Urban Planning /

Children’s City Planning in Kowloon East of Hong Kong

Architecture For Children, city planning, education, volunteer, free, design, children, architecture, future, smart, planning, smart city, kwun tong, kowloon east, EKEO, hong kong, sustainable, model making, primary, students, k12

From Sept 2018, we were invited by Kwun Tong Government Primary School (Sau Ming Road) to begin a five year experiment to use urban planning as a scheme to tie multiple leaning subjects together. We as volunteer help to guide a team of 20 students from different grades to turn their ideas into practice.

Year 1

We began the exercise by taking Kowloon East as the base. Their school is based in the area and its makes perfect senses for the students to study their own neighborhood. Data we have collected at the beginning including landmarks in the area, favorite things to do, type of areas they love and what they want to see in the future. After one month of exercised, they have identified four interesting projects worth exploring. The process was previously published on citylab.

  1. Eco-resort with trams on top of Anderson Quarry.
  2. Space center on top of an old factory building
  3. Aquatic Office on top of a waterfront factory block
  4. Zoo-library next to their school in a open area.

Students presented their massing study and program study by the end of the year. Below is their presentation.

Year 2

We will begin to do design design of the two programs above. Area 1 and 4 were selected and it was the school hope to integrate technology into the model making.

  1. using sensors and simple coding to make the building interact with sun, wind, water and people
  2. using architecture as a method to explain the collaborative process to put collective ideas together.
  3. explain smart city and smart technology using easy to understand terms.