Blast From The Past

While Hong Kong remains critically short of housing, the city continues to lose its heritage buildings in the name of development. We ask the experts: could the future of Hong Kong’s housing lie in its past?

- Leanne Mirandilla

Housing is a hot topic in Hong Kong. The annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey has ranked Hong Kong the most expensive housing market for nine years in a row. It is also one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with more than 7.4 million people living on 1,105sqkm of land, much of which is hills, making it unsuitable for habitation.

At the same time, another crisis faces Hong Kong—the continuing disappearance of its old buildings, as they’re torn down to make way for new developments. The Antiquities Advisory Board (AAB) has identified 1,444 buildings as deserving of varying levels of preservation, but this designation does not always guarantee protection. Five buildings with Grade 1 status—which is given to ‘a building of outstanding merit, which every effort should be made to preserve if possible’ according to the AAB’s website—have been demolished in the past two decades alone.

Across the city, however, revitalization projects have seen heritage buildings transformed into sites that fulfill contemporary needs while preserving their pasts: the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts that opened last year, for instance, is located within the former Central Police Station, a complex that includes 16 heritage buildings. The Murray, meanwhile, is a swish hotel that used to be a government office in the 1960s. If redevelopment can work for these projects, why not residences, too?