Huanyu Peng, BA graduate of SCFAI, is a designer who questions, preserves and deconstructs the essence of the environment and urban heritage amid the changes in contemporary geopolitics and new media. This work explores the issue of how to address the problem of ‘stranded assets’ resulting from the current widespread economic downturn. I analysed the local port heritage and, through new collaborative coding and labour networks, carefully planned a city community skills exchange. Using the language of inclusivity and reuse, I refused to allow the port heritage to become a nostalgic symbol of capital, instead liberating the collaborative logic and material flow inherent in the production of port space, aiming to create spatial elements that are part heritage, part design.

The site moves away from extractive economies and financial production, shifting towards maintenance, management, repair, and care, establishing an intimate relationship between urban harbours and community systems, endowing the space itself with resilience against capital withdrawal. Through tactile collaboration, visual sharing, and food democracy, these three collaborative logics and material flow spaces challenge the disguise and abuse of contemporary financial spaces. Individuals and families benefit from shared resources, collective efforts, and reciprocal labour, thereby reconstructing collective memory and identity narratives.

The project advocates embracing an economic downturn environment, using an open collaborative coding approach to establish spatial resilience and sustainability.