A third park – the sitting-out area under the Hill Road Flyover in Shek Tong Tsui at the western end of Hong Kong Island – will follow at the end of the year, with the fourth park, Hamilton Street Rest Garden in Mong Kok, expected to be completed by July 2022.

The Portland Street park works on many levels: it’s a safe public space, a rest stop for commuters, an open-air venue where neighbours can gather, a social space for the elderly (who are the main target users), and an eye-catching piece of urban architecture.

Combining all of these demands into the 379 square metre (4,080 sq ft) Portland Street Rest Garden, the design team – led by Sam Jacob and including Kam Fai Hung and Wendy Wu (both of whom work in architecture and landscaping); Ricky Lai (graphics and branding); and Xavier Tsang (industrial and product design) – took inspiration from the area’s rich history, with in-depth tours of the neighbourhood, surveys of business owners and talks with local residents.

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“We’re in one of Hong Kong’s oldest districts and this is a really popular street. It’s filled with low-scale buildings, local eateries, vintage signage, theatres, love hotels – lot of 1980s films were made here – but there’s also a lot of old craftsmen, historic buildings and temples that are also a part of the fabric, so we had to think about how to revitalise this space while keeping with the flavour of the community,” says Yiu.

Before the revamp, the park was limited to just 20 seats (visitors were often seen squatting on the ground). Now there are 85, thanks to an ingenious collection of baby-pink terrazzo benches and Barbie-pink modular stools, which have been made from GRC (glass fibre-reinforced concrete).

Weighing up to 90 kilograms each, the seats are light enough to move around but too heavy to steal. The Portland Street park is the first park in Hong Kong to have this type of movable modular furniture, which allows visitors to arrange it in a variety of ways, transforming the space into a dining area, a performance stage, a meeting room or a display area.

“We also introduced tables to facilitate social gatherings,” says Yiu. Elsewhere, there are bright pink recycling bins, a flamingo-pink water fountain, a rosy pergola and a cerise Chinese chess table, which has also been made from GRC with a board inlaid into the tabletop.

Aside from a lack of seating, the park was also suffering from a lack of toilet facilities, with many elderly men regularly urinating in the bushes. Building a toilet wasn’t an option, so the Design Trust turned to one of their mentees, candlemaker Xavier Tang, the co-founder of Hong Kong-based BeCandle, for a solution.

“I wanted to bring him in as part of the team to think about how we can create parks that go beyond the visual,” says Yiu. As an antidote to any lingering smells and as a way to encourage a connection with nature and dissuade them from peeing in public, Tang introduced an array of plants and grasses, including blocking one corner with fragrant jasmine plants and another with swaying purple fountain grass.

The park’s openness may be a deterrent, too. Subtle signage – in pink, of course – reinforces the message with a ‘no urinating’ symbol.

Other crossed-out symbols include ‘Please no cycling’, ‘no dogs’, ‘no ball games’, and ‘no hawking’. But look closely and you’ll see the picture of a cigarette says, ‘Smoking is not prohibited in this venue’, as the Portland Street Rest Garden is one of a few in Yau Tsim Mong to permit it.

The idea is that the signage, along with the design of the park, will instil some dignity to a previously unloved space and help to change behaviour in a positive way.

“After working on the project for nearly three years, the team were so excited about this park and really want it to stand out,” says Yiu.

It does – and in more ways than one.