Client: Planning department, HKSAR Government
Design: MET Studio
Recommended White Papers
Size: 1,500 sq m
Cost: HK$48.5m (£4m)
Completion time: Four years
If, as Prince Charles once observed, Hong Kong has created ‘one of the most successful societies on Earth’, then part of that success must be attributed to the meticulous way in which the city has been planned. The built environment of Hong Kong, also known as the world’s most vertical city because of its dense concentration of skyscrapers, is constantly changing, and consequently the city’s planning department is one of the busiest in the world.
Now, a new permanent exhibition designed by London and Hong Kong-based MET Studio and run by the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administration Region) government’s planning department aims at bringing the history, geography and anatomy of the city to life, charting Hong Kong’s development through its planning.
Urban planning may strike some people as an unusual, perhaps even a dry, subject for a public exhibition, but Neil Williams of exhibition design practice MET Studio says shows on this kind of theme are much more common in Asia. He also says it was a fascinating subject for an exhibition designer to explore: ‘It was brilliant to research, especially because we’re dealing with a lot of history in certain sections of the gallery. We looked at how the city has changed over the past 150 years.’
As well as giving visitors an illuminating and engaging view into the history, culture and infrastructure of the city, the exhibition is also designed to encourage Hong Kong residents to take a more active role in the planning process. Says Williams: ‘The brief asked us to communicate the planning process, but also to get across quite technical issues so that people understand them more clearly. It’s not easy to communicate some of these subjects – they are quite esoteric and professional, and it’s been about getting those things across to the average person in street.’
Based in the City Hall Annex building, which used to house municipal offices, the exhibition is spread over three floors. Visitors enter on the ground floor, where the exhibition begins, and go up an escalator to the third floor and work their way back down. In addition to the permanent exhibits there is also a flexible space for changing exhibitions and events on the entrance floor.
Visually, Williams and his team took their cues from the streets of Hong Kong, using the kind of red neon signage that’s synonymous with the city and which, Williams says, also creates a pleasing contrast to the grey concrete of the building shell. ‘We used a strong red as a way to make the space feel welcoming, and we used that on all the floors.’
While the colour red runs thematically through the whole exhibition, each of the 10 sections is also made distinct by its own palette of colours and materials relating to its subject. The Infrastructure area, for example, is a recreation of a concrete tunnel, while the section exploring transportation is a recreation of a small section of Hong Kong’s FTR underground train network.
The Green Hong Kong space uses a lot of bamboo – a fast-growing, highly sustainable and quintessentially Chinese material, while the Heritage section has mosaic floors and recreations of Chinese-style brick tiles on the walls.
Williams says that interactivity was central to the exhibiton’s design. Not only do interactive exhibits – such as touchscreens that allow visitors to ‘vote’ (hypothetically) on which buildings or areas of the city they think should be preserved – encourage visitors to delve into the subject in a exploring and engaging way, but information gleaned from these interactive exhibits is also stored as a source of (non-personalised) data for the city’s planning department.
Williams has been living and working in Hong Kong for nearly 10 years and he says the local knowledge that he and his team have was hugely beneficial when it came to designing many of the exhibits.
Some, for example, contain images, sounds and vox-pop recordings that refer to well-known locations, cultural icons and other attractions. There are also small boxes which visitors can open to discover images and video clips, including footage of the spectacular fireworks that take place over the harbour, but also more esoteric references – such as to classic Canto pop songs, local wildlife, the sound of trams, excerpts from comedy and films and people ordering food in Hong Kong restaurants.
Local knowledge was vital, I think,’ says Williams, ‘especially in terms of the details that we’ve included, where we have things like local films and music built into the walls. I think it’s important to have that connection, and someone coming from outside and trying to do that would probably have missed quite a lot of those subtleties.’
Words by Jamie Mitchell
