Celebrating 25 Years of Hong Kong Architecture
John Hill
17. October 2022
All photographs by John Hill/World-Architects
World-Architects stopped by Beyond Territories – Made . Make . Making, the traveling exhibition that celebrates the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Beyond Territories is on display at Ideal Glass Studios in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood for just two weeks (October 11–25, 2022) before it heads to Hong Kong for its last installment, at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Organized by the Hong Kong Institute of Architects, the exhibition began in August in Hangzhou, China, and then moved to Beijing before its NYC iteration. The exhibition World-Architects visited last week, though considerably smaller than those in China, is full of numerous models, photographs, drawings, videos, and other displays. Fittingly, the title and theme of the exhibition, as explained to me by Roger WU, who curated the show with Bernard LIM and Stanley SIU, reflects the desire to incorporate different media into the displays of architecture in Hong Kong from 1997 to today — and into the future.
The subtitle gives the exhibition a structure that is basically chronological: Made documents Hong Kong's architectural history, with many buildings designed by so-called master architects; Make displays the present, focusing on "the rich, vivid, and creative environment of Hong Kong's communities," per the exhibition text; and Making looking to the future through the "innovative ideas and voices" being worked on in projects today. Regardless of this structure, the projects — all of them labeled appropriately with one of these three words — are scattered about the gallery space, not in any particular order. Below are a few highlights from this recent visit to Beyond Territories.
A commissioned piece in the gallery entrance is Thomas CHUNG's "City Beyond Territories: Multiple Hong Kong," which is based on a book by Chung of the same name and consists of a large image collaging Hong Kong's natural features, vertical buildings, and movement systems.
Across from the collage is a video that features interviews with architects, conversations with the exhibition curators, and four episodes of "Faceted City," which combines facades of Hong Kong buildings into mesmerizing kaleidoscopes, as seen here.
The third element of "City Beyond Territories" is a work of calligraphy by Raymond CHAN based on a poem by Thomas CHUNG; the negative space of the calligraphy intentionally resembles Victoria Harbour.
The most eye-catching installation in the gallery space is a small room, or cavaedium, made by Henderson Land Group called "Future-proof."
Defined by four columnar vitrines, mirrored floor and ceiling, and a large illuminated wall, the installation describes the design for The Henderson, a 36-story tower in Hong Kong's CBD designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.
With models, text, renderings, and additional materials stored in drawers, the Henderson display embodies the theme of the exhibition.
Next to "Future-proof" is a circular table covering a half-century of public housing in Hong Kong, from the establishment of the Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) in 1953 to the present.
"Housing for Millions" by HA features a timeline along the perimeter of the table, accompanied by dozens — if not hundreds — of tabbed displays that can be pulled down for visitors to learn about individual housing projects.
A few of the displays in "Housing for Millions" are lifted to reveal floor plans or, in this case, images that express the desire for sustainable building in Hong Kong's efforts to build 300,000 housing units over the next 30 years.
Green space is the focus of "Power of 4 x 4" by Cocoon Architecture and Afloat Studio, which features a grid of 16 models — sections of cities with buildings in gray...
...and the "void space" in literal green, showing the "growth of plants through spaces in between."
Last is "Street Scene Dream" by Picture Rhythm Studios, a portion of a considerably larger model that is a backdrop for ever-changing projections that are meant to serve "as a time lapse of the evolution of the city streets of Hong Kong."
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