Anson Wong

HKHS Prosperous Garden, Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong

Team: Ellena Wong, May Chan, Vicki Yuen
Fall 2020

This project proposes “personality traits” as its main play area zoning strategy, in order to break the age boundaries in traditional play spaces. With bright colors as the major palette, the new playscape utilizes dynamic topographic changes, simple flexible components, smart play equipment and sensory planting design to reshape the existing site. The design encourages intergenerational users to explore themselves according to their personal preferences, and uncover more possibilities regardless of age.

Click here for the winners’ interview.

Harvard Graduate School of Design
MLA Thesis, Spring 2019

Advised by Dr Rosalea Monacella

The thesis critiques Instagram, a contemporary social and representation tool, for rapidly commodifying our physical landscapes into still images, and taking over our landscape’s aesthetics, experience and production. A set of design devices are experimented to explore how to reconstruct a non-abstractable park experience in Central Park, starting from flattened images, with the 3 following intents:

(1) Creating the Unexpected;
(2) Embracing the Notion of Movement; and
(3) Revealing the Commodified Past.

Harvard Graduate School of Design
2018 Penny White Project Fund recipient

Public Presentation & Exhibition, April 2019

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/2018/03/department-of-landscape-architecture-announces-2018-penny-white-project-fund-recipients/

The project outlines the development timeline of Stone Wall Trees from Colonial Hong Kong, and the more recent local controversies after multiple disputes on Stone Wall Tree felling. It is time for landscape architects and designers to step in and address the current conditions of Stone Wall Trees with a more comprehensive reading –

(1) to document and study Stone Wall Trees through the making of drawings alongside the quantitative analysis done in the past years;

(2) to engage residents in realizing the cultural specificity of SWTs in each and every local community; and

(3) to provide a range of design options for the discussion of our future urban landscape among all stakeholders.

Arlington, VA
Harvard Graduate School of Design (2018)

Arlington National Cemetery is an important historic site to U.S history. It receives 3 million visitors annually. Meanwhile, the Cemetery is still an active burial ground. The arrival experience at the Cemetery is, however, not as dignified and graceful as anticipated, as different users and transport modes jumbled together in a state of confusion and congestion.

“A Living Memorial” is a proposal for the redesign of the Cemetery’s entrance ground. Three main objectives in this project include:

1. Formal & Graceful arrival: Reimagine the entrance dignity and respect, keep up with other parts of the Cemetery

2. Individual experience: How to accommodate the co-existence of Tourists and Funeral attendee while enabling an experiential journey that is unique to the cemetery

3. Administration Burden: To redesign the entrance ground with consideration of administrative functions, including crowd dispersal and control, security checkpoints, funeral services and tourist services provision

South Boston, MA
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Fall 2017

Team: Jenjira Holmes, Monica Miyagusuku
Instructed by Sergio Lopez-Pineiro

Over the past decade, abundant preventive and anticipatory designs have addressed the hazard of sea level rise on cities in the future. Many focus on the preparation of the landscape to accommodate the influx volume of sea water. Our question is – even the landscape is ready, are people prepared to adapt to the new lifestyle, and react to the changes brought by sea level rise?

The primary goal of this project is to create a gradual shift in public’s perception on sea level rise. The proposed waterfront neighborhood in South Boston comprises new public space and "city grid" typologies, directly responding to daily tidal movement and increasing sea level. Telling people water is coming would never be as powerful as allowing themselves to experience how water moves in and out every single day. Synchronizing the time scales of social life with water patterns, the project provides a flexible framework for future city migration, and most importantly mental preparedness of people to adapt to the new lifestyle in sea level rise – Living in Ephemerality.

Dawei Special Economic Zone, Myanmar
The University of Hong Kong (2012)

Clark Air Base, the Philippines
Harvard Graduate School of Design (2018)

Team: Isabel Preciado, Melody Stein

Rice is the most widely grown agricultural crop in the Philippines. The Philippines is consistently unable to fulfill its caloric demand for rice, perpetuating cycles of dependency on foreign aid. Annual typhoon and flood events destroy rice harvests, amplifying these shortages.

This project proposes re-channeling foreign aid to produce new forms of temporal occupation and rice farming and harvest cycles, ultimately leading to increased national food security and autonomy.