| forthcoming monograph publication in the Routledge Research in Architecture Series |

Book Description

Recent developments have attracted global attention to Hong Kong’s cultural and architectural scene, with the new iconic buildings at West Kowloon and the heritage regeneration projects such as Tai Kwun and the Asia Society, which have seen much publicity in both academic and popular press. However, relatively little has been written about the municipal cultural buildings developed and constructed over the last decades of British colonial rule. These public works are sometimes regarded with lower aesthetic value and neglected in the architectural discourse, yet they are the physical manifestation of cultural and urban policy during a transformative period of Hong Kong from a colonial territory to what it is nowadays.

After the war, the Colonial Government began investing in social welfare and public infrastructure in response to the influx of immigrants fleeing political turbulence in China. The welfare policy first focused on housing and education, followed by recreation and culture, with dozens of cultural facilities built during the late 20th century that will be the study subject of this book. The 1970s also presented a critical moment in Hong Kong as the negotiations regarding the city’s sovereignty handover between the British and the new People’s Republic of China (PRC) regime began. The consequences, such as increasing investment in public infrastructure and democratic political reform at the Urban Council, have fuelled the growing cultural sector in Hong Kong with a sense of belonging and local identity.

It coincided with the post-war welfare state cultural policy that emerged in Britain and Europe, in which the government supported cultural funding and development, and public cultural architecture became the physical manifestation of social visions such as national pride, solidarity, and democracy. These ideals and their associated policy and spatial strategy have influenced cultural policy and development globally, including in Hong Kong. At the same time,  there was also a strong force of capitalist pursuit in the local colonial context. These issues regarding Hong Kong’s late-colonial condition are identified in the book as a critical background to examine the hybrid model of cultural development that held sway in the city, which will be illustrated through three case studies of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the Tsuen Wan and Shatin Town Halls.

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Through historical and spatial analysis of the cases, this book explores how cultural architecture contributes to building civil society during political and social changes. Such was an important discussion topic in post-colonial Hong Kong around the turn of the millennium, and its relevance is revived today as the city anticipates another turn in urban and cultural development in response to the dramatically changing political and social situation in recent years. Some twenty-five years after the reversion of sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997, we can find similarities in how culture is used as a means to express and exert political agenda from both the government and the civic cultural sector, manifested in the built environment and through public actions in cultural space. This research on municipal cultural buildings in Hong Kong reveals a cultural and architectural significance that to date has not been fully unpacked, and this book addresses this knowledge gap by providing a historical, cultural and socio-spatial narrative of the three cases of municipal cultural centres conceived in the 1970s and open to the public in the decade of 1980s.

The book’s uniquenesslies in its interdisciplinary approach to studying cultural architecture, presented as a dialogue between the workings of architectural history and spatial conditions. These two complementary forms of analysis offer a new perspective to reading cultural buildings beyond a purely formal discourse about architectural aesthetics and symbolism. The narrative revolves around three publicly-funded municipal cultural buildings in Hong Kong from the late-colonial period to provide a dialectic view of the design and practice of cultural architecture and urban space and examine it against contemporary neoliberal discourse on the cultural industry. As Hong Kong finally established a Cultural Bureau (CSTB) in 2022 with a broader jurisdiction and strategic positioning than the former operational departments, this book will offer a timely reflection on cultural and spatial production, calling for alternative projections about the city’s future urban and cultural landscape. The intention is to provoke discussion about how cultural space is – or should be – made and inhabited, thereby providing insights into the probable cultural and urban development in Hong Kong in the coming decades.

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Table of Content

Introduction      A Spatial Reading of Cultural Landmarks

Chapter 1          The Cultural Centre: a Public Institution Typology

Chapter 2          Institutional Cultural Space in Late-colonial Hong Kong

Chapter 3          New Towns and the Municipal Cultural Centres

Chapter 4          The Making of a Cultural Landmark

Chapter 5          Cultural Space for Public Participation

Chapter 6          Characteristics of Late-Colonial Cultural Space

Epilogue           The Next Turn in Hong Kong’s Cultural Development