Dear Sea
Niko Leung
Sha Kiu Village Office is a 30sqm pitched roof, shorefront house built before the fishermen of Sha Kiu village settled their living on land. Situated by the pier, the house overlooks the inland sea of High Island, which includes Tin Hau Temple, Tung A village and the fishing raft.
While most of the villagers moved to the city, Sha Kiu people are deeply rooted in the sea. The entire older generation used to reside on fishing boats until the 70s-80s.
The village office has been under maintenance and used as storage for years. The villagers expressed their wish to revive it for Sai Kung Hoi Arts Festival, turning it into a community space where villagers can truly enjoy. “Dear Sea” puts on a new skin for the village office, on the east elevation, a fish net woven with ropes is co-created with the villagers, new signage is made with ceramics and written by a calligrapher who has lived in Sai Kung for more than 30 years; on the south elevation where the entrance is formed, 800 diamond-shaped ceramic tiles are made with a clay body formulated with recycled soil from construction site in Sai Kung, the shades of pink you see on the tiles come especially from the clay slip and sea water from High Island. The wall resembles the fish net pattern while symbolically taking the tile-making process as the “brick by brick” journey of villagers coming ashore.
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Material
Ceramics and nylon ropes
Niko Leung
Niko Leung is a Hong Kong-based product designer working in the realm of object, material research, installation and spatial design. Niko holds a bachelor’s degree in design (Cum Laude) from Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands. She has taught visual art, spatial design and design and applied technology at Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity in Hong Kong. Niko had been a resident artist in Jingdezhen (China), Fiskars (Finland), Den Bosch (Netherlands) and Arita (Japan). She was awarded DFA Young Design Talent Award in 2017 to undertake a work placement at Studiomake Architects in Thailand.
Niko had also been a craftsperson at Dutch ceramics manufacturing company Royal Tichelaar Makkum. Having studied and worked in the Netherlands for 8 years, these experiences inspired her to develop a keen interest in re-examining materials and the way we make use of them. Niko founded TMML STUDIO in 2020, and co-created a project “Hong Kong Soil” with Loky Leung in 2021, as an initiative to research and advocate purposeful reuse of discarded soil from construction sites.