Introduction
The story of Hong Kong’s Wah Fu community shrine began over 50 years ago. It was as a destination for residents living in the nearby housing estate to leave their porcelain deities when they moved or when the religion was no longer practiced by the younger generation. Over time, the community shrine became an important social space for residents of all ages and served as an informal archive of the community’s growth and transformation. Elders and retirees volunteered their time to keep the place clean and to care for the deities. Using their own resources, they also added new facilities such as a clubhouse and changing rooms for the swimmers. It is a remarkable example of how residents worked selflessly, generously, and harmoniously to self-organise, co-create and take care of a public space. The collection of porcelain deities was gradually expanded to include soft toys, plastic figurines and decorative trinkets, as younger residents participated in beautifying the community shrine. With the impending renewal of the Wah Fu housing estate, the community shrine faces a precarious future. Current residents will be assigned new flats much further away while many are moving to other housing estates. Moreover, since the shrine’s existence was not sanctioned by the authorities and there were also illegal constructions, such as the clubhouse and changing rooms built by the elders, there is a strong possibility that the community shrine will be demolished.
How do we remember the Wah Fu community shrine when it is no longer around?
What do we wish to remember about the Wah Fu community shrine?
The Project
The studio explores the archive as an act of intervention in anticipation of future memories for the community shrine in Wah Fu Hong Kong. It will investigate the archive as a transportable collection of tangible stories and materials that are entangled with the site’s social, cultural, economic and political forces. Central to the investigation are the following three questions.
How are memories (personal, collective, historical) spatialised in a transportable archive?
How are memories (personal, collective, historical) materialised in a transportable archive?
What are the tectonics and aesthetics of the transportable archive?
The story of Hong Kong’s Wah Fu community shrine began over 50 years ago. It was as a destination for residents living in the nearby housing estate to leave their porcelain deities when they moved or when the religion was no longer practiced by the younger generation. Over time, the community shrine became an important social space for residents of all ages and served as an informal archive of the community’s growth and transformation. Elders and retirees volunteered their time to keep the place clean and to care for the deities. Using their own resources, they also added new facilities such as a clubhouse and changing rooms for the swimmers. It is a remarkable example of how residents worked selflessly, generously, and harmoniously to self-organise, co-create and take care of a public space. The collection of porcelain deities was gradually expanded to include soft toys, plastic figurines and decorative trinkets, as younger residents participated in beautifying the community shrine. With the impending renewal of the Wah Fu housing estate, the community shrine faces a precarious future. Current residents will be assigned new flats much further away while many are moving to other housing estates. Moreover, since the shrine’s existence was not sanctioned by the authorities and there were also illegal constructions, such as the clubhouse and changing rooms built by the elders, there is a strong possibility that the community shrine will be demolished.
How do we remember the Wah Fu community shrine when it is no longer around?
What do we wish to remember about the Wah Fu community shrine?
The Project
The studio explores the archive as an act of intervention in anticipation of future memories for the community shrine in Wah Fu Hong Kong. It will investigate the archive as a transportable collection of tangible stories and materials that are entangled with the site’s social, cultural, economic and political forces. Central to the investigation are the following three questions.
How are memories (personal, collective, historical) spatialised in a transportable archive?
How are memories (personal, collective, historical) materialised in a transportable archive?
What are the tectonics and aesthetics of the transportable archive?
The Option Studio provides a supportive environment for architecture students to apply their transferable architecture design skills in the creation of their transportable archives.
Multi-Scalar Thinking
The project challenges students to think about their design across multiple scales, nurturing a holistic understanding of spatial relationships. At the intimate scale, they curate and organise individual items within the archive by considering their arrangement, interrelationships and narrative significance. At the intermediate scale, students address construction techniques, detailing, and material selection. At the contextual scale, they integrate design, aesthetic sensibilities, user experience, and cultural significance to the context. Through this multi-scalar approach, students learned to think and design at different scales and the importance of their interconnection.
Contextual Understanding
Desktop research and interviewing the shrine’s elders and residents gave my students a deeper understanding of the shrine's history, evolution, and cultural significance within the community. These conversations offer invaluable first-hand insights, revealing personal stories, rituals, and lived experiences that go beyond what is accessible through secondary sources. The knowledge informs and shapes curatorial strategies, artefact selection, and modes of display. This community-engaged approach ensures that the archive reflects and preserves both the intangible values of the people and the cultural heritage embedded in the shrine.
Curating, Planning and Organising the Archive
Given the limited space of the wooden archive case, my students had to plan and organise their curated collections to fit within its confines. They treat the space as a container and a design challenge, which demands careful spatial planning, where each item is critically evaluated for its significance, relevance, and relationship to the overall narrative. These curatorial decisions about what to include, omit, or emphasise require thoughtful alignment between concept, content, and aesthetic intent to ensure that the physical arrangement and curatorial choices reinforce the archive’s central theme.
Communication and Visualisation
My students used a range of media like drawings, models, diagrams, photographs, sound recordings, and videos to support the archival experience. They assess the most effective visual strategy to ensure that these choices are contextually appropriate and resonate with the visual language and sensibilities of Hong Kong and the site. The visualisations go beyond depiction of architectural forms, but serve as interpretive tools that frame and express social, cultural, historical, and spatial narratives. Through this process, students learn how to translate ideas into compelling visual experiences that engage the archive users emotionally and intellectually.
1:1
Engaging with the archive at full scale requires students to confront the practical realities of construction, materiality, and detailing in a direct, hands-on manner. Unlike traditional representational drawings or digital models, which often remain abstract and speculative, full-scale prototyping demands that students grapple with how their designs perform under real-world conditions. This includes addressing structural integrity, tactile quality, joinery, and assembly of components. The process fosters a heightened sensitivity to materials and craftsmanship, while deepening their understanding of how form evokes emotional responses. The project cultivates a habit of iterative refinement, and coherence between functional performance, aesthetic resolution, and the narrative embedded in the archive.
Multi-Scalar Thinking
The project challenges students to think about their design across multiple scales, nurturing a holistic understanding of spatial relationships. At the intimate scale, they curate and organise individual items within the archive by considering their arrangement, interrelationships and narrative significance. At the intermediate scale, students address construction techniques, detailing, and material selection. At the contextual scale, they integrate design, aesthetic sensibilities, user experience, and cultural significance to the context. Through this multi-scalar approach, students learned to think and design at different scales and the importance of their interconnection.
Contextual Understanding
Desktop research and interviewing the shrine’s elders and residents gave my students a deeper understanding of the shrine's history, evolution, and cultural significance within the community. These conversations offer invaluable first-hand insights, revealing personal stories, rituals, and lived experiences that go beyond what is accessible through secondary sources. The knowledge informs and shapes curatorial strategies, artefact selection, and modes of display. This community-engaged approach ensures that the archive reflects and preserves both the intangible values of the people and the cultural heritage embedded in the shrine.
Curating, Planning and Organising the Archive
Given the limited space of the wooden archive case, my students had to plan and organise their curated collections to fit within its confines. They treat the space as a container and a design challenge, which demands careful spatial planning, where each item is critically evaluated for its significance, relevance, and relationship to the overall narrative. These curatorial decisions about what to include, omit, or emphasise require thoughtful alignment between concept, content, and aesthetic intent to ensure that the physical arrangement and curatorial choices reinforce the archive’s central theme.
Communication and Visualisation
My students used a range of media like drawings, models, diagrams, photographs, sound recordings, and videos to support the archival experience. They assess the most effective visual strategy to ensure that these choices are contextually appropriate and resonate with the visual language and sensibilities of Hong Kong and the site. The visualisations go beyond depiction of architectural forms, but serve as interpretive tools that frame and express social, cultural, historical, and spatial narratives. Through this process, students learn how to translate ideas into compelling visual experiences that engage the archive users emotionally and intellectually.
1:1
Engaging with the archive at full scale requires students to confront the practical realities of construction, materiality, and detailing in a direct, hands-on manner. Unlike traditional representational drawings or digital models, which often remain abstract and speculative, full-scale prototyping demands that students grapple with how their designs perform under real-world conditions. This includes addressing structural integrity, tactile quality, joinery, and assembly of components. The process fosters a heightened sensitivity to materials and craftsmanship, while deepening their understanding of how form evokes emotional responses. The project cultivates a habit of iterative refinement, and coherence between functional performance, aesthetic resolution, and the narrative embedded in the archive.
Wah Fu Qi Field- A Parascientific Inquiry. Nellie Leong
Beyond the physical structure of the Wah Fu Community Shrine exists an intricate network of energy fields—collectively known as Qi (氣 )—that flow in constant flux. Though invisible, these forces profoundly shape how individuals experience and connect with the space. The emotions we associate with a place are not merely reactions to its physical form but are deeply influenced by the unseen energy that permeates it. This ever-evolving cosmic field is shaped by the presence of deities, embedded belief systems, and the rituals performed over time. Unlike conventional archives focused on material preservation, this project redefines archiving as an experiential and interpretative process, capturing the essence of energy flow. By adopting a parascientific approach, it explores how Qi can be sensed and engaged with beyond its intangible nature.
The Wah Fu Cosmic Theatre. Sheena Ng.
Wah Fu Community Shrine exists as a Cosmic Theatre, where time, space, and rituals coexist into an unfolding performance of the seen and unseen. Beyond religious beliefs, the shrine is a liminal space where fleeting moments dissolve into cycles, incense smoke drifts into wind, whispered prayers merge with the shrine’s echoes, and offerings bridge the human and divine. Every element participates in a performance larger than itself, one that is constantly in motion, shaped by the presence of those who pass through, pause, pray, and remember. The shrine holds not just memory, but momentum that continues regardless of who is watching. The film reveals the shrine’s hidden dimensions, shifting between formlessness, human and animal life, deities, and the underworld. The realms that interweave on the same plane transform through perception. Just like how a statue might just be stone to one person, it is a living presence to another, or a ritual could seem like a simple action, but to someone else, it’s a connection to another world. Meaning becomes dependent on belief, and presence becomes elastic, stretching across dimensions based not just on sight, but on faith, gesture, and emotion. The shrine, then, is not fixed in space or time, but breathes with the people who interact with it. The turntable structure mirrors this movement, emphasising the cyclic nature of existence, where everything is interconnected rather than separate. It is a physical metaphor for the shrine’s essence of a world in flux, always turning, always returning. Expanding beyond religious narratives, the shrine unfolds as a universal performance, where realms of human, deity, and unseen forces converge. Rituals become performances in the karmic cycle - offerings, prayers, and burning joss paper act as echoes of past actions and future consequences. This is not a static space but a rotating
stage, where time, belief, and existence move in an endless interplay.
Rhythm of the Sacred and the Everyday. Faith Yeo.
The Rhythms of Life is a transportable archive of Wah Fu that reimagines how time can be documented and experienced. Drawing inspiration from the Chinese calendar—an intricate system that weaves together cosmic, seasonal, and ritual dimensions—the project moves beyond the linearity of the Gregorian calendar to explore how time is felt, embodied, and practiced within a specific community. The calendar’s almanac-like nature, which guides daily actions through its indications of auspiciousness, served as a catalyst for investigating how temporal rhythms shape both spiritual practice and everyday life. The proposal introduces an alternative method of timekeeping—one that traces the interplay between the mortal and the immortal across cycles that are at once cosmic, benign, seasonal, and fleeting. Rather than reducing time to abstract units, it emphasizes lived experience. The archive becomes a medium through which ephemeral moments—those that might otherwise escape documentation—are translated into a sensory “symphony of life.” This approach allows users to engage with time experientially, encountering preserved moments not as static records, but as portals into temporal rhythms that can be re-invoked.
During the field visit, the project evolved to attend more closely to the temporal nuances of the site itself: the rising and falling of tides, the routines of the shrine caretaker, passing joggers and butterflies, and the silent guardianship of porcelain deities. These observations prompted a shift in focus toward a single day on 27 February 2025 or 初一 (Chu Yi) , the first day of the lunar month.
Through a series of videos recorded between 10:00 AM and 4:30 PM, the archive captures the preparation of the shrine on Chu Yi. The resulting composition documents Wah Fu’s temporal life as a convergence of ritual, routine, and transience. More than a record, it becomes a reflection on how time is marked, remembered, and shared—both individually and collectively.
Mahjong Planning Principles. Loh Min Ru.
The Wah Fu Community Shrine in Hong Kong is more than a religious site or a historical relic - it is a living space of exploration, participation, and interrelation. Its collection of deities and artifacts embodies evolving social-cultural beliefs, spiritual practices and community rituals. The shrine functions as a site of both religious devotion and communal recreation, holding deep significance for many residents. However, redevelopment threatens to displace the community, risking the shrine’s vitality, prompting a critical question: How can we preserve cultural memory and spiritual identity amidst urban transformation while fostering a sense of ownership for future generations? The project responds by reimagining the shrine through the spatial logic of mahjong - a deeply rooted aspect of Hong Kong's cultural identity - in the ideas of arrangement, strategy, and continuity. like mahjong tiles that are rearranged to form “winning” combinations, the shrine’s dieties and objects are envisioned as modular and symbolic units in a living archive that adapts, expands, and invites community participation over time.
At the core of this system is the revival of mahjong tile carving, a once thriving craft now fading in Hong Kong. Reinvented here as a method of tactile inscription, the engraved tiles encourage hands-on interaction, allowing residents to touch, arrange and contribute to the living archive. As sensory tools of preservation, they record spiritual ties, spatial hierarchies and communal stories - safeguarding the shrine’s essence while revitalising a disappearing practice. Through this evolving community-driven system, it transforms the shrine from a static structure into a living framework for legacy and identity. It empowers displaced communities to take ownership and reconstruct their sacred space elsewhere, grounded in cultural familiarity and collective agency. In doing so, the project turns potential loss into regeneration, keeping the Wah Fu Communtiy shrine spiritually alive and culturally resonant within Wah Fu Estate’s shifting urban landscape.
Between Worlds: Wah Fu and its Kaifong. Lee Zhuo Yao.
Wah Fu: Kai Fong of the Deities is a transportable archive that seeks to preserve not a fixed image of the Wah Fu Community Shrine, but the spirit that continues to shape it. This project captures the essence of Wah Fu through its continuous growth, informal care, and the layered rituals of those who quietly sustain it. At the heart of the archive is the idea of Kai Fong, a Cantonese term that refers to neighbourly ties, bottom-up maintenance, and shared presence within community space. The shrine, located on a hillside in Wah Fu Estate, has been formed over decades through the accumulated actions of residents and visitors. Deities, figurines, and objects have been added, arranged, and cared for without a singular plan. The shrine has grown not through design, but through lived negotiation. Wah Fu: Kai Fong of the Deities proposes an archive that interprets and distills the soft rules that have guided this process. These are drawn from the identities of the deities, their spatial arrangements, and the quiet meanings tied to their presence. Users are invited to uncover the hidden logic behind these quiet designers and the Kai Fong of the deities, moving through layered observations of names, placements, and meanings. Through this unfolding, the archive offers soft rules in the form of impressions rather than instructions, gently guiding users toward the recreation of Wah Fu itself. The aim is not to replicate the shrine, but to internalise its essence as a logic of coexistence, care, and improvisation. The archive becomes a living methodology that resists the flattening of heritage into fixed display and instead embraces the ongoing collaborative labour of care. Even if the original site disappears, its spirit continues: reshaped, retold, and reassembled each time a new Wah Fu takes form.
Between Worlds: Wah Fu and its Kaifong. Lee Zhuo Yao.
Wah Fu: Kai Fong of the Deities is a transportable archive that seeks to preserve not a fixed image of the Wah Fu Community Shrine, but the spirit that continues to shape it. This project captures the essence of Wah Fu through its continuous growth, informal care, and the layered rituals of those who quietly sustain it. At the heart of the archive is the idea of Kai Fong, a Cantonese term that refers to neighbourly ties, bottom-up maintenance, and shared presence within community space. The shrine, located on a hillside in Wah Fu Estate, has been formed over decades through the accumulated actions of residents and visitors. Deities, figurines, and objects have been added, arranged, and cared for without a singular plan. The shrine has grown not through design, but through lived negotiation. Wah Fu: Kai Fong of the Deities proposes an archive that interprets and distills the soft rules that have guided this process. These are drawn from the identities of the deities, their spatial arrangements, and the quiet meanings tied to their presence. Users are invited to uncover the hidden logic behind these quiet designers and the Kai Fong of the deities, moving through layered observations of names, placements, and meanings. Through this unfolding, the archive offers soft rules in the form of impressions rather than instructions, gently guiding users toward the recreation of Wah Fu itself. The aim is not to replicate the shrine, but to internalise its essence as a logic of coexistence, care, and improvisation. The archive becomes a living methodology that resists the flattening of heritage into fixed display and instead embraces the ongoing collaborative labour of care. Even if the original site disappears, its spirit continues: reshaped, retold, and reassembled each time a new Wah Fu takes form.
Wah Fu Memories: Echoes of Wealth and Splendour. Alison Liew Chooi Yi.
荣华富贵 (Wealth and Splendor) is a design project that archives the Wah Fu Estate and Wah Fu Shrine through the lens of popular culture. As Wah Fu faces complete redevelopment by 2040, this project aims to preserve its architectural and emotional memory in a way that resonates with children and the wider community. This project uses popular culture as a method to archive as Wah Fu is already deeply embedded in Hong Kong’s cultural imagination. Featured in films like Limbo and known for its milk tea, myths, and mysterious atmosphere, Wah Fu has become a nostalgic backdrop for horror and memory. Popular culture is also widely accessible; it reaches across generations and invites emotional participation. People already archive their lives through movies, games, and storytelling, this project simply follows that instinct. The project consists of four interactive archives. The TV Wall preserves the fading interiors of the estate, capturing textures, wall finishes, and the personal habits of residents through hidden compartments filled with mini zines and mementos. The Pop-Up Cards document four key community-built shelters, allowing children to physically open up sacred spaces and engage with the idea of shared protection. The Sandbox retells Wah Fu’s layered and mythic history like mass burials, pirate massacres, and ghost stories, through light, material, and atmosphere. Finally, the Poker Card Game features 12 caretakers from the shrine, using dice, color beads, and traditional rules to archive people through play, ending with the creation of a wearable bracelet as a personal souvenir. Together, these formats create a tactile, emotional archive, where memory becomes something you can touch, play with, and carry home. Popular culture, in this project, becomes a living vessel for remembrance.
Wah Fu Mart: A Game of Chance and Fate. Tan Chu Yi.
The Wah Fu Community Shrine is a place of devotion where worshippers seek guidance, luck, or divine intervention through a ritual like qiu qian (fortune stick divination). The act of shaking a cylinder container until one stick falls out is an experience of chance, fate, and divine response—a moment of suspense where happiness or surprise unfolds. Worshippers have no control over the outcome, just as they cannot control the forces guiding their lives. Offerings left behind—incense, food, or paper money—mark the shrine as a living space shaped by the community’s hopes and prayers.
This unpredictability mirrors the thrill of opening a box without knowing the contents in it. In the transportable archive, players draw boxes containing objects that hold personal, collective, or historical memory from Wah Fu’s shrine. Deity collectibles, audio recordings, and printed personal memories become interactive tokens of history, transforming intangible cultural heritage into a tangible, evolving game experience. To recreate the experiences at the shrine—such as contributing deities or offering joss sticks in reverence—this travel archive presents three different outcomes, each offering a unique way for participants to engage with the box. Although each person may encounter a different activity, all are able to sense, experience, and connect with elements of the Wah Fu Community Shrine. Like the shrine, the archive is a socio-religious space where players engage with fate, serendipity, and discovery, keeping Wah Fu’s unique heritage alive beyond its physical site.
Installing the archive at the site.
Interviewing the Wah Fu community shrine caretaker.
Sharing Session at the University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture.
Walking tour of the Wah Fu Housing Estate.
Visit to the Housing Authority Wah Fu Housing Estate renewal exhibition.
Talk on community building by Mr. Lam Hoi Pang from Caritas.
Visit to the M+ Archive.
Visit to the Asian Art Archive.
Visit to the personal archive of artist Siu King Chung
The studio would not have been possible without the support of:
Dr. Mary Ann Tsao. Chairperson, Tsao Foundation.
Associate Professor Eunice Seng, Chairperson, Department of Architecture. University of Hong Kong.
Associate Professor Thomas Tsang, Associate Dean (Impact and Communications), Department of Architecture. University of Hong Kong.
Senior Lecturer Vincci Mak. Division of Landscape Architecture, University of Hong Kong.
Mr. Lam Hoi Pang, Caritas.
Mr. CM Yip and Billy Cheng. M+ Research Centre. M+ Museum.
Mr. Siu King Chung.
Dr. Mary Ann Tsao. Chairperson, Tsao Foundation.
Associate Professor Eunice Seng, Chairperson, Department of Architecture. University of Hong Kong.
Associate Professor Thomas Tsang, Associate Dean (Impact and Communications), Department of Architecture. University of Hong Kong.
Senior Lecturer Vincci Mak. Division of Landscape Architecture, University of Hong Kong.
Mr. Lam Hoi Pang, Caritas.
Mr. CM Yip and Billy Cheng. M+ Research Centre. M+ Museum.
Mr. Siu King Chung.