Hack A Bench Public space intervention by Dylan Kwok and Hinz Pak |
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| DESIGN DETAILS | |||||
| DESIGN NAME: Hack A Bench PRIMARY FUNCTION: Public space intervention INSPIRATION: Part of the 'City Dress Up Seats Together' government funded commission project by the Arts Promotion Office, 'Hack a Bench' aims to promote arts and better living in the city. Durational observation, design engagement exercises and interviews were done at the park, so as to bring in real community and user friendly seating, social engagement activities and performing art programmes to the park with minimal disturbance to the existing infrastructure; to refine public spaces. UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Design and enhancement of public benches that promotes re-imagination and better utilisation of public spaces, thus catalysing community activities and achieving social engagement. 10 curving art benches were designed to fix to the existing park benches to reshape the ways and orientation of sitting. This allowed citizens to look into their public spaces from different perspectives and community engaging events to happen at those uncommonly-used spaces, such as lawn and pond, in the park. OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION: Replacing the existing backrests with series of curving elements that encourages various sitting postures. This inspires new park culture with new perspectives and possibilities. For example, long curved benches allow Filipino nannies on their day off to stretch their legs as they have wanted; benches facing the lawn and pond facilitate re-imagination of the areas where social engaging durational site-specific dance and art installation happened respectively. PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION: The project started in Aug 2016 in Hong Kong at the Aldrich Bay Park. Initiate community research and development events were done in Jun 2017. Bench enhancement were installed in Jun 2017. Second stage of video making for online social media engagement was done in May 2018. Durational site-specific dance performance with 360-degree video “SWIM with us” was showed in Dec 2018. Community engagement workshops and art installation “Wind Shines” was done from Feb-Mar 2019. FITS BEST INTO CATEGORY: Social Design |
PRODUCTION / REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY: Applying design probes, such as The Briefcase and temporary bamboo sculpture, and participatory site-specific dance performance to achieve social design outcome. SPECIFICATIONS / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES: - TAGS: HackaBench, SeatsTogether, citydressup, placemaking, socialdesign, publicfurniture, ArtPromotionOffice, APO, LCSD, HongKong RESEARCH ABSTRACT: Hack-a-bench is a public seating modification experiment which highlights urban intervention by citizens. The project takes a dual approach - both top-down and bottom-up. Extensive community engagement and qualitative survey through conversations and observation were conducted before the designers work out the designs and location choices of the 10 benches. A 1-to-10 model set was made for different types of park users to create and express their ideal ways and facings of sitting in the park. CHALLENGE: Major challenges was to overcome the strict code in public space management. There are rigid design guidance, where the existing park benches are normally equipped with armrest and backrest, to avoid homeless and confine movements. Signages and barriers are set to restrict people from ball games in the lawn and entering the water feature. ADDED DATE: 2020-06-28 11:16:27 TEAM MEMBERS (14) : Designer: Dylan Kwok, Designer: Hinz Pak, Design assistant: Raymond Chan , Design assistant: Ivan Lai, Choreographer (SWIM): Ivy Tsui, Videographer (SWIM): Ken Leung , Sound artist (SWIM): Peter Lenaerts, Event organiser (Wind Shines): HKPSI, Plastic up-cycling (Wind Shines): Gaau1 Up Production, Material (Wind Shines): Community Green Stations, Event organiser (icosahedron): Hulu Culture, Choreographer (Dance video): Mary Jane Tang, Videographer (Dance video): Moon Cheung and Special thanks: Antoon Versteegde IMAGE CREDITS: Image #1: Photographer Dennissoap, 2017 Image #2: Photographer Dennissoap, 2016 Image #3: Photographer Maximillian Cheng, 2018 Image #4: Creator (designer) Dylan Kwok, 2018 Image #5: Photographer HKPSI, 2019 |
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| Visit the following page to learn more: http://hackabench.org/ | |||||
| CLIENT/STUDIO/BRAND DETAILS | |
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NAME: The Art Promotion Office (APO), The Leisure and Cultural Services Department of Hong Kong SAR government PROFILE: The Art Promotion Office (APO) under the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region aims to raise the public's interest in art creation and appreciation, and let everyone experience the fun of art. APO focuses on providing visual art activities and services of high quality and diversity. |
| AWARD DETAILS | |
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Hack a Bench Public Space Intervention by Dylan Kwok and Hinz Pak is Winner in Social Design Category, 2020 - 2021.· Press Members: Login or Register to request an exclusive interview with Dylan Kwok and Hinz Pak. · Click here to register inorder to view the profile and other works by Dylan Kwok and Hinz Pak. |
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