VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages
Abstract
Obtained the UNESCO highest Award of Excellence in Cultural Heritage Conservation in 2017, the Blue House Cluster, a revitalization project of a group of three Chinese tenement houses (also known as Tong Lau) built from 1920s to 1950s in Hong Kong, is an exemplar that blends together value-based, fabric-based and people-centred approaches in heritage conservation. With the motto of retaining the house and the people, this bottom-up approach exemplifies the possibility of achieving social sustainability through conserving the tangible architectural fabric and intangible neighbourhood network and atmosphere. This project is regarded as the touchstone of other historic buildings and neighbourhoods threatened by gentrification. Despite its success, it remains the only case of such heritage revitalization model in Hong Kong due to the pre-eminence of neoliberal urban policy, absence of guiding framework or policies for community engagement, and government’s lapse in incorporating heritage conservation into the sustainability agenda. The paper is divided into two main parts. The first part outlines the context and concept of the Blue House Cluster project as well as the major achievements of the project. The second part identifies the inconsistencies and gaps in the local heritage policy. Then it uses the UNESCO Thematic Indicators for Culture in the 2030 Agenda, also known as the Culture|2030 Indicators, as an assessment framework to evaluate the aspects in which the project have benefited the development of sustainability at a local level.
Hok Nang Tam is an arts and heritage practitioner with experience working on art projects engaging with issues connected to notions of history, memory, and place-making. He is undertaking independent research and curating work looking into different approaches of contemporary artists’ entering into dialogue with heritage. Prior to this venture, he was the founding Centre Executive of the Centre for Research and Development in Visual Arts at the Academy of Visual Arts of the Hong Kong Baptist University and involved in several other projects that bring together academia, art, and society.