谷埔廢墟花園 Kuk Po Ruin Garden

Kuk Po Ruin Garden is an intervention and conservation of Lo Wai ruined house in Sha Tau Kok, Hong Kong. Located behind the mangrove wetlands of Kuk Po Village, the Sung family residence in Lo Wai is a traditional Hakka dwelling of the Sha Tau Kok region. After decades of disrepair and roof collapse, the towering tree that grew upon the old walls intertwined with the remaining ruins, forming a unique spatial condition. Supported by the Rural Conservation Funding Scheme, the architecture team of the University of Hong Kong began an exploration into conserving the site as a Ruins Garden.

The Ruin Garden of Kuk Po Lo Wai is both a site of architectural heritage and a repository of villagers’ living memories. It is also a garden for experience and reflection: a place where nature and materiality, humanity and art, converge into a cultural imagination and regeneration that transcends reality. Beyond presenting a century of spatial evolution in the multi-bay dwellings of the Sung residence, the conservation design reveals the textures of the walls and their dialogue with tree roots, wind, and rain—testifying to a material culture drawn from nature and ultimately returning to it. Text from @kukpo.vision