Lack of space. Undulating terrain. Prohibitive building regulations. Hong Kong is hardly the ideal environment for architectural talents to flourish – or so it might seem. But, as Caroline Chen discovers from some of our city’s most prominent architects, adversity is the mother of invention when it comes to building for the future

Flying into Hong Kong at night, the view is mesmerising. The plane tips, and out of the window you see the scattered islands, the slouching green hills of Lantau, the glimmer of the Tsing Yi Bridge and the sparkle of civilisation that illuminates the harbour. But this bird’s eye view is more than just a pretty spectacle. It’s a window into the unique challenges that make Hong Kong such a confounding – and desirable – place for architects to ply their trade.

“Hong Kong has been built in a place where no city belongs,” says Ralph Lerner, dean of Hong Kong University’s architecture program, summing up the metropolis’ paradoxical charm. And yet, despite the challenges, development continues unabated. As Hong Kong rebounds from the recession and cranes crank into action in West Kowloon, Kai Tak, and at the Tamar site, the parameters of our city are about to be transformed once again.

To better understand our architecural past, present and future, we spoke to a selection of leading architects and academics, and asked them to outline the joys and woes of shaping a city on such inhospitable terrain.

Topography

When the first colonists arrived in Hong Kong, they were greeted with a land split in two by a deep and un-bridged harbour, covered with green hills that had precarious, unbuildable slopes, and surrounded by a sprinkling of little islands too small to be worth development.

More than anything else, it is this topography that has defined how our city has been built. Unlike many other major world cities, such as New York, London, or Beijing, Hong Kong is not flat. “One cannot mistake Hong Kong,” says retired architect James Kinoshita, former managing director of P&T Group. “The image of the city with the harbour and Star Ferry in the foreground and The Peak looming in the background. This is the image of Hong Kong.”

In the early days, the steep hillsides of Hong Kong Island left the colonists with no option other than to build on the harbour-front strip of relatively flat land. This formed the foundations of the city, and later would dictate the characteristic high density. But as well as sculpting the original shape of the city, Hong Kong’s topography has also shaped the aesthetics of individual buildings. “Most buildings in Hong Kong, wherever they are located, will already have a front and a back even before they are designed,” explains architect Rocco Yim, designer of landmarks such as Citibank Plaza and and the HKSAR Government Headquarters at Tamar. “The front will be facing the harbour and the back will be facing the hills.”

This may seem unsurprising at first, until one considers famous architecture around the world. Structures like the Empire State Building, Shanghai World Financial Center, or Taipei 101, all built in relatively flat cities, are designed to be approached from all four sides. In contrast, many of Hong Kong’s well-known buildings, such as Yim’s One Peking Road or Norman Foster’s HSBC Headquarters, have a distinct front-and-back orientation.

Density

Given Hong Kong’s geographical size, population, and the fact that only 20 per cent of the territory is built-up, it naturally follows that we are one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Buildings are packed so tightly in some housing estates that residents can look out their window straight into their neighbour’s, close enough to steal each other’s laundry. Put in numbers, Hong Kong’s population density is close to 30,000 inhabitants per km² of built-up land. That’s about five times the population density of Tokyo and six times that of London.

Hong Kong’s density, which is only going to increase as the population continues to grow, creates an ever-pressing problem for architects to build increasingly space-efficient buildings on diminishing available land. “We need to expand the volume of our rooms,” says Yim. “Even if our population remains stable, the average person in the community needs a larger space to live and to work. We are way, way below first-world standards when it comes to space per person.”

Architect Chris Law of Oval Partnerships also believes that architects can do much to improve space-efficiency, even in small spaces. “Instead of subdividing the tiniest flats into three bedrooms,” he says, “you can have living rooms which can also be used as dining rooms and bedrooms.”

Furthermore, as available building space decreases, real estate prices are becoming absurd. The result, which concerns many architects, is that major developers and the government – the only people who can afford the skyrocketing land prices – are the only clients on the market. “What this means is that there is less variety and less diversity,” says Law. ”Wherever you go, the buildings all boil down to the same building plan. The straitjacket of high land prices means that the architects cannot offer as much variety any more.”

Many plans have been proposed to increase space and lower land prices. Both Yim and Lam suggest that the government should re-evaluate land use in the New Territories, to see if land might be put to better use. Others have suggested reclamation on the south side of Hong Kong Island.

Besides the practical difficulties of creating more space, architects also face aesthetic challenges, as the density can make it difficult for them to distinguish their buildings and prevent their designs from getting lost in the concrete-and-steel jungle. “High density is Hong Kong’s unique characteristic and also its biggest challenge,” says architect Dennis Lau, chairman of DLN Architects & Engineers. “The problem is that all the buildings are affected by each other because they are not freestanding.”

On the other hand, as Law reflects, not all buildings need to be landmarks. “Good buildings are not necessarily iconic or outstanding,” he says. “In a city you need some icons, but 90 per cent of the buildings need to just be good, ordinary buildings which improve people’s quality of life. In fact, a city in which every single building shouts, ‘I’m here, look at me!’ could be quite nightmarish.”

Rules & regulations

As if Hong Kong architects didn’t have enough to deal with, they also have to work with restrictive government regulations that result from the city’s density. Many architects bemoan the inflexible bureaucracy and have criticised the strict building codes as a deterrent to creativity. However, the codes have also resulted in some of the most recognisable building forms of the city.

One rule that has defined the architecture of the city is the light-and-air regulations. When the first housing estates were being built, the government required that all kitchens and bathrooms have windows for ventilation purposes, a requirement unique to Hong Kong (most big cities rely on internal mechanical ventilation instead). So when Mei Foo Sun Chuen, Hong Kong’s first private housing estate, was being designed the architects struck on a cruciform design, with the lift and staircase in the middle and two apartments on each of the four arms of the cross [see Image 2, above]. This design maximised the perimeter of the building, thus satisfying the government’s strict requirements. Today, the cruciform shape is used for the vast majority of Hong Kong’s housing estates and has become an iconic form of Hong Kong architecture.

Site coverage is another regulation that local architects struggle to accommodate. Due to the high density of the city, the government has a blanket rule that calculates a building’s area by the shadow it casts. What this means is that even if the total volume is the same, a building that has a more sculpted profile will often be considered as occupying more space than a building that is a regular block [see Image 3, above]. “If we were to be avant garde and design a building that is bigger at the top and smaller at the bottom, we might not be allowed to do it,” says Lam Wo-hei, director of architecural and engineering group Wong & Ouyang. “Unfortunately, this regulation penalises designs that are a little bit out of the ordinary in shape.” Lau echoes Lam’s concern: “If I add a cantilever at the top of the building, even if there’s nothing under it and it’s just a feature, it’s not allowed. The regulations really restrict creativity.”

While architects around town all chafe under the site coverage regulations, they have, surprisingly, resulted in another characteristic building type that is seen around the city – the podium and tower. As the regulation does not apply to the first few floors of a building, the result is structures such as the Elements complex in West Kowloon: a large sprawling podium for the first few floors, then narrow towers shooting up, trying to maximise the buildable area without increasing site coverage.

Conservation

While new buildings continue to be built every day, many local architects are now looking to the past and to preserving Hong Kong’s architectural heritage, such as the tong lau (tenement buildings) and colonial architecture. A handful of old buildings still remain, crouched between the skyscrapers, the residents pottering about their daily lives as if the 21st century didn’t exist.

But many architects believe that we are almost too late – in the rush to develop and build the city, the government and the public allowed the demolition of many beautiful old buildings. “I think we have already wasted too much of our heritage,” says Yim. “We didn’t realise that we needed to conserve our past until the last five years.” Professor Puay-peng Ho, architectural historian and director of the Chinese University architecture program, also laments the belated concern for conservation. “What we are left with is very accidental,” he says. “There is no choice in what buildings to preserve. All we can do is preserve the buildings that were left behind.”

Now that conservation is finally on our radar, the question is, how can we best preserve and reuse our architectural heritage? Ho argues that the best conservation involves a creative reuse of the space. “How well a building is preserved is a rather technical issue and not too difficult to do,” he says. “Instead, how to revitalise the building and create something useful within the urban context is the real challenge.”

According to Ho, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club is an example of good conservation. The distinctive brick-and-stucco colonial building with circular windows is host to various cultural and social events throughout the year. “The building is a lively cultural hub in Central,” says Ho. “That’s a well-done conservation project.” Yim also recommends the Central Police Station as a significant site for adaptive reuse, as the colonial building is now being redesigned as an entertainment and cultural complex.

Looking ahead

And yet, it is not despite the challenges but because of them that Hong Kong architects love building in this impossible city. Musing about his many years of watching Hong Kong transform from a little colonial outpost to the commercial capital it is today, Lam is convinced that Hong Kong is one of the most exciting places in the world to be an architect. “I have been working in Hong Kong for 40 years,” says the veteran architect, who has worked on prominent local landmarks from Pacific Place to Langham Place. “Over the years Hong Kong architects have built up a pool of expertise and knowledge from solving all the architectural and spatial problems. I think we have had a unique journey over the last 30 or 40 years that architects in other parts of the world would never have experienced.”

All the architects we spoke to also expressed an enthusiasm for solving the puzzles of the city. “We have to ask – how can we come up with innovative solutions which people will want tomorrow?” says Law. “Things that people can’t say they want now because it doesn’t exist yet, but that they would want if they knew about it?”

Yim, meanwhile, sums up the spirit of local architects: “I think any architect would not really want a project where he is told he could do anything – given a completely free hand, a blank sheet of paper. That’s is not what we want. We want to solve problems so we can think of unconventional solutions.”

But while the focus is undoubtedly on the developments and initiatives taking place in Hong Kong over the next decade or so, some architects are looking even farther ahead. “I think the next move is 2046,” says Lerner. “The next big question is: what does Hong Kong-Shenzhen mean?”

Take a look at four of the most iconic styles of architecture in Hong Kong today