Ancestral heritage : conservation guidelines for traditional Chinese ancestral halls in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong is a well-known metropolitan city in the world and one of the developed cities in China. Due to city modernization, land value increases rapidly and many traditional Chinese buildings were demolished and redeveloped to modern buildings in order to obtain the highest profits and values. On the other hand, nowadays people show less interest to construct Chinese buildings and the quantity of Chinese buildings are diminshed. As a result, the demand of skilled craftsman is trending downward and the traditional skills and specialized knowledge for construction of traditional Chinese buildings are facing threat and disappear. Currently, there is no standardized methodology or guidelines to conserve and preserve the traditional Chinese buildings and in some cases the conservation works were done improper way which had adverse impact to the historic buildings. Due to the absence of well-founded locally relevant principles and guidelines for conservation and restoration of Chinese buildings in Hong Kong, it brings quarrels on repair method statements among different groups of professionals. While the General Specifications for the repair and maintenance of buildings applied only to the modern buildings (ie. reinforced concrete structures) and not traditional Chinese buildings. There is therefore a need to develop a set of General Specifications and typical repair method for Chinese historic buildings in Hong Kong, which will lead to better conservation of these important heritage buildings. The author is to write the appropriated practice to preserve and conserve Chinese historic buildings in Hong Kong. The objective of this dissertation is to produce the first draft of a set of conservation guidelines and general approach for repairing and conserving traditional Chinese ancestral halls that can be adopted in the industry.