Urban Elephant Architecture
Participatory Design | Community Engagement
Intern at Fang Ngook Community Engagement Center, NGO, associated with Urban Elephant Architecture
Supervisor: Guangye Rui
富康村 Teacher’s New Town
Fukang Cun is a residential block that has around 1000 residents. It used to be housing unit for teachers in the university and college.
Fang Ngok is commisioned to be in charge of the engagement and design process of the renewal project targeted at the old and deteriorated neighborhood.
The first design charrette is held to gather opinions from the residents and learn about their visions. Also, to get in touch with them and learn from their lived. On that day, residents started to talk with us their urgent needs and feelings. Along with it are stories about their everyday lives and the community.
The second design charrette is held to let the residents learn about progress on design intervention and have the chance to voice their concerns and feedback.
During this phase, the feedback appeared to be positive with features targeted at providing a better playground for the children living in the neighborhood and residents are really happy with the process of engagement.
However, during the committe review, local government is less favor of the long-term maintainance that the project might cause.
Part of the project's design was laid off but we managed to keep most features after negotiation with the Planning Commision.
This proves that the dynamics of engagement might face rough edges in implementation.
Especially when the engagement is rather more of a process or required element under a bigger framework's new regime.
碧江 Bijiang
During the internship, I participated in the implemention of the online platform for the historial neighborhhod of Bijiang, Shunde.
After the launch of the platform we organized treasure hunt event in the neighborhood.
The platform also served as the archive of the neighborhood's cherished history as well as a tool for new visitors.
Map Interface
Drone View Interface
81 号大院 Compound 81
Compound 81 is a more grass-root based project in which we worked as an active community initiative.
We worked with local kindergarten, childcare centers, art teachers and parents in the community.
In this process we
managed to raise micro funding for placemaking process proposed by participatory design.