Living in a developers' town like Hong Kong is architectural oblivion, say those in the know. Architects say we live in a city where it doesn't matter if a design looks good, if it's not practical and costs money - it's out. Li Yao writes.

A group of architects got together to design a building that looked very much like an ocean going cruise ship, whereas, in reality it was a columbarium - a kind of ghost ship for storing the mortal remains of some 35,000 people. It's called "Floating Eternity". The daring design is on display until November at a contemporary art space in Sheung Wan.

The designers proposed "Floating Eternity" last year. We're running out of places on land to store people's remains after they die - and our population is seriously aging.

"Floating Eternity", conceived over about a week, is likely never to be more than a pipedream. The designers know that. They know this kind of architecture doesn't sell in a city that likes its architecture practical, if not prosaic.

And that's why the public dialogue about the cruise ship to oblivion took one of the designers, Benny Lee, 30, completely by surprise. Part of the discussion hinges on the proposition that architects in Hong Kong usually don't think "that way". Creative designs in the spirit of "Floating Eternity" aren't big sellers, Lee observed.

Enterprise and creative design flair tend to elicit a limp response, a "meh', ho hum, what's the point and why would we want to do that?

Lee recalls how his future as an architect might have sailed off into Eternity because of that kind of limited perspective. He took that kind of ossified perspective to London with him. After completing his Bachelor's Degree in architecture in Hong Kong, he went on to do post-graduate studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. He remembers the struggle.

"I almost failed," he exclaimed. I learned technical skills, like drawing windows. In London, the teachers demanded creativity. I was unaccustomed to this. And I always asked them, what use would these designs have?" Lee recalls.

He finished his studies in 2008 and came back to Hong Kong in 2011. Since then he's worked with several architects who share the same mindset he took to London. "If I suggest we do a little extra design to make the thing look nicer, they will ask what good it is. If extra work means additional costs, architects know developers will trash the idea," Lee said.

In Hong Kong, architects do not have the stature to take on developers on matters of aesthetics. It's a developers' world here in Hong Kong. They run the show and make the final decisions. At least in Europe, architects get a little respect, Lee complained.

Developers are powerful and all profit-driven. The city's limited usable land and building regulations give developers a blank check to maximize their profits from every piece of land they buy, Lee said. If a developer agrees to balconies, it's not a matter of improving the quality of the living space - it's about being able to claim a larger floor space to sell people who eventually will buy the properties.

Lee said he had seen high-rise residential buildings with bedrooms facing sewer pipes. It's not very healthy for anyone living there. But no one seems to care, he adds. Apartments are still in high demand. Architects can't do anything. They'd be written off as trouble makers if they created a fuss and there would be all that expensive education out the window.

Building designers, not architects

Louis Lor, another architect, said Hong Kong architects are really building designers. Lor got his BA in architecture at the University of British Columbia, Canada, in the early 1980s. When he came back to Hong Kong he was unprepared for what he encountered in the field. As he described it, there were design architects, and administrative architects.

"The administrative architects are good at contract management, to coordinate with different stakeholders and ensure the project gets done on time, meets the safety requirements, and stays on budget," Lor said.

Lor said administrative architects are the norm in Hong Kong. He says the education system is partly to blame. He recalled that the fourth time he applied for the architecture school in Canada, the dean interviewed him and asked whether Lor had knowledge of psychology, sociology, anthropology or even what architecture means. Lor said he just sat there shaking his head.

From the dean's explanations, Lor came to an awareness that architecture is an evolving subject and that individual architects should not be confined to a narrow field, but should be exposed to knowledge in various disciplines, experiment with new ideas, and find different solutions and approaches.

Lor says he has challenged professors at the Department of Architecture, the University of Hong Kong with the same questions that once stumped him. Introduced in 1950 under the deanship of British architect Gordon Brown, the school has produced a large number of graduates who have helped shape Hong Kong's landscape in the past decades. But Lor thinks it should be called the "school of building design".

"Professors there teach technical skills and contract management. No liberal arts courses are offered. Students learn how to get a building constructed, but do not study how the environment they are creating will affect the residents and the community," Lor said.

Soul-searching architects

Kacey Wong, 43, from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design, echoes Lor's argument and said, "The architecture I learned has a capital letter A, and the rest are just buildings." Wong studied architecture at Cornell University in New York in the 1990s, and arts in London and Melbourne.

"Architects in Hong Kong feel helpless. They are part of a mega-money team, and are treated like accessories to the powerful real estate companies," Wong said. He worked for three companies, even opened his own firm, then the work got competitive and boring. He saw through it, stopped being an architect, and became a visual artist in 1997.

Wong said Hong Kong had played the role of transmitting an architectural culture from the West to the Chinese mainland. "In the 1980s, people from Chinese provinces would come to Hong Kong, point at one building, and ask for an exact replica," Wong said.

Today, the mainland no longer needs to go through Hong Kong and can work directly with foreigners. And more mainland people come and look at some of the crazy apartment buildings in Hong Kong, erected with no intelligence, like boxes with holes, he said.

Mainland property purchasers brought their influence to Hong Kong. In the 1980s, an increasing number of mainlanders bought Hong Kong properties. "Developers tried to please them. The buildings were designed with marble here, and marble there, to create a lavish look. If they weren't designed that way, mainland people were not interested," Wong said, seeing the fad as no less than a crisis for Hong Kong architects.

Another brewing crisis is the exodus of the architects from Hong Kong. Manfred Yuen, 33, founder of an architecture firm "groundwork", said many of his architect friends now work in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, some in Taipei and Bangkok. Yuen himself has worked in Dalian in Northeast China. He just came back from a trip in Hangzhou, and saw a 3,800-square-foot apartment there cost HK$8 million. "In Hong Kong, to buy an apartment of a similar size, it is four or five times more expensive. If there is better living quality and the nearby network of entrepreneurs gives opportunities to young people in Hong Kong, why don't they leave?" Yuen asks.

He said too stringent bureaucracy puts constraints on artistic pursuits too. When architects submit building plans, the city's administrators use a set of rigid laws against their creativity. The government wants functional buildings that meet the basic safety requirements against fire, water leakage and typhoon. The administrators are risk-aversive and dislike the use of new building materials or techniques. Then it will be difficult to convince the client to adopt the idea.

Yuen admits that to overcome the challenges is a learning process for young architects. "Although I complain about these constraints, I know it is what drives us to think creatively and make a difference," he said.

Creativity comes when architects try to beat the regulations, go beyond boundaries and experiment with fresh, even risky ideas, Yuen added.

Contact the writer at liyao@chinadaily.com.cn

(HK Edition 10/04/2013 page2)