How Hong Kong sustainability award winners came to a Cambodian village’s aid, ensuring water security while providing a social gathering place
- Magic Kwan and Kenrick Wong’s WaterHall project recently won the grand award for sustainability at the Hong Kong Design Centre’s DFA Awards
- Completed in 2019 for less than US$30,000, the twin structure collects and stores 2,000 litres of water to ensure adequate supply for roughly 100 families
Whether it be women at the well in ancient times or water-cooler conversation today, people tend to gravitate to sources of fresh water.
The idea to fill two human needs with one deed saw a pair of Hong Kong architects design a water-harvesting community hall for a small rural community in Cambodia. The social project, titled WaterHall, won the grand award for sustainability at the DFA Awards in October, the flagship programme of the Hong Kong Design Centre.
Magic Kwan Chun-sing and Kenrick Wong Guan-nok became aware of the lack of basic infrastructure in Sneung, a remote village on the outskirts of the city of Battambang, when, as architecture students at the University of Hong Kong, they joined a volunteer mission run by the university’s Humanity in Focus programme.
After graduating in 2012 and establishing their careers – they co-founded architecture firm Orient Occident Atelier (OOA) in 2016 – the pair secured philanthropic partners to fund their first project in the village: a school for local children.
The Adventurous Global School, where some 250 primary and secondary students now attend supplementary classes outside their regular school hours, opened in 2017. During its construction, Kwan and Wong’s intent was always to follow with a community hall. Not only would this provide a social gathering place, it would also ensure water security for a community plagued by drought, which relied on a surrounding lake and wells as its main water sources.