West Kowloon Cultural District Research Articles

Hong Kong as a Global Art Hub: Art Ecology and Sustainability of Asia’s Art Market Centre

Over the past decade, Hong Kong’s art market has experienced unprecedented growth, emerging as the second largest in the world in 2020 in terms of contemporary art auctions. Factors such as the city’s free-market economy and well-developed infrastructure, as well as its unique position as a gateway to the large and growing Chinese art market, have led to major global art fairs and galleries establishing their presence in the city, in addition to the already present international auction houses. Moreover, the recent opening of M+, Hong Kong’s new museum of visual culture, as part of the West Kowloon Cultural District, is designed to further seal Hong Kong’s position and contribute to the continued growth of its art market. This paper explores the Hong Kong art ecosystem and its sustainability by focusing on leading art market institutions, anchor cultural organizations, and other key actors driving the development of the Hong Kong art system, on both the commercial and the nonprofit side; the effects of the expanding art market on the city’s art scene; the dynamics of the relationship between the Hong Kong art market and the broader Chinese art market; and the key emerging opportunities and challenges to Hong Kong’s future development as Asia’s premier art hub.

Cultural Centers in Hong Kong: Welfare Provision or Economic Instrument?

“Cultural center” is a new type of architecture and institution that has emerged since WWII and has become a model for many contemporary cultural institutions. It reflects the physical realization of the European welfare-state cultural policy, especially in Britain and France. With reference to the European cases, this paper examines three major cultural centers in Hong Kong from the 1960s to the present day (City Hall, Hong Kong Cultural Center, and the Xiqu Center at the West Kowloon Cultural District). Employing a socio-spatial approach, the methods include an archival study of government documents and spatial analysis of public space at the selected cultural centers. The paper demonstrates how the positioning of culture has shifted from a public welfare provision into a capital-oriented urban development strategy and, in this context, questions the role of contemporary cultural institutions.

Hong Kong as special cultural zone: Confucian geopolitics in practice

Responding to An, Sharp, and Shaw’s article, ‘Towards Confucian Geopolitics’, I consider how strategies and interpretations of Chinese geopolitics are playing out in Hong Kong with attention to their cultural dimensions. First, I reflect upon the reactions of individuals and the media in the West—specifically Britain—to the protests and street violence that rocked its former colony in the summer of 2019. Second, to reckon with An, Sharp, and Shaw’s contention that the hybridized nature of Chinese geopolitics emerges from its ‘strategic adaptability’, thereby enabling the integration of foreign ideas into Chinese cultural traditions, I offer a brief critique of cultural and infrastructural developments in Hong Kong relating to the West Kowloon Cultural District. Initially intended to showcase local culture and link it into the art world’s global circuits, the megaproject is increasingly being made in China’s image. Third, as a counterpoint to the supposed flexibility of the Chinese geopolitical imagination, I address the ossification of Western geopolitical thought and practice. In order for geographers to build more pluralistic critical geopolitics, engaging with a diversity of geopolitical approaches and their cultural underpinnings is key. For Western nation-states, failing to practice a more hybridized geopolitics may represent a more existential risk.

Translating Culture-Bound Elements: A Case Study of Traditional Chinese Theatre in the Socio-Cultural Context of Hong Kong

This study explores the controversy surrounding the translation of the name of a new cultural infrastructure in Hong Kong, specifically related to the cultural heritage of traditional Chinese theatre. The first performing arts landmark in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District was named the Xiqu Centre; the term xiqu is a Hanyu pinyin representing traditional Chinese theatre. Though this translation issue has been intensely debated for over a decade, it remains unexplored in the research. With reference to Venuti’s translation strategies of foreignization and domestication, this study examines the Hong Kong public’s views on the translation of the name of this cultural landmark and the underlying drivers of their perceptions. It uses internet-based surveys, semi-structured interviews with the public, and interviews with experts as data sources. The results revealed that factors of (1) aesthetics and artistry, (2) cultural identity, and (3) publicity and internationalization have contributed to public perception. This study’s findings shed new light on how translation interacts with cultural, social, and political factors by examining how Hong Kong’s unique historical relationship with China and the West has played a role in this translation issue. The findings have significant implications for the translation of culture-bound elements and the transmission of cultural heritage in Hong Kong and worldwide.

Xiqu Centre, Hong Kong: design and construction of a suspended theatre structure

The West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) development aims to provide Hong Kong with a vibrant new cultural quarter on the shores of Victoria Harbour. As the first completed building in the district, the Xiqu Centre provides a world-class venue dedicated to the development and performance of xiqu (pronounced ‘see-chew’), a form of traditional Chinese opera. With its prominent location, the Xiqu Centre will act as a gateway to the wider district. Accordingly, a large area of ground-level public realm is provided within the building footprint. This article discusses some of the technical challenges in the design of the building structure – prompted by its unusual arrangement and constrained site – and how they were overcome. In particular, it will focus on the design and construction of the 1073-seat Grand Theatre spanning 37m over a column free public plaza.

Soundscape design of an open-air concert venue using virtual reality technologies

Hong Kong has two mega-projects underway that include open-air concert venues. One of them is called the Kai Tak Sports Park and another is the West Kowloon Cultural District. As an open-air concert venue will produce amplified music and noise from audience, as well as vehicular traffic noise and crowd noise before and after the concerts, a priori analysis of soundscape and noisescape in the district due to musical events is highly desirable. This paper reviews some noise incidents due to concerts at the Hong Kong Stadium and Chinese operas at other public places. We suggest that virtual reality technologies shall be utilized so that stakeholders can hear the possible soundscape and noisescape at different periods of a musical event during the public engagement.

Hong Kong’s M+: A museum of visual culture at a time of political unrest

Abstract Part of the yet to be completed complex of cultural institutions called the West Kowloon Cultural District, M+ (i.e. ‘museum plus’) has been a topic of heated debates in Hong Kong for over a decade. Being a museum of visual culture, defining its curatorial mission was from the onset a difficult task since the very idea of what constitutes visual culture is far from clear cut. This task was in fact rendered all the more complex by the emphasis it almost accidentally had to put on the visual arts because of the first great donation this museum benefitted from. Although its collections are extremely varied, the attention of the local public as well as the international art press has often focused on the bequest made by the Swiss collector Uli Sigg of his vast selection of contemporary Chinese art. This article will first address the history of this donation and its potential source of ideological tension with the Beijing authorities in the changing political environment of Hong Kong. This environment was rendered particularly complex in the atmosphere of political polarization generated by the pro-democracy demonstrations (called the ‘Umbrella movement’) of late 2014. The last part of this article deals with the objects generated by the participants of the Umbrella movement that are presently at the heart of the latest controversy about M+, a controversy where the nature of local politics and the very existence of freedom of speech in Hong Kong are at stake.

Public buildings in Hong Kong: A short account of evolution since the 1960s

In a capitalist society, public buildings are essential social assets that balance private and civic interests while providing convenience and comfort for the entire community. The performance of public buildings is remarkable as they are related to most people instead of a handful of users/owners in the private sector. Hence, architecture of public institutions occupies a central, subtle, and decisive role in the quality and the state of civility in the city. Living in compact environments, Hong Kong people always need and aspire for more acute use of public spaces. In this local context, common space and public buildings naturally form an extension to city living. As a consequence, public buildings are becoming multi-use, multi-value and multi-level.This article is a short account of the evolution and development of the public building in Hong Kong, from the early1960s to the new millennium. It considers the historic background of the modernist movement and the socio-economic setting of the city. In chronological order, the paper delineates six examples: the City Hall (1962), Town Hall in Shatin New Town (1985), Cultural Centre (1989), Heritage Museum (2000), Central Library (2001) and Wetland Park (2006). The authors present the statistical analysis of public buildings during this period and examine the cases with established criteria of public/civic buildings. Furthermore, social background and the strategies that those designs adopted are discovered and discussed. While generally following the modernist principles, the government architects in Hong Kong adopted alternative methods to respond to the increasing societal expectations along the timeline, for example, pragmatism, neo-classicism and sustainability. It concludes by suggesting the future of the city's public buildings in the West Kowloon Cultural District in the coming decade.

Geographies of Abstraction, Urban Entrepreneurialism, and the Production of New Cultural Spaces: The West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong

During the 1990s and 2000s understandings of urban politics have become dominated by narratives of neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism. Considerations of, and even interest in, the diversities that exist in the specific politics that shape place developments have often been relegated to a matter of secondary interest when understood in relation to broader structural global forces. This is particularly significant as urban development projects have become increasingly bound-up with cultural programmes, many of which are embedded in the social relations of places, yet are often dismissed as subservient to global, fast-track development logics. This paper draws on a study of the politics surrounding the development of one of Asia's largest culture-led urban development projects, the West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong. It explores the complex relationships between contemporary development discourses and historically embedded postcolonial subjectivities and policy legacies. It uses the evidence to argue for more nuanced interpretations of change, and calls for a stronger focus on the concrete relations in and through which policy abstractions are formed.