Making an oasis
Reconnecting mental well-being and nature in Hong Kong
A.A. Jurkowska (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
D.J. Rosbottom – Mentor (TU Delft - Situated Architecture)
WM Pimlott – Mentor (TU Delft - Situated Architecture)
K. Mulder – Mentor (TU Delft - Building Design & Technology)
R.J. Nottrot – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Education and Student Affairs)
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Abstract
Making an Oasis is a master’s thesis about transforming a Hong Kong shopping mall into a sequence of gardens. In a city where retail facilities have replaced public squares, this project reimagines one of Hong Kong’s commercial centres as a place for healing, nature, and connection.
The project brings together mental health, shopping malls, and nature in the city of Hong Kong. What began as a personal reflection on well-being and architecture developed into a design that challenges the role of consumption-driven public spaces in cities.
Set in the Franki Centre—an early 1980s shopping mall—this thesis proposes four interconnected gardens that reclaim the building as a non-clinical, accessible space for mental well-being. Drawing from research, lived experience, and the complex urban conditions of Hong Kong, the project treats the mall not as an enclosed commercial facility, but as an exterior landscape.
Part research, part reflection, and part architectural proposal , Making an Oasis offers a prototype of hope for cities around the world. It reimagines not only what architecture is, but what it can become—a bridge between people, nature, and the possibility of renewal.