Many of the older neighbourhoods of Hong Kong are facing top-down renewal that often results in gentrification and community displacements. The ‘slash and burn’ process has removed many built heritage assets, particularly the ‘tong lau’ (tenement houses), the mundane built forms of the 1960s. These rows of ‘tong lau’ were once the most prevalent streetscapes in the city and have become a significant representation of the collective urban identity.

This project explores an alternative approach of urban regeneration that aims to preserve both the material heritage and the community heritage within. It starts with unifying all the individual ‘tong lau’ within a street block by adding corridors to connect all apartments on each level. With the new horizontal circulation, individual staircases are no longer needed for each building, resulting in a selective demolition of the redundant ones. This transformation widens the alleyway, and new communal programs are added to the extra spaces for the community. The new corridors and communal balconies reactivate the alley into a collective courtyard that promotes co-living with more flexible spaces and richer environments. In addition, the new structures also serve as scaffold to build new housing above, revitalising the ‘tong lau’ into a hybrid of old and new.