Seeing the bigger picture : interpreting the Hong Kong City Hall ensemble as a cultural landscape

Abstract

Cohabiting with the city’s intrinsic hunger and demand for development, it has become daily to walk past stand-alone, if not almost out of context, heritage buildings in our neighbourhoods. Governed by a heritage appraisal framework designated to direct sole attention to individual buildings instead of the wider landscape it encompasses, the tendency for cultural heritage to compromise its significance toward the loophole in current frameworks has become an indifferent scene to witness. This study explores the concept of cultural landscapes through the case study of the Hong Kong City Hall Ensemble (‘HKCH Ensemble’) - an assortment of buildings and spaces tied together by the Modern Movement at the Central Harbourfront - a site that has historically been vulnerable to ambitious visions of reconstruction and reclamation. The analysis of the HKCH Ensemble as a potential cultural landscape is premised on four major assessment criteria formulated in close relation with internationally chartered definitions and the local climate: (i) multi-layered and progressive, (ii) aggregation of nature and the man, (iii) clue to culture and (iv) geographical specificity. Despite the indisputable ability of the City Hall to tell a fully flavoured story that could, in all ways, stand solo, an interpretation inclusive of its adjoining landscape ultimately presents a finishing touch that locks all pieces of the puzzle into place. The cultural bloom and architectural advancement anchored in the City Hall could only be rightfully justified when positioned in a larger frame that perceives the entire HKCH Ensemble as a post-war urban planning initiative that provided a social space and, eventually, a point of reference for the local population to collectively measure themselves. The wealth of interweaving narratives encountered in the process of deciphering the HKCH Ensemble underscores the necessity of reading heritage buildings beyond their individual context. In the long run, this study bears the forging ambition of applying the research outcomes to the many more uncharted cultural landscapes in the city.