PUBLIC
OBJECTS

The city as an enclosure

Human civilization starts from the ability to transform the surrounding environment. Our first cities appeared during the Neolithic Period when the development of agricultural techniques assured surplus crop yields large enough to sustain a permanent population.


The idea of the city first emerged as an integral and self-contained settlement, containing within itself other lesser settlements. While our cities may change according to the evolution of our society, the fundamental concept of being an enclosure – to protect human from nature -  is still maintained.


In the modern society, we design cities with the method of zoning by dividing lands into different zones with specific functions and usage. This idea further expands to nature reserve, where human set a zone as protected area for wild life conservation. The first modern nature reserve was established in 1821 by English naturalist Charles Waterton who was one of the first people recognised not only that the natural world was of great importance but that it needed protection as humanity made more and more demands on it. 

The dissolving boundary

According to the United Nations (UN), 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, adding about 2.5 billion people to urban areas around the world.

As human populations and demand for urban area continue to grow, people and wildlife are increasingly interacting and competing for resources, which can lead to increased human-wildlife conflict such as loss of property, livelihoods etc. Urbanization also dramatically alters the composition of wildlife communities, leading to biodiversity loss.


Seeing the traditional way of conservation and zoning may not be enough to solve this complex issue, it forces us to rethink our concept of the city as an enclosure.


How should we set our urban boundary? Should our city act as an enclosure at all? How can we maintain the life of other species while expanding our cities?

The inevitable relationship between human and wildlife

The French landscape architect Gilles Clément suggests that all enclosure is an illusion. The planet is a territory where species are constantly moving and evolving. Human activities over the past decades have made enormous contribution into this planetary intermingling, that we are constantly moving, and making everything else move.


Clément’s idea on the “Planetary Garden” stated that the entire planet is one big garden and we are all gardeners. Nature is not at the service of man: we exist within her, submerged in her, intimately associated with her. The goal of the planetary garden is to exploit diversity without destroying it, perpetuating the “planetary machine” and ensuring the existence of the garden – and hence the gardener.


According to Clément, the work of the architect lies not in the arrangement of forms, or in balance between shade and light, but in the acknowledge of a life saved.


Nowadays, due to climate changes, there are more awareness on our impacts to nature. The sustainable movement has further led to concepts like New Economy which focuses on the integrity of human and nature, and not only on economic growth alone. Also, Regenerative Design which has been developed from sustainable design, emphases on creating design solutions with positive impact to the planet rather than merely doing ‘less bad’.

Change starts from the 20%

As architects and urban planners, we usually put human needs at first place. However, we believe that to be human is to share space with other species; to build is to build for humans and other animals. 


According to the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule): 80% of the outcome depends on 20% of the causes. Human comprise a very small share of life on Earth – 0.01% of the total, yet we havedirectly affected at least 83% of the planet’s viable land surface.  While more land has been urbanized, there is an urgency to question how we can shape our activities so that our impact on the environment is intentionally beneficial.


This book is a research design project which begins with the reflection on our impact on Earth and the interactive effects of our influence based on the concept of Anthropocene.


Since the city is the centre of all human activities, instead of focusing on the entire planet and all its problems we have created, we bring our focus back into our daily living environment. Starting from the scale of mundane street objects (i.e. lamppost, benches, bins etc.), we try to observe and understand how other species have been accommodating the living habits of human beings in the context of micro-urban environment.


Through studying how animals and other beings use and adopt our urban space in the scale of street objects, we hope to extend our design focus from human centric to human-planet centric for a sustainable urban environment.

How this website is organized

This website is organized into four main sections:


1/ Observe - How the 80 adapts to the 20

Review existing street objects design and document the mini eco-system created by the street objects under various urban situations.

i.e. how animals and plants beings adopt and incorporate into human artefacts


2/ Precedents – Concepts on integrity of nature

Research on animal and ecological friendly design


3/ Ideas -  Conceptual ideas on human-planet friendly design

Develop conceptual street object design prototypes which can be beneficial to both human and other beings


4/ Dialogues– Interviews with local ecologists and NGO

Interviews with local ecological experts to understand the habits of common urban animals and plant species in Hong Kong



The fruit of the research is documented into both printed and online publication to rise attention on the needs of animals and other beings that live together with us in our city.


The way we see the world has an impact on the way we look after it. Hence, we hope to create new perspective in designing public space and urban environment for a truly liveable city for both human and all beings.