Tattooing the city: "infiltration of arts platforms in urban dense space"

Abstract

There are huge demands of limited lands in Hong Kong. It is an increasing trend for Hong

Kong Government to develop open space for the use of recreation activities as they found out

that it is very important to the individual as well as the community. Other than recreation use,

those open spaces can also served to allow air ventilation, penetration of sunlight and also act

as a place for amenity and visual relief in Hong Kong. Although, these functions are very

important in the high rise building environment, high density city like Hong Kong, there are

many small public open spaces in urban area which are not in a good quality. They cannot

function well in responsive to the context of the area, enhancing the quality of the

neighborhoods and suited for the public need in the community which they turns out become

not as popular as they are expected. The pocket open space in urban area is relatively small,

surrounded by commercial buildings or residential buildings. They usually have a simple

setting with planters and street furniture. Different activities involvement by different users in

these small open spaces create a small community in the urban area and supposingly can

enhance the interaction within people in the area.

Considering that there are complaints from the Artists that there are not enough outdoor arts

space in Hong Kong and public arts is the trend of some of the cities in other countries to

enhancing the identity and culture of the urban areas, such as the King Williams ArtWalk in

Otario in Canada. However, It is not popular in the urban dense space in Hong Kong. It is

good to exploring a possible new way to sustain the unique culture by applying public arts

platform in the urban area. The site is located around the Aberdeen Street in Central. It is an

old district with new culture style but lack of solid identity and energy throughout the space.

Although there are different organic developments, the streetscape is without strong

characters. The following pilot project is aim to use art platform as a tools to revealing the

missing link in urban context and also adding a possible new function to the open space in

urban dense area as a “outdoor showroom” of arts in the city in order to vibrate the city and

raise the awareness of public arts to the publics.