But it was demolished sometime in the 1990s, and Fan could find no official explanation. It is unclear if it fell victim to a redevelopment plan for Shek Lei Estate, which was built in 1968 to resettle squatters whose huts were destroyed by fire.

Today, only a memorial plaque remains as a reminder of the original playground, with no mention of Selinger.

Fan’s curiosity led her to embark on an ongoing project on abstract play spaces, supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

She recently published a book, The Abstract Playscapes of Hong Kong. which calls for a fresh look at combining art, design, architecture, landscape, education and urban planning in play areas.

Her work caught the attention of artist Sampson Wong Yu-hin, 36, who wrote an article online and put out a call for anyone who remembered playing at the unique Shek Lei Playground.

Nine people of different backgrounds and aged between 30 and 60 responded, saying the place remained vivid in their childhood memories.

“We always thought children’s playgrounds meant sets of unappealing metal and plastic equipment installed over rubber safety mats,” Fan says.

“But this was not always the case. Some 50 years ago, there was a golden era when designers were allowed freedom of imagination and there were many possibilities for creating something we took for granted every day.”

One woman remembered how she imagined the sculptures’ fanciful shapes to be a base of aliens. Others recalled many happy hours passed there in unsupervised play.

Residents said the playground was a local icon residents were proud of and they invited children from other areas to come over and play. It was also the backdrop of many family pictures.

Such memories are evidence that unique features and opportunities for unstructured play make a lasting impression on children, says Fan, who admits she did not enjoy playgrounds much as a child.

“I realised that experiencing a really fun playground can be so powerful for children.”

She found that after Shek Lei, other local designers experimented with combining art, landscape and play.

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In the 1970s, Ping Shek Estate in Kwun Tong was the last Housing Authority estate designed by a private architectural firm. It had a large playground with abstract concrete structures, metal climbers, terrazzo slides embedded in slopes, a sandpit, and “The Ruin” – a group of interlocking, colourful planes made of concrete.

The period of novelty and experimentation was short-lived, however, and such features were gradually replaced from the late 1980s.

The Shek Lei Playground was forgotten as Hong Kong switched to treating playgrounds as a social welfare facility, often criticised as being too dull and predictable.

Fan says this was the result of the city buying standard equipment from mass producers and following specific rules in response to concerns about children’s safety.

Her book traces the origins of playgrounds which evolved from the outdoor gymnasium built in Germany in the 19th century to encourage people to exercise during the era of industrialisation.

Playgrounds began appearing in the West in the 20th century as the increasing regulation of child labour resulted in unsupervised children having a lot of free time.

Playgrounds first appeared in Hong Kong in the 1920s, a period of widespread poverty and crime. Street children were a common sight after the city saw an influx of new immigrants from mainland China and baby boom.

The colonial government built playgrounds in an attempt to maintain public order, hoping to keep children occupied and out of trouble.

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The Shek Lei Playground was made possible by a donation of HK$150,000 from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, and designer Selinger.

In a letter he wrote in 1972, he said that as an American who happened to be living in Hong Kong, he had the opportunity to apply design ideas at Shek Lei which might not have been possible in the United States.

“My ideas proved successful in Hong Kong because I was given artistic freedom to carry them out,” said Selinger, who died in 2015 aged 79.

Fan says he succeeded in building his dream playground by riding on the government’s desire to create more leisure areas, and could set his creativity free at a time when there was little or no regulation.

“It was a chaotic time when the system was not quite comprehensive, but allowed the most freedom for a bright designer to let his ideas play out,” she says.

Artist Sampson Wong, who is a lecturer at Chinese University, regards Fan’s book as one of the best of the year.

“The author has uncovered several very artistic, avant-garde and modernist play spaces in Hong Kong, which are closely linked to the history of global playground development and design thinking over the last half-century,” he says.

“She has spent nearly five years researching and putting everything she knew into a book, making her a world-class researcher in the field.”

Kathy Wong Kin-ho, executive director of the Playright Children’s Playground Association, which was founded in 1987 to promote and protect the right of children to play, says she was happy to see Fan’s book.

“The right to play was something neglected before but it is gaining awareness now,” she says. “For a playground to respond to the needs of a community, it is important that the voices of stakeholders, including children who are playground users, be heard at the design stage too.”

The 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child has the right to leisure, play, and participation in cultural and artistic activities.

Children’s playgrounds are now included alongside other facilities as essentials of modern, healthy residential neighbourhoods, with their designs reviewed and updated regularly.

In 2018, the Playright group had an advisory role in converting the playground in Tuen Mun Park into an innovative one with different zones including a sandpit, a sand play table and water cascade features.

The design process for the park, considered a major success, included asking children and residents for their views.

Paying homage to the Shek Lei Playground, the WE Park which opened in 2019 at the Fung Mat Road Waterfront Open Space, in Sai Ying Pun, does not have the usual equipment.

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Designed by Playright in collaboration with the Central and Western District Office, it has elements such as large, recycled water pipes from Stonecutters Island for children to crawl through or slide on.

Other playgrounds in Hong Kong are also undergoing change. In her 2019 policy address, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced plans to upgrade more than 170 public play spaces under the Leisure and Cultural Services Department over the following five years.

Kathy Wong says there is now a movement to reform the city’s play spaces, and Playright will continue to hold training sessions and other projects to raise awareness and get ideas from the public.

Fan plans to broaden her research to include places such as Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, where there is also a lack of documentation of playgrounds compared with a more comprehensive discussion in the West.

She says it is interesting to see how playgrounds in different parts of Asia have evolved, with varying styles.

Singapore, for example, shares connections with Hong Kong, including how both began building public estates around the same time as the economy took off.

As a city state, Singapore’s early playgrounds included elements of the nation’s culture and identity, whereas this was not a consideration in Hong Kong and its playgrounds lack a unique style, she says.

Noting that change is happening elsewhere in Asia too, Fan says: “There is no definition for the best playgrounds. Each generation may have different demands and tastes. This is why the design process should be open-minded and engaging.”