A Home For Happiness: Lightbe, Wing Lei Street, Central, Hong Kong

We were commissioned by Lightbe, a social enterprise to provide the design for a community center/flat for a single mother and her three children

Wing Lei Street project is a housing project where Groundwork had offered our design services on a pro bono base. We have also paid for part of the construction cost of this unit. Wing Lei Street is a Hong Kong heritage and a exemplar of Hong Kong’s dwelling conditions of the 1950s. Lightbe, a local NGO, is to provide 6 units of 60sqm housing for 11 singleton families who are victims of domestic violence. All of these units were donated by donors(Urban Regeneration Authority in this case).

We suggested to Lightbe that these 11 families will need a communal space for meetings and gatherings, such that spiritually, the domestic violence victims may gather and support each other or simply to share the intelligence of discount offers from the supermarkets.

This unit will be the accommodation for one singleton family, and half of the unit may be converted into a community. Thus, flexible use of space will be the theme of our design.

Most of the partitions are removable to accommodate the different tenant’s family mixes. Our primary material choice is recycled wood; being green is also one of our aspirations for this project. The budget is minimal and as the architect, we have donated the design service and 2/3 of the renovation fee.

For family that have two teenage children, the two children may sleep on the upper level, with study shelves fold down from the wall. In turn the mother may have a separate sleeping space at the lower level.

For families that have more than one child, especially with babies, the elder children may sleep on top bunk bed while baby’s bed can be placed along side the large bed at the lower level.

GROUNDWORK TEAM Lawrence Law, Justin Or, Justin Ip, Wunting Yim, Echo Xiang, Manfred Yuen

YEAR 2014

LOCATION Central, Hong Kong

CLIENT Light Be

STAGE Completed