Happy Ageing Lab Foundation
Established in 2019, Happy Ageing Lab Foundation is a non-profit think-and-do tank based in the School of Architecture and CUHK JC Institute of Ageing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong ("CUHK"). Our mission is to innovate community solutions to improve the living environments for healthy ageing. HALF bridges the gap between users and professionals through our participatory research and development initiatives, fostering intersectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations.
In collaboration with public and private housing providers, NGOs, and social enterprises, HALF has developed a range of age-friendly community design and management solutions, including but not limited to: Housing Authority's Well-being Design Pretest (focusing on 5 public rental housing estates), Hong Kong Housing Society's intergenerational housing models (pilots in Kai Tak and Hung Shui Kiu), Hong Kong Arts Centre's community art projects - Urban Design Workshops for its "Via North Point" and Future Imagineer Academy for "Re:Tai Kok Tsui", and our team's award-winning community initiative "Hou2 Living Gallery: a Participatory Estate Improvement Programme at City One Shatin".
A core belief at Happy Ageing Lab Foundation is that raising public awareness, industry's know-how and cross-sectoral collaboration and exchange are the keys to address both challenges and opportunities of population ageing. HALF is a partner under the Jockey Club Age-friendly City Partnership Scheme, a collaborator of the Hong Kong Housing Society Living Lab in Gerontechnology for Age-Friendly Home (under the European Network of Living Lab, "ENoLL"), members of the WHO's Age-friendly Environments Knowledge & Action Hub (AFE K&A Hub) on Urban and Territorial Planning, Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU)'s Age-Friendly Community Working Group, and the New European Bauhaus. Our connection with international, regional and local agencies demonstrates our role in advancing age-inclusive practices. We are dedicated to facilitating knowledge exchange, fostering public education on the importance of age-inclusive environments, and developing supportive living environments to improve residents' quality of life, particularly the vulnerable groups in the community.