Presented at ANCER Research Camp |

Most of the public cultural facilities in Hong Kong nowadays were built in the 1970s / 80s, a period of active public construction. It was followed by a second wave around the 2000s, resulting in landmark projects such as the WCKD. The debates and controversies during their development have become an opportunity for public discussion about the value of culture in society. This paper takes architectural production as the subject to review how it evolves in Hong Kong over the past 5 decades.

A holistic view of cultural projects across time and scale can illustrate the changing positioning of cultural policy… with two key questions in mind:

• How can planning initiatives support and nurture the development of arts and culture?
• How does culture situate in a broader urban development context? And does it work in collusion or against urban development goals?