An uninspiring small stadium and basketball courts alongside a children's playground have become a potent symbol in the struggle to preserve a dwindling amount of recreation space in densely-populated Hong Kong.
A campaign to preserve the courts and play area, known as Southorn Playground, is part of a wider skirmish between government officials, developers and preservationists over the city's dwindling stock of public and cultural space.
Containing some of the world's most densely populated urban areas, the territory has lost not only much of its open areas but also most of the historic low-level structures that allowed at least some sunshine into the darkened chasms between the city skyscrapers.
Swimming pools, beaches, parks and heritage buildings have been lost in recent years to make way for lucrative office and residential space in a territory where the vast majority of its 6.9 million residents live and work in just a third of its 1,098km2 area.
It is a struggle that has found greatest focus in the rapidly changing Wan Chai district where Southorn Playground is located.
"This is such a vital, busy little space that it is absolutely of the utmost importance that it is maintained as a public park," says Thomas Heatherwick, the British architect who is one half of the design team behind a proposed park refurbishment.
"Right now it is looking like an ideal candidate for sale to the next big developer and if that is lost so will be all these intricate networks of relationships and activities that go on among the thousands of people who use the park," he said.
In a city where space is at a premium, the companies that develop it have all the power.
"The government's Lands Department is supposed to decide what can and can't be done but everybody knows the developers are the ones that run the Lands Department," said Marina Lo, head of the Center for Heritage at Hong Kong's leading preservation group, the Conservancy Association.
"If the developers decide they want to do something, there's little anyone can do to stop them," she said.
Invited by the British Council in partnership with Wan Chai district council, Heatherwick's team conducted a public consultation earlier this year before designing a blueprint for the future of the park, which has been a public space since early last century.
"The more we can make this a more fantastic place -- a stage for sports, relaxation and greenery -- the more it will consolidate that space and save it from the developers," Heatherwick said following the consultation process.
The design includes a futuristic Perspex platform 5m overhead, where boys and girls play basketball on "floating" courts watched by an audience of office staff in the surrounding skyscrapers.
Below, children gambol in a shrub-ringed playground, a football match is played in a small stadium and seniors perform taichi under a row of banyan trees, according to the proposal.
"The intention was to ensure that the space really did remain public and open to all," said Fred Manson, Heatherwick's partner.
The plan is still awaiting approval by government and planning agencies, after which funding would have to be secured.
Southorn provides a vital hole in the dense pin-cushion of the city's seemingly endless swath of light-blocking skyscrapers. Two low-rise Victorian-era police station compounds, one in the Central business district, the other in the heart of the Kowloon tourist belt, perform a similar function. Both have been tagged for redevelopment into high-rises.
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