REGENERATION: WEST KOWLOON
festival’s waterfront site will be transformed into the West Kowloon Cultural District, a £1.8bn, 40 hectare collection of museums, theatres, shops, flats and public spaces. More than just a cultural district, West
Kowloon is an ambitious experiment in archi- tecture and urban planning. Built on a piece of land reclaimed from the sea in the early 1990s, it could set a new model for development in Hong Kong, where profits usually trump good architecture and planning. But spiralling costs and delays have taken their toll on the project’s reputation, with one local newspaper decrying it as “one of the ugliest breeds of white ele- phant.” Delays on an adjacent train terminus mean that construction on most of the project won’t be finished until the late 2020s. “I think it will be very difficult,” says John Batten, an art and architecture critic who has followed West Kowloon’s development. “Hong Kong doesn’t do public space very well.” Such scepticism could be forgiven, con- sidering the district’s history. When the project was first announced by the Hong
The Pavilion will offer views over the harbour and will act as an event and exhibition space
Kong government in 2003, it was conceived primarily as a tourist attraction, with exclu- sive development rights given to one of Hong Kong’s largest property conglomerates. Foster + Partners proposed a design that enclosed the entire district under an enormous canopy.
The public was not impressed. Eventually, the entire scheme was sent back to the drawing board, with the developer replaced by an independent government agency, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. That led to a new public competition for its
Bing Thom’s Xiqu Centre is purpose- built for Chinese
opera performances
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