Keep It 100

For more than a decade, Adrian Cheng has been sculpting a multibillion-dollar cultural district on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront that comes with a social mission. With K11 Musea now complete, he’s ready to open the doors of Victoria Dockside and spill its secrets

- Oliver Giles

Adrian Cheng wears many hats. Tycoon. Art patron. Philanthropist. The entrepreneur behind K11 Group. Executive director of jeweller Chow Tai Fook and executive vice-chairman of New World Development, his family’s international conglomerate. At one recent black-tie gala, his love for the finer things in life led one fellow partygoer to ignore all these and dub him the Great Gatsby of Asia. But the toughest job, he says, is one that’s often overlooked— that of a fortune-teller. “When it comes to buildings, what you’re looking at today was probably designed seven or eight years ago,” says Adrian. “So for a project to be relevant, we need to be looking ahead 20, 30 years into the future, sometimes more. And that’s the hardest part because people change, the paradigm shifts and it’s easy to be distracted.”

Adrian has spent the past 10 years resisting distraction because, quietly, he has been dreaming up his largest project yet: the US$2.6 billion redevelopments of Victoria Dockside on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront.

“This land was acquired by my grandfather, Cheng Yutung, in 1971, then both my grandfather and my father built the New World Centre in 1978. It was an icon and a hub for Hong Kong in the 1980s and ’90s,” recalls Adrian, looking out over the site. New World Centre was a retail, hotel, residential and office complex—a multi-use model Adrian has kept for the redevelopment. Now the harbourfront development features a 65-storey tower designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) that houses both a Rosewood hotel and K11 Atelier offices; the 21-storey K11 Artus, featuring luxury residences; and K11 Musea, an art, culture and retail complex that Adrian sees as the heart of the project—a place he hopes will inspire visitors.