Regenerating Buffalo Living

Tony CHUNG

It is no doubt that Hong Kong is a highly developed city. The more development we have, the more land we need. Therefore, due to this urban encroachment strategy, a lot of wildlife animal is losing their habitat. In order to survive and find food, the wildlife animal establish their ‘Counter-encroachment’ to our urban area. For example, wild boars, monkeys and even birds bursting into our urban area for finding food on the floor and rubbish bin could be commonly seen in recent years. Unfortunately, as the self-called ‘Administrator’ of the earth, we usually simply expel the animal from getting into our territory.

Based on this direction, I studied the South Lantau Island in Hong Kong towards the problem of civilization VS one of the most iconic wildlife party—the cow. With the rapid development of Hong Kong, farming became a declined industry. The cows were abandoned and thus gave rise to survival difficulty to them. With less habitat, food and space, It is common that they are competing resources with human such as getting into supermarket, dominating traffic road, messing with rubbish bin.

However, it is not the mistake of the cow and I do understand and agree that we human need development. We need land and facilities to help our social development. Hence this leads to an interesting topic of how to striving a balance between social development and maintaining the wildlife habitat in a sustainable way to achieve a harmonious situation, with respect of our landscape supposed to be for different habitat.

My thesis is a study and proposal for Pui O, South Lantau Island to strive a balance between human activities and the cow through the design of landscape and architecture. Re-generating the habitat in a sustainable way. It is also not simply proposing the design of Pui O but act as the demonstration for other places such as Mui Wo and even Sai Kung which also facing with similar situation.