Fong Yuen Study Hall

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.