About the Seminar

In recent years, public engagement has been increasingly recognised as a key component in many public works projects. Yet, it not fully recognised among technical professionals.

This is the first session of a CPD series that aims to promulgate public engagement as an important means of encouraging bottom-up conservation process. It does not focus on technically how to conserve, but how to engage and empower the local community to participate in the process through exploration of the various difficulties in mobilising the local community, tools adopted, the local community’s expectations, how to compromise and reconcile, and how to make decisions etc. The ultimate goal of heritage conservation is not merely for the heritage conservation of the physical features, but also community collaboration, partnership and empowerment.

The speakers of this session will introduce public engagement and share their experience in different projects such as how to identity and attract the target stakeholders / user groups to participate in the process, how to drive the participants to generate ideas and make decisions to facilitate the design process, and how the project team, local community, designers, and client interact throughout the process.

About the Speakers

Ms. Sarah Mui

Sarah is a catalytic architect. She brings collaborative creations that are grounded in human-design thinking, to connect people to the space in their community and strengthen the social fabric. She focuses on public space, social design, and cross-disciplinary creative strategy in public space innovations in the city through her design and research works – GUTS and Urban Matters platforms.

Sarah received her Bachelor of Architectural Studies degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Master of Architecture from University College London in the UK. As a registered architect in Hong Kong, she is the winner of the Hong Kong Young Architect Award 2015 and has received the DFA Hong Kong Young Design Talent Award in 2018. She is also a Certified Facilitator at LUMA Institute.

Mr. Alan Cheung

Alan Cheung is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of One Bite Design Studio. He graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong for both his bachelor and master’s degrees in architecture and recently attained another master’s degree in Urban Analytics from the University of Hong Kong. He is a registered architect in Hong Kong with over 15 years of experience. Leading the first B Corp in Hong Kong from the architectural industry and One Bite Social which has recently been registered as a charity organisation, he and his team at One Bite bridges commercial and public sectors with the community through their creative ideas.

Alan brings collaborative creations that are grounded in human-design thinking, to connect people to the space in their community and strengthen the social fabric. He focuses on public space, social design, and cross-disciplinary creative strategy. Currently, he is leading the team as the curatorial partner for the 3-year Sai Kung Hoi Arts Festival.