This week
we visited Hong Kong! Can i just say WOW!! We have visited a lot of Asia and I half expected to see another ‘forbidden city’ or temples with a century
old Budha in it. But no… This city is so modern, it’s unbelievable.
The Architecture
of Hong Kong focuses on Contemporary architecture, especially Modernism, Postmodernism, Functionalism,
etc. Due to the lack of available land, few historical buildings remain in the
urban areas of Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong has become a centre for modern
architecture as older buildings are cleared away to make space for newer,
larger buildings. Although the newer buildings are amazing and spectacular, it’s
sad that they have to destroy older buildings to make room. All that history
just lost, no way to get it back.
Hong Kong
has more buildings above 35m (or 100m) and more skyscrapers above
150m than any other city. Hong Kong's skyline is often
considered to be the best in the world, with the surrounding mountains and Victoria
Harbour complementing the skyscrapers.
But Hong
Kong wasn’t always such a vision of glass, steel and marble.
Like most
of Asia, Hong Kong was a colony. Hong Kong became a colony of the British
Empire after the First Opium War. Prior to the British settlement
of Hong Kong in 1841, architecture in Hong Kong was predominately Chinese.
After the
British established the entrepôt of Victoria City (now Central
and Western District on Hong Kong Island), the local population
increased substantially, and as a result Tong Lau began to appear.
These were three-to-four storey buildings, tightly packed in city blocks, and
combining Chinese and European architectural elements. The ground floors
were typically shops, with apartments and small balconies upstairs. These
buildings had stairs but no elevators, and sometimes had neither toilet facilities.
These Tong Lau remained the cornerstone of Hong Kong architecture
until at least World War II; a number of these building survive to!this
day, although often in a abandoned state.
So all is
not lost. Although Hong Kong is one of the most modern cities in the
world they do have a few colonial buildings left. It’s always nice to see a piece of a city’s
history, to know how people used to live.
I found
this video of an architect in Hong Kong who rebuilt his tiny apartment so that
he could fit 24 rooms! AMAZING!
Sources:
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