Finding small wonders on the streets of Central

Governments and planners may have the best intentions when laying out city streets and urban amenities. Yet how people use their environments typically evolves over time and may upend the best-laid plans.

Tai Kwun's latest exhibition, Serendipity in the Street, chronicles how residents in Hong Kong's Central have adapted their environment to fit their current lifestyles. It utilizes the Modernologio method to observe and record daily activities, resulting in distinctive narratives that speak to the ways in which the neighborhood has changed over the years.

Modernologio rose from the ashes of the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake that leveled most of Tokyo. Subsequently, the architect Kon Wajiro conducted extensive field research to study the lives of displaced city folks living on its fringes. He developed Modernologio - the study of factors causing urban transformation through on-site sketches and observations.