International Workshop On Urban Design: Kowloon Bay Regeneration

Retrospective and Prospective; International Urban Design Workshop with Ewha Womans University (Seoul) and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

As Carmona argues, the substance of urban design can be considered to include dimensions of the ‘morphological’, ‘perceptual’, ‘social’, ‘visual’. ‘functional’, and ‘temporal’. Urban design is a joined-up activity, that is contextualized by the every day and simultaneously relates to four themes:
First, urban design is for and about people.
Second, it emphasizes the value and significance of ‘place’.
Third, it recognizes that urban design operates in the ‘real’ world, with its field of opportunity constrained and bounded by economic and political forces.
Fourth, it asserts the importance of design as a process of incrementally making better places, rather than what it is at any point in time.

Working within this framework, 25 students from the Spatial Design Department of Ewha Womans University in Seoul and the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) initiated a joint urban design study workshop from the 08th to 19th July 2024. This international collaboration explores the potential for cooperation in research and to engage in a series of new and interesting joint initiatives for the mutual benefit of our schools. It aims to
initiate and promote a better reciprocal understanding between Hong Kong and Seoul, South
Korea.

This study focuses on the case of Kowloon Bay, which is considered to be the first industrial ‘satellite town’ first developed in the 1960s. as a form of Complex Urban Regeneration in HONG KONG,’ with a ‘balanced land-use pattern: compact, high-rise, high-density urban development during 1960-64. Sixty years later, it is a good time to revisit the prototype for the first new town with a proposal involving Complex Urban Regeneration, and with a meaningful parallel to the sixty year history and anniversary of the PolyU School of Design. The study and workshop aim is to consider how and what emerging lifestyles can be enhanced through a critical understanding of
the urban systems and spatial structure of Kowloon Bay.
Working productively and proactively, the collaborating students developed their critical thinking and spatial design approaches towards architectural, street furniture, and spatial devices design, from a micro and meso scale, highlighting the importance of environmental sustainability. From this starting point, we hope to continue this international collaboration between our schools so that we may benefit from shared knowledge and experience