Young architects describe their vision of an urban landscape with a heart

Imagine a new Kowloon housing estate where the focus is not a shopping mall or extravagant clubhouse, but a communal green space used for cultural activities and urban farming, irrigated by recycled water and used to tame the summer heat in the surrounding city.

That's the future envisaged by Garden of Towers, an exhibit at this year's Venice Biennale of Architecture. Hong Kong's pavilion at the showcase of architecture and design focuses on the fast-changing neighbourhoods of Kowloon East, where new office blocks sidle up to design offices, artist studios and band rooms where musicians can practise. The area is slated to become CBD2, a dynamic alternative to the established business districts of Hong Kong Island.

For curator Christopher Law, the biennale is a chance to explore the complexity of an area subject to some of the largest and most elaborate redevelopment plans in Hong Kong's history. But it's also an opportunity for several of Hong Kong's most exciting architectural practices to flex their creative muscles.

Law's firm, the Oval Partnership, is responsible for three installations at the biennale, including Garden of Towers. It also designed the Hong Kong exhibition, whose green metal frames and exposed wires evoke the cluttered vitality of Hong Kong's streets. "For us, architecture is a cultural activity," says Law, leaning back into a chair in the airy garden cafe of the Metropole Hotel, a few minutes' walk from the Hong Kong pavilion. He looked only a bit weary after two long days of opening events.

Slightly worse for wear was Law's British colleague, Jonathan Pile, who had been up until 3am celebrating the opening with architects from Oval's offices in Hong Kong, Beijing and London. "It's the first time we've all come together," Pile says. "The biennale is a real exchange of ideas."

It has been 20 years since Law and Pile founded Oval with fellow architect Patrick Bruce, but it still has the energy of a much younger firm. Its projects across Asia have earned it a name for thoughtful designs sensitive to their environment, both natural and urban. All three of Oval's offices contributed to the biennale, which runs until November 25.