Temporal Hybridity

Hong Kong’s emerging North Metropolis is bringing intense change to Kwu Tung North, Fanling North and the older districts that surround them. While the new development areas are still construction sites, labour will pour in-from high-end innovators to construction crews and service workers-seeking inexpensive accommodation that village houses and disused factories might supply. At the same time, logistics operations that once filled Sheung Shui’s warehouses are migrating east, leaving behind under-used industrial land. Long-standing villages such as Sheung Shui Wai therefore sit at the centre of converging pressures: densification, shifting land use and the search for a distinctive identity within the North Metropolis.This project takes Sheung Shui Wai and its neighbouring factory cluster as a case study, asking how public-space provision and heritage character can be safeguarded even as residential capacity rises.

The proposal advances three linked moves. First, it redistributes circulation and carves out new plazas, courtyards and service points, chosen for their ties to the village’s historic street grid and today’s vacant lots, so that both the village and industrial quarter share a continuous public-space network. Second, it stages development over time: early phases retrofit factories into low-rent flats and micro-business units, then layer in neighbourhood parks and, later, mixed commercial-residential “warehouse-store” blocks. Third, it invests in placemaking-restoring the moat and gateways of the walled village, upgrading the environs of Liao Man-Shek Tong Ancestral Hall, and re-equipping the village-centre park—to attract creative firms and middle-income residents who value character settings. Taken together, these steps outline a flexible framework for steady, inclusive growth; they can be revised as demographic and economic forecasts shift, yet they keep public space, affordable housing and cultural memory at the forefront of North District revitalisation.

This project, based on Sheung Shui Wai Village and the nearby industrial building group, explores how to maintain public space per capita and conserve the unique historical identity, while increasing residential density.