Fong Yuen Study Hall

Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong

"The concept is to celebrate our school, where we have filled the space with joy and laughter. The place is engraved with our movements"

"See, this is our school! This little piece of garden is filled with our movements. The yellow boxes marked where we have jumped, ducked, played hid-and-seek….."

"….and this is where I have learned to be who I am today."

"I tried really hard to concentrate in class! But perhaps, I have enjoyed playing a bit more than learning."

"I remembered that the lights of the interior changes, as the sun sets, the classroom became crimson."

Architects: Groundwork

Location: Tin Liu Tsuen, Ma Wan, Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong
Year: 2008

Tourism and Chinese Cultural Centre cum Ma Wan Residents Museum.

This project is about memory – Fong Yuen Study Hall was built in the 1920s. It was a local primary school and it was built from the funding collected from the local villagers at Ma Wan. Most of the vernacular dwellers of Ma Wan were fishermen. As the local fishery business was subsiding, the local villagers turned to other sources of income and one of which was sand collection: the villagers were supplying the sand collected from the beach for a local glass manufacturer. In short, Ma Wan was no paradise and to the local, the education of their children seemed to be the only avenue that would be leading them out of poverty.

We were commissioned by the Yuen Yuen Institute, a local Taoist philanthropy organization and the Hong Kong Government's Development Bureau, for the regeneration of this grade three listed building into a 21st Century museum; a museum that would be the testament of the local villager' struggle for their children's future.

Our response to the brief was simple: to celebrate the movement and the of the children that were once the occupants of this building. We have lined the interior with an inner second skin of translucent membrane that would be animating the reminisce of the children's movement trajectories. The complex geometries of the second skin may not be achieved without computational design which would allow every single piece of the fabric to be precisely trimmed and tailored.