https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549413510421.

Richard E. Ocejo, “Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life,” American Journal of Sociology 125, no. 2 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1086/704770.

Man Kuen Yeung.“【回歸廿年空間戰之二】直立文藝發酻地——富德樓:, June 27, 2016, accessed December 16, 2021. https://www.hk01.com/藝文/100650/回歸廿年 空間戰之二-直立文藝發酻地-富德樓?utm_source=01webshare&utm_medium=referral.

Gabriele de Seta, “A ‘No-Venue Underground’: Making Experimental Music Around Hong Kong’s Lack of Performance Spaces,” in Fractured Scenes: Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia, ed. Damien Charrieras and François Mouillo (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 101. ISBN: 978-981-15-5913-6 Alan Latham, and Jack Layton. “Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces.” Geography Compass 13, no. 7 (2019): 3. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12444.

Gabriele de Seta, “A ‘No-Venue Underground’: Making Experimental Music Around Hong Kong’s Lack of Performance Spaces,” in Fractured Scenes: Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia, ed. Damien Charrieras and François Mouillo (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 102. ISBN: 978-981-15-5913-6 Nancy Stieber. “Microhistory of the Modern City: Urban Space, Its Use and Representation.” JSAH 58, no. 3 (1999): 387.

Kar-lok Carol Or, “An Urban Space Re-Creation - Southorn Playground,” (The University of Hong Kong, 1999), 15. DOI: 10.5353/th_b3198479 Po-Fung Matsushita, Tetsu Yoshida, and Junzo Munemoto, “Research on the Formation Process of a Multi-ethnic Network in Urban Mixed-use District by Ethnic Minorities Living in Mixed-use Buildings, Wanchai, Hong Kong” Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering 4, no. 2 (2005): 389, DOI: 10.3130/jaabe.4.383 Kar-lok Carol Or, “An Urban Space Re-Creation - Southorn Playground,” (The University of Hong Kong, 1999), 10. DOI: 10.5353/th_b3198479 Kar-lok Carol Or, “An Urban Space Re-Creation - Southorn Playground,” (The University of Hong Kong, 1999), 10. DOI: 10.5353/th_b3198479 Michael Wolf, Hong Kong Corner Houses (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 40.

Ho-yin Lee, Lynne D. DiStefano, and Chi-pong Lai, “Hong Kong’s Early Composite Building: Appraising the Social Value and Place Meaning of a Distinctive Living Urban Heritage” in Place Meaning and Attachment: Authenticity, Heritage and Preservation, ed. David Alan Kopec and AnnaMarie Bliss (New York, NY: Routledge, 2020), 172.

Eunice Seng. “Narratives:Composite Building Studies” in The Resistant City: Essays on Modernity, Architecture and Hong Kong (Hong Kong; Singapore: World Scientific Press, 2020), 97.

Social Infrastructure and its People Affecting Each Other Wing Yan, Mak

When thinking about the social infrastructure in Wan Chai, it is easy to link it to Southorn Playground, one of the most notable public spaces in Hong Kong. While playground plays an important role in social infrastructure in terms of its ability to connect the society during urban development,1 Southorn Playground has been serving as one of the largest public spaces in Wan Chai. This essay looks in depth at how the social infrastructure shaped the people using it and their view towards it, and how this uses among the users and the community affects this social infrastructure over time with Southorn Playground as the case study.

Architecture is built to serve a function. This is the first thing people benefit from the new space — a public space that everyone can use. Southorn Playground serves as the pioneer in the district to improve the living standard of the Chinese citizens through providing a place to exercise and play. Since Wan Chai was a typical Chinese worker’s community and there were very few open spaces in 1930s, the establishment of the Southorn playground became a proper node of meeting, a place where the traditional Chinese community could establish their lives at that time.2 Given that one of the most important properties of public space is that accessing to these facilities is

free and not determined by one’s background,3 the setup of Southorn Playground is thus a move that showed the living standard of Chinese are valued.

Figure1: People of different age groups and backgrounds are playing basketball together.

Southorn Playground also lets different people connect.

Due to the high accessibility, the usage of Southorn Playground is high.4 People with different backgrounds come together. It is observed that among the interviewees, their background varies, from office worker to students to retirees, most of them shared similar purpose of going to Southorn Playground – either to eat, to speculate, to rest, or to do sports, suggesting that Southorn Playground this social infrastructure has the ability to gather up people.

But what is special about Southorn Playground is that it not only gathers up people but also creates social bonding among them. On the other hand, it is also observed that people with different age groups were playing balls together. When asked if they knew whom they were

playing with, they did not. This showed an interesting phenomenon that they are willing to play balls together as a team with strangers. We also observed groups of friends playing ball together with strangers. In the process of not knowing each other to becoming acquaintances, sports in Southorn Playground plays an active role to bring them together as the common language among them and forget about their burdens and discrepancies in backgrounds. Meanwhile, Southorn Playground, where a great myriad of people come across every day, provides the venue to let all these happen.

While sports connect people from different backgrounds and classes in the daytime, the inclusion in the nighttime gets more diverse. Although Wan Chai is one of the wealthiest districts in Hong Kong, Wan Chai also comprises grassroots and underprivileged populations. Among the 1,532 street sleepers in Hong Kong in 2021, 15.5% (237) of them live in Hong Kong Island, and about a quarter (380) of them are living in parks or playgrounds5 such as Southorn Playground. From the perspective of a street sleeper, Southorn Playground is a refuge to them. Due to the high accessibility of Southorn playground, many street sleepers stay at Southorn playground at night. Although they rarely know the names of other street sleepers, they are forming a little community sharing similar experiences and helping each other. Since Southorn Playground reflected plenty of social issues in Wan Chai, many social services were established around Southorn Playground, such as Caritas and Hong Kong Aged Concern. There-

fore, Southorn Playground can both establish bonds in the community, and also the vulnerable population.

It is suggested that architecture can not only affect how people use the space as architecture has the ability to gather up people. But in return, the ways people use the space and their spatial experience can also affect the architecture. It is about enriching the social meaning of the place. Therefore, Southorn Playground plays an irreplaceable role to both people living inside and outside Wan Chai District.

The most important thing that people can enrich the social infrastructure in return is memories and historical content. People in Southorn Playground have created a lot of memories there, enriching the history of the playground. The power of the built environment is not just about creating a space for people, but also recording and reconstructing the story of the past. Southorn Playground is thus the place that brings Chinese together since the establishment of the playground. The earliest memory of the Southorn playground of improving the living standard among the Chinese may have faded away with time, but newer memories like the prosperity of the Tai Tat Tei during 1960s, or the feverish cheers on the spectators stand, or the ecstatic but exhausting effort on the pitch, lives on.

From two of the interviews, they were playing football in Southorn Playground since they were small. One of them is still playing in a club based there. Their memories in Southorn Playground lived on and they proudly told us

what they did here in the past. The imageries of the night market, the cheers, and the football pitch are the things people resonate with.

Architecture also helps shape the identity of Wan Chai people and through social infrastructure. Since Southorn Playground carries so many memories, and histories, a lot of these memories share a similar background. Collective memories of this place are formed. In Southorn Playground, their memory is all about playing and watching ball games, and having fun. Nowadays, the name of Southorn Playground is already a synonym of ball games in Hong Kong. Although many large scale sports competitions are no longer held in Southorn Playground, Southorn Playground is the incubator of the many football and basketball players, no matter professional and amateur players, in Hong Kong. On the other hand, South playground also witnesses the improving livelihood in Wan Chai. So Southorn Playground is part of the history of Wanchai. Therefore, Southorn Playground has become the identity of Wan Chai People. For those not living in Wan Chai, Southorn Playground is also representing Wan Chai as they also share similar experience as the locals, which is different from their experience in their community. From the interview, although most people are actually working in Wan Chai but not living in Wan Chai, they are willing to travel and visit this place for relaxation, and for reminiscing the past. From the interview, they all agree that Southorn Playground is important to Wan Chai. The representation in Wan Chai is this developed.

Figure 2: Social enterprise making use of the representation of Southorn Playground to set up a sports brand in Southorn Stadium.

Source: Southorn Stadium6

While architecture is meant to be demolished in a capitalist city7 emphasizing on profitability and functionality, such as Hong Kong, where there is a long-held perception that Hong Kong tears down buildings before it gets old.8 Constant replacement and redevelopment of buildings happens around the city, especially in old districts and inner cities like Wan Chai. Based on these principles, Southorn Playground, which is located in one of the most prestigious pieces of land in the region with high accessibility, and aging facilities, the possibility of demolition is very high. However, there is no proposal for its demolition. What makes Southorn Playground stand the test of time and exist today amid the rapid development and redevelopment?

One of the reasons why Southorn Playground can es-

cape from the destiny of demolition is that its program can respond to the needs of the users. Although the land use of this social infrastructure remains to be recreational over the years, the diversity of the program increases gradually — from just a children’s playground in the beginning, to football pitches and basketball courts and sports clubs since 1950s to a myriad of sports and facilities since 1980s.9 Night markets were also held by then.

Although these changes in program were mainly initiated by the government, these changes actually aligned with the social needs at that time. It began as a children’s playground as there was no similar social infrastructure to allow Chinese children to play and exercise. With the increasing living standard, Southorn Playground no longer needed to bear this responsibility alone so it enlarged its target users to all citizens in Wan Chai by providing sports facilities so they can chill out and relax amid the fast-paced, impersonal city. This change allows Southorn Playground to offer the users suitable functions that do not decay with time.

Another reason is the memory and the identity and symbolism of the playground. Because of the memory and the identity and symbolism of architecture, people tend to be subjective about the environment and abandon the notion in a capitalist city, opposing the process of elimination and replacement as a natural cycle in capitalism and functionalism. The good memories people have and the significance of Southorn Playground etched in their minds urge them to defy this place. And keeping

Southorn Playground is a means to record and preserve their memories in this community, creating a great momentum to keep Southorn alive. In other words, the social interest as the shared memory and representation are prioritized over economic return. This is how Southorn Playground escapes from its fate and extends its lifespan.

Although Southorn Playground has many imperfections in its facilities, such as the absence of showers in the changing rooms, the absence of large open space, and the dilapidated facilities despite the renovation undergone some years ago, the value of Southorn Playground is not subjected to the designated lifespan of its systems.

This showed that the constraints of the Southorn Playground do not affect the attitude of people in whether the South playground shall be kept or torn down. From the interview, it is clear that the respondents carried good hopes towards the playground.

Standing in the test of time is never easy in a capitalist society. Southorn Playground is a good example of survival amid the transformation and redevelopment of the city. It is because it carries the memories of the people. It becomes part of the collective memories of not only inhabitants in Wan Chai, those who lived in Wan Chai, and also those working in Wan Chai.

Similarly, this can be applied to the other two sites of the walking tour, May Wah Mansion, and Foo Tak Building.

For May Wah Mansion, they are composite buildings.

While the residential floors remain the same over the years, the commercial floors soon transformed to work on similar businesses — agglomeration of Chinese Medicinal clinics are found in May Wah Mansion. And for Foo Tak Building, the collective transformation in the characteristics of the program, from residential to recreational, especially on arts and creative industries, has made this nimble building at the street corner of Wan Chai resemble to a social infrastructure to gather up people not only from Wan Chai district but also those living outside the district but interested in arts. Both buildings were built more than 60 years ago. In other words, they have exceeded the serviceable life of concrete buildings of around 50 years in Hong Kong10 but they are still standing amid the development.

Unlike Southorn Playground as a Public space to gather people, the two buildings gather people through agglomeration, which gather up people more closely related to each other. The people gathered in these two places can be further divided into two groups. One of the groups is the visitors/customers of these businesses. The visitors/customers are usually interested in arts and creative industries for Foo Tak Building, or consult Chinese medical advice and get treatment in May Wah Mansion.

When they are gathered in this social infrastructure, they can share their experiences on their treatment process and support patients undergoing these treatments. Another group of people is the business runners. Compared to agglomerated businesses on the street, those inside

these social infrastructures are closer to each other, favoring exchange in experience in Chinese Medicine and marketing skills/creativity and curating. So in the relationship of being both the supporter and competitor, the quality of their medical services/arts and culture may be elevated and attract more visitors to this place. In both groups, they are people interested in a certain field, their memories are thus intersecting in these places, coinciding with one of the features of social infrastructure — to connect the society. It is unclear if the two buildings can last as long as Southorn playground, but it is foreseen that these two social infrastructures can survive longer than other buildings with similar years of construction.

Positive feedback loop between Southorn Playground and its users is found between social infrastructure and its users. On one hand, social infrastructure provides people with new connections and memories. On the other hand, the connections and memories have let the social infrastructure create its social value to stand against the change in capitalism.

Notes

1. Latham, Alan, and Jack Layton. “Social Infrastructure and the Public Life of Cities: Studying Urban Sociality and Public Spaces.” Geography Compass 13, no. 7 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12444.

2. Or, Carol. “An Urban Space Re-Creation - Southorn Playground,” 1999.

3. Hong Kong Public Space Initiative. “Significance of Public Space.” Hong Kong Public Space Initiative, May 10, 2015. http://www.hkpsi.org/eng/publicspace/significance/.

4. Southorn Playground is located within the most accessible area of the district with 4 main roads and an MTR station exit next to it, this planning encourages pedestrians to pass by. Ling, Michelle Xiaohong. “Measuring the Influence of Spatial Configuration on Accessibility of Open Space in the Wanchai District of Hong Kong.”

Open House International 42, no. 4 (December 1, 2017): 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1108/ohi-04-2017-b0010.

5. Society for Community Organization. “Survey and Census on Street sleepers in Hong Kong 2021.”Society for Community Organization, October 27, 2021. https:// soco.org.hk/rp20211026/.

6. Southorn Stadium. “場地租用: 修頓場館: 香港 Hong Kong Island.”Soustadium, 2021. https://www.soustadium.com/.

7. Daniel M. Abramson. “Obsolescence: Notes Towards a History.” Praxis (New York, N.Y.), no. 5 (2003): 106-12.

8. Chu, Cecilia. “Heritage of Disappearance? Shekkipmei and Collective Memory(s) in Post-Handover Hong

Kong.” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 18, no. 2 (2007): 43-55.

9. Or, Carol. “An Urban Space Re-Creation - Southorn Playground,” 1999.

10. Buildings in Hong Kong are mainly reinforced concrete structures designed to have a serviceable life of around 50 years. Legislative Council HKSAR. “Legislative Council Brief Measures to Enhance Building Safety in Hong Kong.” Legislative Council HKSAR, 2010. https://www. devb.gov.hk/filemanager/en/Content_3/LegCo%20 Brief%20-%20Building%20Safety%20(final%20eng).pdf.

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Appendix

A: spectator/ coach (having meal) B: office worker(having meal) C: secondary school student D: dad with primary school daughter E: couple (resting) F: woman stretching G: cleaner

1. Do you live/ work in Wan Chai?

A, B, F, G: work C: study D: daughter studying E: both 2.

How many times would you go to the site (Southern Playground) each week?

A, C, D: 5 days B: during lunchtime sometimes F: 4 days 3. What is the most usual thing you will do here?

A: watch people playing ball games at lunchtime, sometimes at other times Play soccer with friends and others B: eat there instead of at a restaurant because there’s sunshine (outdoor), can watch football matches C: play ball games with schoolmates and strangers after school D: eat snacks while waiting for buses back home E: watch people playing ball games F: do stretching at lunchtime 4. Why would you come to Southorn Playground?

D: can watch people playing ball games E: watch people playing ball games - refreshing F: Proximal to the workspace

5.

Where would you go to do that mentioned thing if there was no Southorn Playground?

A: might go to other sports grounds E: might go to other public places in Wan Chai but many people walk by 6. What unusual thing would you do?

B: walk around; join soccer matches C, D: spectate E: sleep 7.

How would you change the site if you can? Do you want more trees?

More rubbish bins? More toilets? More seats?

A: make it more beautiful with both indoor and facilities as it’s a landmark (but it has already been renovated) B’s friend: similar park in front of office in Quarry Bay - no soccer space but laid back area, more cozy/relaxing C: no smoking, more seats, also include volleyball courts F: bathing facilities 8.

Have you been to here at other times rather than the usual time that you visit? Anything different you found?

A: yes, watch people playing ball games 9.

Do you think Southorn Playground can represent/is important to Wan Chai?

A: yes, because it is a historical landmark Have been playing soccer since small D: long history - came when small (for soccer) came to watch large scale competitions E: important to Wan Chai and others, but no collective memory

The Modern Architecture Guidebook Hong Kong’s built environment represents a unique site of inquiry in the global history of the Modern Movement. The Modern Architecture guidebook series draw from an inter-disciplinary toolkit of knowledge, references, and field studies to understand the processes at work in the built environment. Each walking tour in the series begins with one of the 98 MTR stations in Hong Kong as the meeting point.

First opened in 1979, this modernist infrastructure has produced a city rationalized around transportoriented development. Organized around key themes (industrialization, colonization, environment, internationalization, migration, decolonization, counterculture, and globalization), the guidebooks present a critical yet open perspective towards the implications of large-scale modernist schemes on the environment and community.

© ARCH2058 Eunice Seng 2021