Experiencing the City

Activities

Movement

Creating Your Urban Palettes

Best known for its efficiency, Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) regularly tops the charts of the world's best public transport and has been a favourite for social media check-ins by locals and sojourners who are fascinated by the diverse mosaic tiles in MTR stations. This activity invites you to embark on a short urban journey that uses MTR stations as the starting and the end points of your journey but without travelling on it. Try to experience and perceive the city, and collect shades and tints and create your own urban palettes along the way.

How it works

Pick two consecutive MTR stations as your starting and ending points. You can make use of Google Maps to find a suggested route connecting any two stations. Alternatively, you can try to explore the city and create your own route. Try to explore different side streets, alleys, and lanes along the way. The two main requirements of this task are:

Do not take the MTR.
Start your journey by taking photos of the mosaic tiles in the first station and end your exploration by taking another photo of mosaic tiles in the successive station.

There is no requirement on the number of photos that should be taken. After you have taken all the photos that you want, arrange them in grids, and place the starting station as the first photo, and the ending station photo as the last.

As you create an urban palette, reflect on the following questions:

Think about the last short-distance trip you had on the MTR, how many minutes did you use? How many minutes did you use in the short urban journey this time? Do they vary a lot?
When walking in the streets, what can you see? List three things and their respective colours.
Was it easy or difficult for you to navigate the streets? Was it easy or difficult to find any animate or inanimate objects or items that are of the same colours as the two stations that you had selected?
Do you think that the colour of the stations is representative of the area/quarter/neighbourhood? Have you ever wondered the stations to have such colours? Why or why not?

Example

An example from Whampoa Station (blue) to Ho Man Tin Station (green):

Photos by Vanessa Yeung (from left to right): Whampoa MTR > The Whampoa > One Harbourfront > Leaves and baskets at a condolence flower shop > plants around the Ho Man Tin Station entrance > Ho Man Tin MTR.