Having spent the first few days taking in Hong Kong and exploring other aspects of its culture, I decided to go see the district I was most interested in : Sham Shui Po. When I got off the metro and crossed to Apliu Street it really was like entering another world. We saw technology markets, walked through alleyways, and explored entering tall structures such as the Dragon Center to try to get views of the rooftop slum communities. What I liked most about Sham Shui Po was that it was very obviously a non-tourist area. Considered the poorest district in Hong Kong, the streets are lined with market stalls selling everything from technology to LED lights to fabrics, interspersed with the occasional staircase that brings one up to the housing of the building above.
When one enters the Dragon Center, escalators take you up higher and higher into this nine-floor shopping center. The view outward to Sham Shui Po becomes a story in itself: one of the poverty of the rooftops visible through the modern and industrial glass façade of this new development. The image really is worth 1,000 words as you wonder how developers can create a building so out of touch with its surroundings.
The Rooftops | From Street Level
The Rooftops | From Street Level
Using my first day just to wander and take in Sham Shui Po, we made our way back towards the MTR to head to Central where we had a meeting with OMA. At the meeting we were exposed to two of the new projects of OMA: one to propose a new design for the existing MTR stations and one for the Stock Exchange in Shenzhen. The proposal for the MTR stations seemed very fitting at first, filled with new advertisement boards and with a new roof design that would make MTR station entries very visible from the street; but it also was quite terrifying. To see the influence of the clients’ vision on the design, it was no wonder to me anymore that I found the amount of advertising in Hong Kong overwhelming. The entire scheme considered new spaces to advertise Adidas or other companies to the thousands of passer-by. It did, however, also take some interesting new approaches to how to organize the circulation in the MTR stations, which I appreciated having already felt lost many times trying to find my way to a particular entry or exit in the madness of the MTR stations in Hong Kong. Post-OMA we reconvened as a studio and enjoyed a delicious dinner in Central where we discussed our projects and tried to make a plan to see particular sites together if people were interested in the same space.
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