ENABLE FOUNDATION “urban studies” encourage citizens to see themselves as active creators rather than passive dwellers in our cities.

Based on Dr Yanki Lee’s previous studies at HKDI DESIS Lab (2013-2017) and the book she co-wrote with architect/design historian Dr Hilary French in 2013, ‘Patterns of Living: Hong Kong’s High-Rise Communities 設計生活模式: 香港高樓社區', New Talents Press, Hong Kong ,

“Empathy was our main method when encouraging residents to see themselves as active partners rather than passive interviewees. Our tactic was to constantly refer to people’s homes as our homes and emphasise that we are collectively mapping Hong Kong homes. Everyone was informed of the reasons that they were participating in a general architectural study of housing design in Hong Kong. Collectively we were gathering data, which would contribute to this book, ultimately sharing knowledge around designing and living. “ (Lee, 2003:175)

EF published its 1st book: Wong L, Lee Y, Wong S & Tsui I (2018), 'Home Street Home: Hong Kong’s Self-build Communities 家在街: 香港自建社區 , ISBN: 978-988-78916-0.

“...Instead of analysing the social situation of the homeless community with the aim of developing design solutions to solve the ‘problem’, we agreed to reframe the study around the ingenious ‘design’ skills of self-builders. ‘Homeless’ is a word used to describe a person without a home and typically living on the streets. However, that a person is ‘living on the streets’ does not mean that they do not have a home. It all depends on the different definitions of home. In this case, there should be multiple versions between traditional forms of home to the homeless and we believe self-builders are those who can create alternative forms of homes…”. (Lee, 2018:7)