Appropriating Public Space

As part of Parsons Global Studio Intensive, I worked with students from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shenzhen University, and Parsons School of Design to learn more about appropriations of public space in the Hong Kong Central Business District specifically by female, foreign domestic workers. Our preliminary research conducted before the workshop, revealed complexities and contradictions involved in the livelihoods, policies, and economies surrounding the global flows of migrant labor, particularly the over 300,000 women from the Philippines and Indonesia who’ve moved to Hong Kong to work.   

Sundays are important days in the lives of domestic workers in Hong Kong because on that day most are asked to leave their employers’ home and places of work, and spend the day outside. Given financial limitations, but also the prospects of gathering in larger groups, they have historically chosen to appropriate vast network of streets, passages, alleys and bridges in the Central Business District.

Each design team identified their own specific research topics and subsequently developed design scenarios in response to their research. In our group, we spend time speaking with local organizations and activists to better understand foreign domestic workers’ experiences and worked on a design proposal that looked at how to collect and centralize stories as a tool for the domestic worker movements that were already underway (see page 72 for more information).

Designed as a printable booklet, a digital version can be viewed below or accessed as a pdf here.

2018