How old furniture is defining Hong Kong's urban spaces

Every so often, while walking down a quiet alley or waiting for a minibus, you’ll notice a collection of mismatched furniture that seems to have been plucked from someone’s living room and deposited on the sidewalk. What’s up with that? Rosly Mok and Vanessa Chan wanted to know, so the two young designers set out to investigate the phenomenon, which has led to an ongoing project about Hong Kong’s so-called “abandoned furniture.” 

Venturing out into the places where the furniture is most common -- next to transport hubs, outside shops, in green areas where public benches are either absent or uncomfortable -- Mok and Chan interviewed the people using the chairs. “At first they were afraid to talk,” says Mok. “They thought we were from the government and we were going to fine them or take their chairs away.” Eventually, they were won over by the pair’s ready smiles and started to share the stories behind the furniture. 

“The people who design the streets in Hong Kong ignore the need for seating areas, so people in the neighborhood put some furniture they don’t need to good use,” says Mok. Shop owners put old chairs outside to give customers a place to hang out. Poh-poh and gung-gung -- grannies and gramps -- pass the day playing cards, chess or mahjong in the street or in parks. People waiting for the bus in the New Territories, where service isn’t always frequent but benches are rarely provided at stops, wait in chairs brought from home. 

Though Mok and Chan use the term abandoned furniture, it’s actually a misnomer: the eclectic range of formal dining chairs, office recliners and old-school chesterfields found in Hong Kong streets represent the city at its most alive. In one case, people in Tai Kok Tsui took advantage of a newly widened sidewalk by “filling the gap” with furniture from home. “Then they sit down and take a rest in the extra space,” says Mok. “They generate their own leisure area.”

Chan and Mok are critical of the way public spaces are designed in Hong Kong, both by the private sector and the government. “The first items a developer lists in its design brief for architects is ‘money’,” says Mok. Everything is designed according to a standard formula that doesn’t take into account the unique qualities of a given area. But in traditional urban fabric, “the configuration of space was developed gradually by people through time,” she says. “It allows [people in] the neighbourhood to express the way they want the space to be.”

One thing the pair noticed when studying abandoned furniture was the type of person who uses it: old. With the notable exception of teenagers, says Chan, young people just don’t engage with the city in the same way. “Maybe they like staying at home because they pay all their salary towards it,” she says. “I’m like an old guy -- I like to take a newspaper or some food and enjoy the wind and air.” 

Find out more about Mok and Chan’s project here.