A vast majority of sportgrounds in Hong Kong today are managed by private property developers, the Housing Department, or the Leisure and Cultural Services Department; these departments tend to produce largely identically designed sportsgrounds; quite a few amongst them have become dilapidated and are in need of repair.

Gaw Capital believes that as landlords, we should make effective use of our available land, and – through revitalising malls and fostering a communal sense of belonging – develop new hubs in malls and sportsgrounds. As such, we took the bold move of hiring the basketball-promoting group SLAB and the communal spatial designing lab One Bite Social, in concretising our “Our Hong Kong, Our Basketball Home Ground” vision.

SLAB comprises a group of youths who, born and raised in local estate housing, have been striving to build a street basketball court that could preserve the Hong Kong spirit in its servicing for locals. One Bite Social consists of a group of young local architects and designers, who specialise in a human-oriented and community-driven approach to urban design; they have participated in multiple local construction projects.

Gaw Capital offers aspiring local designers the opportunity to undertake authentically user-driven design work; in doing so, it seeks to offer the wider industry a model for effective deployment of privately-owned public space. With adept and crafty innovation, even very finite space (such as an anodyne sportsground) could give rise to infinite possibilities and a new communal haunt.