Macau Matters | Back to Basics for our Public Spaces

Richard Whitfield

Macau has some wonderful old parks and gardens, but in my opinion some of our newer public spaces leave much to be desired. Why do our architects and urban planners so often ignore the lessons of the past?

Among others, the Camoes Garden, Lou Lim Ioc Garden and Guia Hill Municipal Park are exceptionally pleasant public spaces that have been used and loved by many generations of Macanese (by this I mean citizens of Macau and not Macau citizens of mixed Portuguese/Chinese ethnicity – I have always found it quite strange and unreasonable that just one sub-group of Macau citizens gets to call themselves “Macanese”).

I love these old parks and gardens because they are natural, shady, calm, lush and inviting spaces where it is very pleasant to sit and chat with friends and watch the world go by. The buildings, walls, and other artificial elements in these public spaces seem to disappear into the background or complement the natural environment. Clearly, many others feel the same as I do, given the large number of other people using these spaces. Even on hot days the shade and trees are cooling and these parks are pleasant.

In Macau the sun can be very strong, and shade in public spaces is essential. Large open areas paved with concrete or stone (or even worse, tarmac) are a disaster – in hot weather they become ovens and in wet weather they provide no rain protection and become slippery lakes.

Some of our newer parks and gardens are equally inviting and well done. The Dr Carlos D’assumpcao Park and the footpath along Avenida Dr Sun Yat-Sen opposite the Macau Art Museum, for example, are also very pleasant.

By contrast, some our our most recent, and under construction, parks and gardens seem to totally ignore all rules of good sense in the design of public spaces. Tap Seac Square is a sun baked desert that is avoided by anybody with good sense. This is clearly realized as they are trying to rectify the problems by half-hearted efforts to make pergola covered walkways with potted plants. Much the same can be said about the Sai Van Lake Square outside the Macau Tower.

Similarly, the center of the roundabout between the Wynn and Lisboa Casinos and the new park at Taipa Central Park are also very poor. They must have gotten a great deal for buying glass, given the amounts they are using in these parks. The obvious trouble with large glass surfaces is that it is very good for making hot-houses and very bad for providing shade – the exact opposite of what you want in a park in Macau. (As an aside, some knowledgeable architects tell me that glass curtain walled buildings are the last thing you want in this part of the world for energy efficiency reasons – they trap the sun and make the building a hot-house, dramatically driving up energy costs. You can readily experience this problem if you visit the main lobby of the Zobon Hotel in Zhuhai on a nice sunny day.)

There are other problematic park designs now being constructed in Macau. For future new parks and other public spaces, I really hope that we can learn from the past and go back to emulate the excellent old parks and gardens that we have here, and re-adopt the very good design principles that they are based on.