Northern Street Lights

Hong Kong Lights

Speculative Spatial Environment Design

Speculative Spatial Design

Northern Street Lights

Hong Kong Lights

Year: 2022
Field: Spatial Design
Type: Individual Project
Role: Interaction Designer

About This Project

Hong Kong has long established itself as a destination known for its world-famous street culture. However, with the region's recent political shifts, this historical part of the city is slowly fading. Northern Street Lights is an interactive design solution that aims to stop this trend.

Northern Street Lights Visualization
Northern Street Lights visualization
User Research Process
Research & design process
Stakeholder Map
Staholder map of relevant street market users
User Journey
User journey of the Northern Street Lights concept

Light Installation

Northern Street Lights is a socially-oriented design solution to revitalize the fading significance of Hong Kong's street markets. The centerpiece of this project is an artistic light installation that creates places for social exchange across the city. Residents can interact with these lights and explore their changing illumination patterns.

Hawker Stall Model 2

Interactive Prototype

This scale model of a traditional Hongkongese hawker stall has been developed to better demonstrate the underlying functionality of the Northern Street Lights concept. Powered by an Arduino Uno, the prototype can visualize all the different interaction states of the proposed design.

Hawker Stall Model 1
Hawker Stall Model 2
Year: 2022
Client: PolyU University
Field: Spatial Design
Type: Individual Project
Role: Interaction Designer
Sign Prototype
Neon sign prototype
Sign Prototype (Green Light)
Sign prototype (green status)
Sign Prototype (Red Light)
Sign prototype (red status)

About

Introduction

This work has been conducted as a research project in collaboration with The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The goal hereby was to explore the potential use of interactive media to preserve Hong Kong's fading street culture.

Background

Street markets are one of the last remaining places that represent the true colors of Hong Kong's bustling street life. There is a certain nostalgia associated with these neighborhood markets which are slowly being banished from the cityscape in order to make space for modern shopping malls. By preserving the historical value of these markets, Northern Street Lights provides a novel approach for a culturally sustainable masterplan to revitalize the urban areas of Hong Kong.

Design Solution

The Northern Street Lights concept features two primary functionalities: During the day, passive infrared sensors detect the congestion rate of the city. This data can then be used by service providers like Google Maps to indicate the real-time traffic status of all the street markets across the city. During the night, the light signs of every market stall illuminate the road, thus engaging residents to socialize under the Northern Street Lights.

Tools Used

  •  Autodesk AutoCAD
  •  Formlabs PreForm
  •  Arduino IDE
  •  Adobe After Effects