Read our students' stories that start from the CUHK and go further beyond.

In Hong Kong, urban dwellers brush past vast swathes of buildings every day and night. At times, the skyscrapers can feel rather clinical. Bringing a warm, human touch into this concrete jungle is therefore the mission of architect Sarah Mui, co-founder of One Bite Design Studio. 

In this most urban of cities, Sarah discovered something fascinating one day when she wandered through a nondescript street. Feeling the heat that emerged from clouds of dust, she detected an intangible yet wondrous bond between the pedestrians – it was as if they were all connected by an invisible string. It was a fascinating discovery. Since then, Sarah has been constantly on the lookout for spaces that can be made over. There is always one major goal in her mind – to illustrate that special bond within communities through architecture. 

Architects do not just build aesthetically pleasing skyscrapers according to their own vision. An Architecture graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sarah attaches great importance to the needs of end-users of buildings and how they feel. She believes the relationship between the architect and the public is complementary. “Hong Kong is very small in area, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have communities... As a ball court can be a place that brings together people in a neighbourhood, we hope to combine various elements to achieve connections within local communities,” Sarah notes. 

As one walks through the tall, densely packed buildings in Tseung Kwan O, a basketball court eventually comes into sight and beckons with its colourful look. This is the Girls’ Priority Sports Ground designed by Sarah and her team. When Sarah’s team took on the project to revitalise Ming Tak Shopping Centre Rooftop, where the sports ground is located, it occurred to them that females were rare users of basketball courts in Hong Kong. That inspired them to take the revitalisation project as an opportunity to encourage more female participation in sports in general. In the various urban transformation projects she worked on, Sarah always engaged local communities. Likewise, for the sports ground project, she solicited the views of some female athletes on the Girls’ Priority Sports Ground project. In addition, her team invited a group of young people to take up part of the woodwork. The hard work of the youths added energy to the basketball court, just as the revamped court has brought a sense of human touch to the neighbourhood, unleashing the energy of the city.

The very first community project Sarah worked on was Cafe330 at her alma mater. At the time, she had just started her full-time career as an architect. Her task was to renovate the cafe, a social enterprise that employs people in recovery. Almost instantly, she noted something incongruous - the cold and somewhat sterile design of the coffee shop was out of tune with the enterprise’s objective to promote a harmonious working environment. Taking into account the physical needs of people in recovery, Sarah set out to give the place a major facelift so that the workers could work in a more employee-friendly environment. To create a warmer tone, she adopted wood as the main design material. She also reconfigured the interior to create a more spacious area for the employees to work in. 

A small-scale project it might be, but the cafe renovation work gave Sarah a great sense of achievement thanks to a user’s compliment some years later. “I was very stressed one night when I worked till late in my office. I turned on the TV and by coincidence, one staff member of the coffee shop was being interviewed. He said he enjoyed going to work because of the comfortable environment there. His words were very heartening to me. I felt that I had really achieved my goal.” After all, what motivates Sarah in her work is never the glamour that comes with her profession, but the people factor, as well as the simple yet genuine feedback from end-users. 

“Architecture is to provide shelter for everyone.” This notion has had a profound impact on Sarah’s works ever since she started her Architecture programme at CUHK. To her, being an architect is about constructing relationships between individuals. She strongly believes architects have the responsibility to maintain the connections between buildings and local communities through architecture.