Two years ago architect Ida Sze and her longtime boyfriend, Billy Chan, brought home the trophy from a concept design competition. Victory did not come as a complete surprise for the couple – it was the seventh time they’d picked up an architectural award – but this one was special, and perhaps the grandest. Their brainchild had won first prize, and was chosen to be the prototype for the Hong Kong Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.

The couple’s winning design is a sleek and impressive three-level structure marked by a transparent void that occupies the entire middle level. Although Sze and Chan laid the design foundation for the Pavilion, they did not get a chance to participate in the construction and were only able to see the finished building in early April, just one month ahead of the opening of the World Expo.

Unsurprisingly, Sze found that the building was markedly, if not wholly, different from the one she and Chan conceived.

“Architecture is just like movie-making,” says Sze. “The writing of a story, the cast, the costumes, the backdrop, the use of cameras... They are all parts of the whole design process. Even after the story is written, the movies produced by different directors can be totally different.”

However, if Sze harbours any disappointment at the end result, she hides it well. She says it would be “unfair” for her to comment on the building as she was not aware of the problems and challenges faced by the construction team. As an architect in Hong Kong, Sze knows all too well that there can be discrepancies between dreams and realities, between the design and the end product.

Hong Kong’s building design is in part determined by high property prices, and the need to be fast, she says: “You need to build something ‘safe’ which sell well within a very short time. Gross floor area is a huge concern here.” Essentially these constraints prevent architects from being more innovative.

In Sze’s opinion, however, architects in Hong Kong are hugely successful – in fact, maybe a little too successful. “No matter the size and shape of the space, Hong Kong architects can always build something out of it,” she says. “But it seems that we hold on too tight to the things we are successful at and we do not try other things. If we relax a bit and try more, there will be lots of other possibilities.”

Sze considers herself as a “humanist” architect – meaning that she regards the interaction between human and buildings of utmost importance. “Architecture is not a closed space; it is part of our city. It is somewhere we go to work, go shopping in... Architecture is not just about the inner spaces, it is also about the construction of outer spaces like streets and plazas – that’s where we wander on the streets.”

Many architects stay professionally active until the age of 60, and it’s often in this late stage of life when their designs reach their full potential (74-year-old Norman Foster is living proof of this). Like the architecture in Hong Kong she describes, Sze reckons her career also has a “long way to go”.

With any luck, Sze will continue to realise her architectural visions in our city for a long time to come, infusing more variety and edge into our apartment-block-dominated cityscape for good.

Grace Tsoi

The Shanghai World Expo starts on May 1. See more at en.expo2010.cn.