Pocket Spaces wins Gold in A’ Social Design Award

Pocket Spaces by Lee Ngai Man earned Gold in the A’ Social Design Award’s Social Design category for a portable guide that helps Hong Kong residents turn cramped housing corridors and stairwells into shared community spaces. The project points to a scalable model for resident-led urban design, backed by field research showing a 40% lift in neighborly interaction.

Why it matters: - Pocket Spaces targets spatial injustice in dense housing environments where living space in Hong Kong averages 15.5 square meters per person. - The project offers a resident-led model for building community resilience in high-density estates. - Field research recorded a 40 percent increase in neighborly interactions after the intervention. - The Gold A’ Design Award places Pocket Spaces among recognized social design projects with measurable community impact.

What happened: - The A’ Design Award announced Pocket Spaces by Lee Ngai Man as a Gold winner in the Social Design category. - Pocket Spaces is presented as a Social Playbook for high-density housing estates. - The project helps elderly residents and children turn narrow corridors and stairwells into shared spaces. - The award announcement was made in Como, Italy, on September 4, 2026.

The details: - Pocket Spaces is a 12-page A5 portable manual printed on 100 percent recycled paper. - The system uses local material cycles, including common public estate items and wood collected from community waste. - Assembly relies on low-barrier connections such as industrial cable ties and simple clamps. - Non-professionals can build modular units in 30 minutes without specialized tools. - The design draws on 700 hours of immersive ethnography and 500 resident interviews. - The project translates grassroots knowledge into a structured guide. - The model is described as zero marginal cost and designed for rapid scaling. - The system is intended as a mobile preservation tool that lets social relationships carry into future housing plans. - Lee Ngai Man led the social design research and intervention framework. - Pak Hei Wang, Kai Yin Lin, Nga Suet Julytha Ho, and Hiu Man Chiu supported field research, co-design sessions, and prototyping. - More information is available on the award page.

Between the lines: - The recognition reflects growing interest in design approaches that prioritize participation over top-down planning. - Pocket Spaces also shows how low-cost, locally sourced materials can support social design at scale. - The project positions community space as something residents can actively make, not just receive from planners. - Estate of Mine’s approach bridges official planning and everyday resident experience.

What’s next: - The Gold award may help Estate of Mine advance more community-centered projects focused on spatial autonomy and social resilience. - The recognition could support wider attention to participatory methods in dense urban housing. - The project’s scalable format suggests potential use in other high-density settings facing similar social isolation challenges.

The bottom line: - Pocket Spaces turns a small manual and simple materials into a practical tool for rebuilding neighborly connection in crowded cities.