#35 Architecture for the masses, by the masses

Individually, Hong Kong lacks any major recognizable architectural landmarks (think of London, Paris, New York etc). Very few people from out of Hong Kong can name a single building of any stature. But, collectively, with the lights on, Hong Kong can be stunningly beautiful. In a sense, this is part of the essence of Hong Kong: individually, the people of Hong Kong are not much; but, as a collective unit, the people here have achieved many things (escaped the tryanny of communism, started anew, survived famines and great poverty, built a thriving metropolis).

One issue that stands for me about Hong Kong’s architecture is the consistency of the ugliness of building styles over the years. For instance, a common feature of industrial buildings constructed in the 1980s was the use of octagonal windows. Here’s an example. I guess there were two reasons for this design feature 1) the octagon has eight sides, and is therefore an auspicious shape for Chinese or 2) a particular architecture firm at the time had a monopoly on designing industrial/commercial buildings, and simple copied and pasted the same design over and over again. I suspect it was the latter, but I’ve no proof. The same repetition can be seen in most public housing estates (which are carbon copies of one another) and even most private housing blocks.

One major gripe for me was the introduction of the “bay window”. This cunning architectural feature started to appear quite early in Hong Kong’s private housing construction history. The Mei Foo estate was the first to incorporate these complete waste-of-space features. The developer found a loop hole (or forced it into government regulations) that allowed the developer to increase the saleable “floor space” by adding bay like features to most of the windows of a flat. I have emphasized “floor space” because in fact there is no actual increase in floor space because walking on the ledge of a bay window is difficult and dangerous, and I say “bay-like” because these tiny ledges can hardly be described as a bay (which usually conjures up visions of a sweeping shoreline vista or an exit out into a garden or terrace). No. These tiny ledges were incorporated into the design for one reason only: to make more money for the developer. Bay windows, for instance, partly explain why the floor efficiency of Hong Kong flats is so low at 70-80%. In many cases, they account for as much as 10% of the gross area of a flat. As an aside, I would point out that flats built (mainly for civil servants – the same people that allowed the developers to incorporate bay windows into their designs the first place) never have this feature in their flats. Civil servants, although they can only rent, are wise enough to know that bay windows are a space consuming feature, and offer little or no benefit to the occupant. Still, look at any residential building in Hong Kong and the windows bulge out of the structure of the building like an army of uniform shaped barnacles.