Building control on adaptive re-use : a case study on the old dairy farm depot in HK Central

Abstract

Adaptive reuse of historical buildings was promoted by the government during the 2007 policy address regarding the conservation of Hong Kong’s Heritage. In the few years after this policy was launched, there were many changes to the statutory control related to the use of buildings, which has indirectly affected the occupants of these historical buildings.

While it was widely criticized that there was no statutory protection to historic buildings other than those graded as Declared Monuments, these buildings related statutory controls also some effects on the conservation of historical building both positive and negative.

This dissertation focus on Fringe Club as a case study, to review the effect of statutory controls to the adaptive reuse of a government owned historical building, in particular, the control through licensing.

The objective is to provide holistic considerations for future improvement in applying statutory control on adaptive reuse of historic buildings.