Redesign
The Wan Chai District Council and the British Council invited English designer Thomas Heatherwick and urban renewal specialist Fred Manson to improve the amenity, which is now a concrete rectangle with games courts painted on. The project is about augmenting public spaces via the use of art. Art in public spaces is about making art for the benefit of the citizens, the community who uses it. It is not about putting a sculpture in a public space for people to look at. Instead, it is about establishing relationship with the community and improving the quality of the environment. The project will endeavour to create a public art intervention in Southorn Playground, which will meet the community's needs and address the cultural complexities of Wan Chai. It is hoped that the project will serve as a model of community participatory approach in public art in Hong Kong. In summary, the project's objectives include:
- To create changes so people will take a fancy to it;
- To make it better so people will benefit from it;
- To bring it up-to-date so that it has new significance as Wan Chai's main square in the past, present and future, and
- To make the playground a public art in its own right.
Read more about this topic: Southorn Playground